NIV had to go on an involuntary hiatus over the past few weeks. Covid, contrary to popular opinion, is still not gone folks. Please be careful and mask up whenever the need arises.
In the time I was incommunicado, we have seen quite a few new readers join us here in the NIV community. To all of you who have subscribed, a big thank you. I hope I can live up to your expectations.
Let’s dive right into today’s articles.
Links of the Week
Literature - Dracula, in my opinion, is one of the greatest novels to extol the virtues of modernism over traditionalism. This is a great article on how Stoker intended Dracula as a critique of Ireland’s refusal to get in sync with the Greenwich Mean Time system.
Readers who have only seen Dracula at the movies may be surprised at the time Stoker spends detailing the vampire’s interest in supply chains, citing books and directories on customs, law, shipping, and transportation routes. Stoker was well versed in this kind of reading material; his first book, Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, (1879) was an attempt to bring order and method to the process of administering criminal courts.
Global Warming - On the surprisingly low death count of this year’s heat wave in India and Pakistan. Multiple hypotheses are proposed in this article. I think it’s important to understand the causal links between high temperatures and death tolls in order to inform our policy responses going forward. (Link)
If the current pattern continues to hold, with fuller calculations showing a still relatively limited impact, five hypotheses provide at least partial explanations: problems with data; the dryness of the heat wave; local adaptation and response; that the hottest parts of the world may already be relatively acclimated to extreme heat; and that our casual use of “wet-bulb” readings may be misleading about actual mortality risk.
Education - How a normal public school in Florida was turned into a factory for math prodigies largely due to the monomaniacal focus of one man. Fascinating stuff. (Link)
The extraordinary thing about the Buchholz math team is how ordinary Buchholz is. It’s ranked 66th among schools in Florida and outside the top 1,000 across the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. But at the annual championships of Mu Alpha Theta, the national math honor society, the Buchholz kids have trouble counting the shiny objects they lug home.
Mathematics - A smashing profile of the latest Fields Medal winner, June Huh. Can’t help but feel inspired every time I read this profile. (Link)
On any given day, Huh does about three hours of focused work. He might think about a math problem, or prepare to lecture a classroom of students, or schedule doctor’s appointments for his two sons. “Then I’m exhausted,” he said. “Doing something that’s valuable, meaningful, creative” — or a task that he doesn’t particularly want to do, like scheduling those appointments — “takes away a lot of your energy.”
Politics - Balaji Srinivasan has become somewhat of a controversial oracle in the tech ecosystem. His latest book, The Network State, is another bold proposition toward a new kind of world order. Here are two useful reviews of the enormously interesting book - from a liberal perspective by Vitalik Buterin and from a conservative perspective by Antonio Garcia Martinez.
Technology - Why is the web becoming so monotonous over time? Blame the SEO-fication of the internet. (Link)
For example, have you ever noticed that the main content of most websites is something like 70% down the page? Every recipe site I’ve ever seen is like this — nobody cares about how this recipe was originally your great-grandmother’s. Just tell us what’s in it. Why is this so prevalent on the web?
Poetry - A delightful review of a brilliant biography of my favorite poet John Donne. If you haven’t tried Donne’s poetry yet, do me a favor and start today.
Donne is a fascinating late bloomer. As a young man he was a Catholic, wrote erotic poetry, had a period as a soldier, converted to Anglicanism, eloped with his employer’s daughter, spent time in jail, lived in hopeless hope of preferment, and then, after his wife was dead and his body was starting to fail, became Dean of St Pauls and famous across London for his sermons.
Happy reading!