Naomi R. Mercer: why should you read The Handmaid’s Tale
9 July 2022
The Handmaid’s Tale, speculative fiction novel written in 1985 by Margaret Atwood, is set in the fictitious Republic of Gilead — usually referred to as Gilead — a totalitarian patriarchal theocracy, occupying much of what is the continental United States. Gilead is a place where even the most basic rights and liberties of many, particularly women, have been curtailed.
But the recent decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling giving women the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, has stoked fears of a Gilead-like regime becoming reality.
Talk of other long standing rights — including access to contraception, and same sex marriage — possibly being rescinded, is doing little to quell such concerns.
I first read The Handmaid’s Tale in 2019, weeks before Atwood announced she was publishing a follow-up, The Testaments. If you haven’t already read her 1985 novel, I recommend it to you, and a TEDEd video presentation Naomi R. Mercer made in 2018, is an excellent introduction.
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The Art of Life, a documentary about Michael Behrens
9 July 2022
Paused for weekend viewing… produced by Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo, The Art of Life is a documentary about mathematician Michael Behrens who walked away from academia, and made a life for himself living in a home he built in the midst of a dense Hawaiian jungle.
As a rising star in the field of abstract mathematics, Michael discovered that he could see beauty and pattern where others could not. But his path was not to be inside academia, or even inside society. He went on a grand adventure to unify his Buddhism with his ability to see an expanded view of reality. He created beauty in a place where nobody else would, and made his friends amongst dolphins.
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When will the last human be born? Not as soon as you think
8 July 2022
When will the last human be born and how many people will there ever be?
With the way things are in the world at the moment, who can help but think the last human might be born sooner rather than later. But in taking on the question, Kurzgesagt argues we may be among the first humans born, especially if our species goes on to survive and flourish over the next billion years. A whole lot depends on that eventuality, but what’s wrong with some optimism?
The future of humanity seems insecure. Rapid climate change, political division, our greed and failings make it hard to look at our species with a lot of optimism and so many people think our end is in sight. But humans always thought they lived in the end times. Every generation assumes they’re important enough to witness the apocalypse and then life just goes on. This is a problem because it leads to short term thinking and prevents us from creating the best world for ourselves and our descendants. What makes this worse is that we actually may live at an extremely critical moment in human history.
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Absurd instances of the trolley problem by Neal Agarwal
8 July 2022
Most people have heard of the trolley problem. In short, you’re standing beside a rail line, near a railroad switch. A train is coming along the track, but there are five people tied to the track, in its path. You have the option to pull the switch lever, sending the train along a side line.
But another person is tied and bound to the side line. What should you do? Stand there, do nothing, and allow the train run over the five people? Or send the locomotive down the side line, where one person will be killed? Presumably there is not time to free any of the people, so you are left with the difficult choice. Do five people perish, or one?
This format of the trolley problem was created by Philippa Foot, a British philosopher, in 1967, while Judith Thomson, a philosopher at MIT, devised the quandary’s name. American creative coder and developer Neal Agarwal, meanwhile, has thought of a few more, absurd, trolley problem instances.
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A trailer for Clerks III by Kevin Smith, Clerks meta sequel
8 July 2022
Clerks III, trailer, billed as the “meta sequel” to the dark 1994 comedy Clerks (and Clerks II from 2006), is being released in the United States in September, with Kevin Smith returning to direct.
Clerks III sees the original gang, Dante Hicks, Veronica, Jay, and Silent Bob, reunite after Randal Graves suffers a heart attack, and asks his friends to make a tribute film about the convenience store where they first met nearly thirty years ago.
I have to say I’m not sure about Clerks III. This could be because the scenes presented in the trailer seem overly contrived (even though maybe they’re meant to be), or the choice to film in colour, in contrast to the black and white of the first movie, Clerks, feels out of place.
But let’s see.
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2022 astronomy photographer of the year shortlist
7 July 2022
The 2022 astronomy photographer of the year shortlist was unveiled on Tuesday 5 July. The award, organised by the Royal Observatory Greenwich is in its thirteenth year, and the entries, as usual, never fail to amaze. Shortlisted images are on display at London’s National Maritime Museum until Sunday 7 August 2022, with the winners being announced on Thursday 15 September 2022.
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Mal Peet’s Beck, a book finished posthumously by another author
6 July 2022
When late British author Mal Peet died in March 2015, his final novel, Beck, remained unfinished.
