Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Saturday, March 30, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 03/30/2024
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MARCH 30TH 2024
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Edward Carr
Deputy editor
On our cover in Europe this week we looked at three severe shocks, actual and potential, to the economy. Partly because of the jump in energy prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union’s GDP has grown by only 4% this decade, compared with 8% in America. As if that were not bad enough, Europe faces a surge of cheap imports from China. And within a year Donald Trump could be back in the White House, slapping huge tariffs on Europe’s exports.
This rather lovely image focuses on the impending blight. Europe’s misfortune is particularly ill-timed. American support for Ukraine has dried up and the energy transition has much further to run. A fast-ageing population, overbearing regulators and inadequate market integration continue to hold back growth. Disillusioned European voters are increasingly liable to support hard-right parties such as the Alternative for Germany.
For all their charm, blue petals and a euro coin say that we are writing about the 20 countries in the single currency. In reality, the shocks threaten the entire continent—including Britain.
Somehow, this crumpled euro note is not so evocative of the currency union. Instead it hints at a fourth danger that we wanted to be a central part of our leader. Although the shocks facing Europe are outside its control, errors from Europe’s own policymakers could greatly aggravate the damage.
We thought about a classical allusion—because those errors stem partly from Europe’s understandable but backward-looking urge to preserve industries and jobs.
One error would be to fight the previous war against inflation by keeping economic policy too tight at a moment of vulnerability. It will be easier to cope with disruption from outside if central banks help avoid a slump that would stop displaced workers finding new jobs.
Another error would be to copy America’s and China’s protectionism by giving vast subsidies to favoured industries. China’s recent economic woes demonstrate the flaws, not the virtues, of excessive government planning.
This chap is wrestling an indicator. Unfortunately, it looks as if he is grappling with red tape. Classical imagery was good, but we wanted something more precise.
When we saw this, we knew we had what we were after. This Mona Lisa has not only received a nasty shock; she’s also gone punk. And that nods towards Europe’s need to junk the past and forge its own mould-breaking economic policy.
Even as America showers industry with public money, Europe should instead spend on infrastructure, education, and research and development. Rather than emulate China’s interventionism, Europe should note the benefit Chinese firms derive from a vast domestic market. Integrating Europe’s market for services, where trade remains difficult, would help firms grow, reward innovation and replace some lost manufacturing jobs.
This hair-raising cover was almost ready, but some of us wanted to tie in the triple shock with our modern Mona Lisa. So our designers came up with some firebolts over her left shoulder. They say lightning never strikes twice. It threatens to strike Europe three times.
Can artificial intelligence transform health care? That is the question at the heart of this week’s Technology Quarterly, written by our health editor, Natasha Loder, and which we featured on our cover in America and Asia.
This is how we illustrated the front of the TQ. As you can see, Leonardo da Vinci is all over this week’s paper: he was the hand behind not just the Mona Lisa, but also the Vitruvian man—which applies geometry and mathematics to the human form and is the inspiration for this image.
We thought that our cover should refer to the TQ. Artificial intelligence is generating excitement and hyperbole everywhere, but in health care it has the potential to be transformational. As the TQ describes, it promises better diagnoses, personalised support for patients, faster drug discovery and greater efficiency. In Europe analysts predict that it could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.
There is already evidence that AI systems can enhance diagnostic accuracy and disease tracking, improve the prediction of patients’ outcomes and suggest better treatments. It can also boost efficiency in hospitals and surgeries by taking on tasks such as medical transcription and monitoring patients, and by streamlining administration.
Unfortunately, integration has been slow and the results have often been mediocre. Our editorial focused on why that is and what to do about it.
Our covers played on a stock medical phrase, “the doctor will see you now”. Putting “soon” as the last word was ambiguous—it’s later than now, but not very far off. To be clearer, we settled on “eventually”.
Health care desperately needs the AI treatment, but its introduction will not be painless. As the doctor says: “This is going to hurt.”
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View large image (“The triple shock facing Europe’s economy”)
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Backing stories
→ The triple shock facing Europe’s economy (Leader)
→ Europe’s economy is under attack from all sides (Finance and economics)
→ The AI doctor will see you…eventually (Leader)
→ Health and AI (Technology Quarterly)
Friday, March 29, 2024
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Roman Winemaking Was Interesting And Innovative
DISCOVERIES
A Rainbow of Wine
In ancient Rome, the wine flowed freely.
Now, new research has uncovered what it might have tasted like, Smithsonian Magazine reported.
Researchers Dimitri Van Limbergen and Paulina Komar found that Roman wine boasted a spicy taste, with tones of toasted bread, apples, roasted walnuts, and even curry – a far cry from the simplistic notions often held about its composition.
In their paper, the researchers delved into the role of clay pots known as “dolia” in the meticulous winemaking process. These vessels, ubiquitous in Roman times, served as more than mere storage containers, but instead were intricately engineered to influence the flavor and texture of wines.
Today, wines are made in stainless steel tanks and contain added preservatives. But ancient wine production is more similar to the modern Georgian method: Georgian winemakers use “gvevri” vessels – similar to dolia – and bury them underground to ferment wine.
The team explained that Romans buried dolia up to their mouths and sealed them with lids to regulate temperature, humidity, and pH during fermentation,
The porous ancient vessels were coated with pitch on the inside to facilitate controlled oxidation, while their narrow bases allowed solids from the grapes to sink to the bottom and separate from the wine.
These buried conditions also nurtured the development of flor yeasts, infusing the wine with unique compounds. The latter would give the ancient drink a distinctive flavor and aroma, such as notes of toasted bread, roasted nuts, and even green tea.
However, the final product would have an orange color, with Van Limbergen noting that comparing this hue to modern-day wines is tricky.
“Wine colors … were not standardly subdivided between white and red (as is done today), but for the Romans, they belonged to a wide spectrum of colors ranging from white and yellow to goldish, amber, brown and then red and black,” he told Newsweek.
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Monday, March 25, 2024
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Saturday, March 23, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 03/23/2024
The Economist
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MARCH 23RD 2024
Cover Story newsletter from The Economist
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Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
This was a banner week for our designers—and for all our font-fancying readers. We have introduced our new family of bespoke typefaces into the print edition. They are designed to be more elegant and easier to read. Here is a short article that tells the story of what we did. We have also refreshed our page furniture, to make our charts clearer and to help readers find their way around the paper. I hope you like these changes.
We have two covers. In Britain we focus on immigration. The politics say that immigration is a crisis and a disaster, but the record says that Britain has a world-beating ability to integrate the people who come to its shores. Everywhere else we illustrate how, even at a moment of military ascendancy, Israel’s long-term future is under threat.
If ceasefire talks fail, Israel could be locked in the bleakest trajectory of its 75-year existence, featuring endless occupation, hard-right politics and isolation. Today many Israelis are in denial about this, but a political reckoning will come eventually. It will determine not only the fate of Palestinians, but also whether Israel thrives in the next 75 years.
We thought about using a photograph. In October Israel launched a justified war of self-defence against Hamas, whose terrorists had committed atrocities that threaten the idea of Israel as a land where Jews are safe. Today Israel has destroyed perhaps half of Hamas’s forces. But in important ways its mission has failed.
This picture illustrates one of those ways. Israel’s reluctance to help provide or distribute aid has led to an avoidable humanitarian catastrophe, and the civilian toll from the war is over 20,000 and growing. The hard-right government of Binyamin Netanyahu has rejected plans for post-war Gaza to be run by either the Palestinian Authority (PA) or an international force. The likeliest outcome is a military reoccupation. Israel’s trajectory will intensify its ethno-nationalist politics and pose legal threats to the economy. As estrangement from the West deepens, so deterrence may weaken. Firms could be blacklisted. Bosses could move high-tech businesses abroad or, if they are reservists, be arrested there.