In a phone call Peet made to friend and American born, London based writer, Meg Rosoff, shortly before his death, he expressed a desire to finish writing Beck, but didn’t think he’d be able to. At that point Rosoff offered to step in.
At the time of their conversation, Rosoff knew nothing about the novel, or how much progress Peet had made. But this posthumous collaboration paid off. Beck was well received. In August 2016, the Sunday Times named Beck their Book of the Week, describing it as “powerful, shocking, uplifting, funny and beautifully written.”
But this is not the first time one person’s novel has been finished by another, because of death or incapacitation. Realising illness would prevent him finishing works in The Wheel of Time series of fantasy books, late American author Robert Jordan, prepared extensive notes, allowing Brandon Sanderson to conclude the fifteen book series.
British writer Siobhan Dowd died in 2007, before A Monster Calls, which she was working on at the time of her death, was finished, a task that Patrick Ness took on.
In some cases though the quantity of notes written by a deceased author have been enough for another to create books from scratch. The works of British author J. R. R. Tolkien are a case in point. After Tolkien’s death in 1973, his son Christopher wrote a number of Tolkien novels including, The Silmarillion and The Fall of Númenor.
Despite the success some have enjoyed, taking over another author’s part-finished manuscript remains a process fraught with difficulty. How exactly can one writer step into the shoes of another? How do the creative visions of two artistic people align? And perhaps, most crucially, how does one author assume the voice of another?
It was a question Rosoff grappled with, when picking up Beck where Peet left off. But the solution soon came to her: “the answer, I discovered, is not to.” It seems then, if an author is sufficiently in synch with the person whose work they are continuing, a book finished posthumously by another author can do well.
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books, Mal Peet, Meg Rosoff, novels, writing
The 2022 Ned Kelly Awards shortlists
6 July 2022
The 2022 Ned Kelly Awards shortlists have been announced by the Australian Crime Writers Association. This year the work of nineteen writers has been shortlisted in four categories.
Best debut crime fiction
- Sweet Jimmy, by Bryan Brown
- Shadow Over Edmund Street, by Suzanne Frankham
- Cutters End, by Margaret Hickey
- Banjawarn, by Josh Kemp
Best true crime
- The Mother Wound, by Amani Haydar
- Larrimah, by Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson
- Banquet: The untold story of Adelaide’s family murders, by Debi Marshall
- A Witness of Fact, by Drew Rooke
Best international crime fiction
- Case Study, by Graeme Macrae Burnet
- The Heron’s Cry, by Ann Cleeves
- The Maid, by Nita Prose
- Cry Wolf, by Hans Rosenfeldt
Best crime fiction
- The Enemy Within, by Tim Ayliffe
- The Others, by Mark Brandi
- You Had it Coming, by B M Carroll
- The Chase, by Candice Fox
- Kill Your Brother, by Jack Heath
- The Family Doctor, by Debra Oswald
- The Deep, by Kyle Perry
The winners will be announced in early August 2022.
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Australian literature, books, literary awards
Books to read by Indigenous authors suggested by Anita Heiss
6 July 2022
We’re in the middle of National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee week, or NAIDOC week, in Australia, which is a celebration of the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
It’s also a good opportunity to focus on the literature of Indigenous and First Nation people, and Twenty reasons you should read blak, by author and activist Anita Heiss, is an awesome starting point. The suggestions were made during a speech Heiss gave at the Blak and Bright Festival in 2016.
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Anita Heiss, Australian literature, books, Indigenous literature
The 2022 Fields Medals for excellence in mathematics
6 July 2022
And now for something a little different… Maryna Viazovska, James Maynard, June Huh, and Hugo Duminil-Copin, have been named recipients of the 2022 Fields Medals, which recognise outstanding mathematical achievement. The Fields Medals are only awarded every four years, to mathematicians under the age of forty, by the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union.
I suck at maths, I truly do. I need a spreadsheet to reconcile my budget to buy cups of coffee. But I was impressed by the work undertaken by the 2022 recipients. Hugo Duminil-Copin was commended for “solving longstanding problems in the probabilistic theory of phase transitions in statistical physics, especially in dimensions three and four.”
That made some sense, up until the word phase.
Maryna Viazovska’s work also sounds outstanding: “for the proof that the E8 lattice provides the densest packing of identical spheres in 8 dimensions, and further contributions to related extremal problems and interpolation problems in Fourier analysis.”
No, sorry, I didn’t get a single word of that. Thankfully though there are people in the world who understand these sorts of things.
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