This picture is even more epic. The sight of IDF troops chatting in the foreground captures an important point. The bleak outlook for Israel is not always acknowledged in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Many Israelis believe the unique threats to their country justify its ruthlessness and that the war has helped restore deterrence. Many see no partner for peace—the PA is rotten and polls say 93% of Palestinians deny Hamas’s atrocities even took place. Occupation is the least-bad option, they conclude. Israelis would prefer to be popular abroad, but condemnation and antisemitism are a small price to pay for security.
This picture is an eloquent riposte to that line of thinking. An Israeli flag supported by a slender branch is buffeted by the wind and set against the ruins of Gaza. Israel faces a long-term threat from Iran and its proxies, including Hizbullah. Deterring this requires a military partnership with America that needs bipartisan backing, and ideally Gulf Arab support, too. The economy depends on tech exports and experts with access to global markets. And rather than making Israelis safe, permanent occupation poisons politics by emboldening the hard right and breeding Palestinian radicalism. Israelis are right that they have no partner for peace today, but they are best placed to break the cycle.
A struggle for Israel’s future awaits. The battle in Gaza is just the start.
Britain now has a larger share of foreign-born residents than America. One in six of its inhabitants began life in another country. Angsty politicians gripe that Britain is letting in people from poor countries to do menial jobs, and weak students who want visas only so they can deliver pizzas. Multiculturalism has failed, they say: too many immigrants live parallel lives in segregated neighbourhoods. This week politicians in Parliament tussled over a bill that will make it easier to ship asylum-seekers to Rwanda without hearing their pleas—the latest in a string of illiberal laws designed to “stop the boats”.
The surprising thing is that Britain excels at getting foreigners up to speed economically, socially and culturally. It is (in this respect, at least) a model for the rest of the world.
An early idea was to look for a symbol of integration. Here’s a multicultural flag—and it was probably a good thing that we didn’t go for this, given that a row has flared up about the multicoloured St George’s cross emblazoned on the new England football kit.
We also thought of the national drink. If America is a melting pot and Canada is a mosaic perhaps Britain could be a warm brew of builder’s. These tea bags come from around the world—worryingly for any tea drinkers out there, that includes Poland and Romania.
In the European Union foreign-born adults with degrees who are not still in education have an employment rate ten percentage points lower than natives with degrees. In Britain the gap is a trivial two points. In England teenagers who do not speak English as their first language are more likely to obtain good grades in maths and English in national GCSE exams than native English-speakers. The idea that Britain is dividing into ghettos is a myth. Every ethnic group has consistently become less segregated since the census started keeping track in 1991.
To capture all this we needed something with more grandeur—and what could be grander than the colossal statue that greeted immigrants as they arrived at Ellis Island by sea?
Here’s a second, close-up version of the Statue of Liberty perched on the Seven Sisters, a stretch of chalk cliff overlooking the English Channel. We have tried cutting out the sea, so that readers are not reminded of the armada of small boats carrying asylum-seekers. After all, fewer than 30,000 of them came last year, compared with 1.2m long-term immigrants in the year to June.
And yet this scene is harder to make sense of. The Seven Sisters are a national landmark, but here they are lost. And confronting readers with the small boats was, in fact, a virtue. Asylum needs fixing and it dominates perceptions of immigration. But it does not represent what is really going on.
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View large image (“Israel alone”)
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Backing stories
At a moment of military might, Israel looks deeply vulnerable (Leader)
The war in Gaza may topple Hamas without making Israel safer (Briefing)
Britain is the best place in Europe to be an immigrant (Leader)
Without realising it, Britain has become a nation of immigrants (Britain)
Friday, March 22, 2024
Humans Were Using Tools 1.4 Million Years Afo
DISCOVERIES
Tool Stories
Archaeologists recently discovered the oldest evidence of human ancestors in Europe at a site in western Ukraine dating back 1.4 million years, Cosmos Magazine reported.
Hominins – a group that includes humans and their extinct relatives – are believed to have first arrived in Eurasia from Africa one or two million years ago. However, their exact route and point of arrival remain unknown.
Now, a new study on the Korolevo archaeological site provided some invaluable insights into the early migrations of hominins into Eurasia, challenging preconceived notions and rewriting the narrative of human evolution.
Korolevo has long been recognized for its Palaeolithic stone tools, yet the precise age of these artifacts remained elusive until now.
Researchers conducted a cosmogenic nuclide analysis of sediment surrounding the tools. This technique allowed them to examine the rare forms of atomic nuclei that formed because of bombardment by high-energy rays from space.
Their findings showed that the Korolevo tools were buried about 1.42 million years ago, with the team theorizing that they were used by the extinct Homo erectus.
But the study also unveiled links connecting disparate regions and time periods, bridging the gap between ancient human finds in the Caucasus and southwestern Europe.
The authors explained that this newfound understanding of migratory routes challenges previous hypotheses, suggesting an eastern entry point into the continent, instead of a land bridge to what is today the Iberian Peninsula or across the sea to southern Europe.
The findings also hint at the dynamic interplay between early humans and their environment over millennia: It shows how these resourceful hominins capitalized on warm interglacial periods to venture into higher latitudes, exploiting opportunities presented by shifting climates to expand their reach.
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
The Largest Fraud In Silcon Valley History
Madame President:
Your Tuesday morning briefing...The radar is always on a 360-degree sweep. Missed by most media outlets is a trial taking place in San Francisco. It is the largest fraud case in the history of Silicon Valley. The gross amount of the fraud was $11.5 billion dollars. After reselling a fraud-plagued asset, the net loss was still a staggering $4 billion dollars.
Was this an elaborate Ponzi scheme like the one pulled off by Bernie Madoff or Robert Stanford? No. Was it a cryptocurrency fraud like FTX where $8 billion was temporarily lost but later recovered? No.
Rather a giant corporation (Hewlett-Packard) led by one of the most capable CEOs in the US, Meg Whitman who is a Harvard MBA and the lady who made PayPal happen. The best and brightest executives, lawyers, accountants, and investigators looked over the acquisition of the British software firm Autonomy by Hewlett Packard in 2012. After much fanfare, Hewlett-Packard paid $11.5 billion for this British software firm. A couple of years later, Hewlett-Packard wrote off $8 billion of the purchase of this software firm. It led to the layoff of some 100,000 employees. Yes, when a big business deal goes bad, not only do the shareholders suffer but working people also suffer.
Some years later Hewlett Packard was able to sell Autonomy to another British firm. $7.5 billion dollars was recovered. There was still a $4 billion loss. All of this loss happened, allegedly, because the CEO of Autonomy and other executives engaged in a massive accounting fraud. Mike Lynch, the former CEO, and Stephen Chamberlain, the former vice president of finance are on trial in a San Francisco Federal court. If convicted of all charges, they could face up to 30 years in prison.
Here is an excellent report for those curious:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Autonomy#:~:text=In%202017%2C%20HPE%20sold%20its,subsidiaries%20on%201%20September%202017.
Be careful out there!
Stay "Far from the madding crowd."
Amo-a,
-JackW
Monday, March 18, 2024
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Saturday, March 16, 2024
The Economist Cover For 03/16/2024
The Economist
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MARCH 16TH 2024
Cover Story newsletter from The Economist
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Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
This week we have two covers, on America’s remarkable economy and what could stop it, and on Russia as it stages another election to acclaim Vladimir Putin as president.
America’s economy is riding high. The unemployment rate has been below 4% for 25 months in a row. Instead of ending 2023 in recession, as many expected, it kept going—and was nearly 3% bigger than at the end of 2022. Over five years, America’s economy has grown twice as fast as the euro zone’s and ten times as fast as Japan’s.
This performance reminded us of another cover we ran, almost a year ago. How about taking the idea to its extreme?
In April 2023 our cowboy had been towering over the prairie. Today we have him above the clouds. That is fitting: America’s economy has remained in the saddle despite sharp interest-rate rises, a trade war with China and real wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
However, unless you remember last year’s cover, this image is a bit baffling. Why is the horse up in the troposphere? What is it standing on? Why are its legs so long?
We thought some more and came up with two other ideas.
We have left the stars untouched, but converted the stripes into a bar chart. To help avoid the impression that we have cut back the flag, we have extended the lines to the right.
This is beautifully simple. But it suffers from a fundamental problem. Although the American economy is indeed miraculous, we have it doubling in size over the past decade. In reality, it has grown by about a quarter. We felt that was taking too much of a graphical liberty.
How about our second idea, a rippling bodybuilder? This image nicely gets at a weakness in the growth story. One big reason the economy has expanded so fast is the pandemic stimulus, worth 26% of GDP, more than double the rich-world average. Yet that dose of steroids cannot be repeated—America will this year spend more on debt interest than on defence. Indeed, protectionism and, under a future President Donald Trump, the mass deportation of illegal immigrants could yet threaten trade and the supply of labour and do real harm to the prospects for growth.
This image divided our colleagues. Some worried that it would go viral in the wrong way, and that people would share it because of our bodybuilder’s trunks rather than our own ideas. Perhaps we could jettison the jockstrap? How about a tastefully placed chart—a sort of fiscal fig leaf?
We doubled down, with a white pair of briefs on a white background. This image is cheeky rather than offensive. A cover is supposed to grab the eye. It’s a teaser, not a treatise.
The election that Vladimir Putin will win in Russia on March 17th is a sham—a ritual acclamation. But it should nonetheless be a wake-up call for the West. Far from collapsing, Russia’s regime has proved resilient. Mr Putin’s ambitions pose a long-term threat that goes far beyond Ukraine. Despite this, however, the West is still without a Russia strategy.
Over the years our covers have featured a lot of bears. The gruesome, parallel gashes in this map are all we need to depict the dangers ahead. The immediate worry is a defeat of Ukraine and, after that, attacks on neighbouring countries such as Moldova and the Baltic states; but that is not where Mr Putin’s ambitions end. Russia may put nuclear warheads into space. Its drones and cyber-warriors allow it to project force beyond its borders. Its disinformation industry spreads lies and confusion. This malign combination has destabilised countries in the Sahel and propped up despots in Syria and central Africa. It could also sway some of the plethora of elections the world will see this year.
Or we could focus on the violence Mr Putin is doing to his own people. Having taken over in 1999, he rolled back Russian democracy, especially after young, urban Russians staged mass protests in the 2010s. Textbooks and the media promote a seductive narrative of nationalism and Russian victimhood. Dissent at home has been strangled. The mutinous Yevgeny Prigozhin was blown from the sky and Mr Putin’s most charismatic political rival, Alexei Navalny, was murdered in the gulag in February.
Many in the West hoped that Western sanctions and Mr Putin’s blunders in Ukraine might doom his regime. Yet as our study this week of life in Vladivostok shows, it looks solid. Russia’s economy has been re-engineered. Oil exports bypass sanctions and are shipped to the global south. Western brands from BMW to H&M have been replaced with Chinese and local substitutes. A prudent working assumption is that Mr Putin will be in power for years.
We believe that outward aggression and inward repression are part of the same impulse. Mr Putin blames the West for challenges to his rule, and seeks to safeguard his regime by shutting out Western influence and trying to unite the Russian people in a struggle against a caricature of America and NATO. At home and abroad, when words fail, he will use fear or violence.
Those gloomy thoughts led us to this photograph of Red Square. You see it as if through a tunnel, drained of colour. St Basil’s Cathedral looms over the cobblestones. A tense, silhouetted couple walk away from the camera holding hands—not, it seems, out of love so much as for consolation.
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Friday, March 15, 2024
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Monday, March 11, 2024
Sunday, March 10, 2024
25 Years Ago March 10, 1999 Was A Joyous Day For Me
Jack Waldbewohner
10:18 AM (2 minutes ago)
to Elena, Djenane, Joao, Lovern, Marianna, Anna, PhD, Claud, Rebecca, Howard, John, Jean, Karenlynn, bcc: Luah
Dear Friends and Family Members:
At 05:00 AM on the date above. I awakened and watched the early morning Los Angeles news. I went to have breakfast.
I was an inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. I was completing a six-month sentence for civil contempt of court. I was worried that a second threatened contempt of court warrant would be served on me when I went downstairs to Receiving and Discharge to be released.
I read my Daily Bread for the day. One inscription caught my eyes as follows:
"Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord had done for you."
Mark 5:19
I cheered up. I was sure that I would be released. The guards took me down to Receiving and Discharge. I was fingerprinted, photographed, and pulled into a private room. A guard who was a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer interviewed me about the US Navy. We had a cordial talk. When we emerged from the room 30 minutes later, he said to his colleagues:
"This man was really in the U.S. Navy."
I was given some awful civilian clothes and $200 in release funds. Two guards escorted me to the ground floor. I complained that I needed to go to the toilet. They pointed to a service station across the street and told me to use the bathroom there.
When the door swung open, I was a free man. I have not come back to jail since then-25 years ago. This is a joyous day for me.
-JackW
Saturday, March 9, 2024
Friday, March 8, 2024
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Monday, March 4, 2024
Poland Is Now Taking On China In Cathode Production
Inside the heart of a battery
Paul Markillie
Innovation editor
It is not unusual for a section of a factory to be off limits to visitors, or subject to high levels of security, usually because what goes on there is part of a firm’s secret sauce. Surrendering my phone and other items was just the first step as I entered a giant new manufacturing complex at Nysa in south-west Poland. Further checks followed as I ventured deeper inside.
The Nysa plant makes cathode materials, which form the most critical component in the lithium-ion batteries powering most electric vehicles (EVs). The factory, together with a new plant being built next door, could eventually supply enough of this material for 3m EVs a year. China has dominated cathode production. The Nysa plant, owned by Umicore, a Brussels-based group, is the first to make these materials at scale in Europe.
Batteries are essential for decarbonising transport, but will also help deal with the intermittent nature of renewable power from solar energy and wind by storing electricity on the grid or at home. Yet, as our story in the Science section this week shows, battery technology is in a state of flux. With EV sales slowing in some places, carmakers are keen to attract buyers with cheaper and more powerful batteries. As a result, many battery chemistries are emerging, each needing a different concoction of materials and elements for their cathodes. Nysa has flexible manufacturing techniques so that it can respond quickly to changes in the market.
At present the main raw material entering the plant is lithium, which is blended with various combinations of nickel, manganese and cobalt to produce so-called NMC battery cells. Most carmakers are trying to use less cobalt, or eliminate it. It is expensive, toxic and rare. (For more on the cobalt industry, read our story on the millennial who witnessed its horrors in the Democratic Republic of Congo and is now building America’s first cobalt-nickel refinery.) Lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) cells are cheaper than NMC battery cells, but they have a lower energy density. In some cases that might not matter; LFP batteries are popular with urban motorists in China, who tend to make short journeys.
Another alternative is to replace lithium with sodium, which is cheap and easy to obtain, but heavier. Sodium batteries are starting to enter production, but again provide a lower level of performance. They could find a big market in grid storage, where weight is less of a problem. At the other end of the scale, powerful and lightweight solid-state lithium batteries may soon be available. These could double the range of existing EVs and cut recharging times to a few minutes. But they will be expensive and will initially be used only in luxury and sports cars. Other new battery chemistries are also emerging from the labs.
How all this works out will partly depend on commodity prices. Those prices will in turn be affected by new battery chemistries. Sodium, for example, could reduce demand for lithium, nickel and cobalt. Recycling will play its part, too, as battery-makers get an increasing amount of their raw materials from old EVs. Flexibility is going to be important in the battery industry.
Thanks for reading this edition of the Climate Issue. If you have any feedback, you can reach us here: climateissue@economist.com.
Sunday, March 3, 2024
Saturday, March 2, 2024
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