Iām going to try something new. Youāre reading the first edition of the āMonthly Mind Mealā, a medley of all the things Iāve learned or discovered in the past month that I found interesting, smart, or otherwise worth sharing. Iāll be doing this on the last Friday of each month, replacing my regular weekly article.
So it beginsā¦
Did You Know?
Some interesting things Iāve learned recently:
Did you know that the Panama Canal was almost built through Nicaragua instead?
Thereās vague talk by the U.K. government of building an undersea tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland. Iām not sure what to think of this ambitious idea, but Iāve learned that any engineer who tackles it is going to face an interesting obstacle. Did you know thereās a million tons of explosives at the bottom of the Irish Sea?
Did you know that in 1902 Kaiser Wilhem II of Germany drew up unrealised plans to invade the United States?
Youāve probably heard of Dolly, the cloned sheep whose existence was announced 24 years ago this week. But do you know why she was given that name? Itās because she was cloned from DNA taken from a sheepās mammary gland, and to quote head scientist Ian Wilmut: āwe couldnāt think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Partonās.ā Iāll file that under ājokes you wouldnāt get away with in 2021.ā
Did you know that in the aftermath of the First World War, when international delegates were meeting in Paris to discuss the peace terms, American president Woodrow Wilson came down with a severe illness that was almost certainly Spanish Flu? According to the book The Great Influenza, Wilson completely changed his attitude to the negotiations after getting sick, and granted enormous concessions to the French that heād previously refused to consider. No-one can be sure, but the author speculates that without that bout of flu, the Treaty of Versailles might have been far less punitive to Germany, depriving Hitler and co. of the grievances that propelled them to power. Makes you think.
Ever heard of the 1991 Downing Street mortar attack? This month was the 30th anniversary. I imagine most people my age have never heard of this attempted assassination of Prime Minister John Major - but thatās only because the IRA missed. We can only speculate about how different the U.K. would look today if a single Irishman had adjusted his aim by as little as five degrees.
Check This Out
Deutsche Welleās short documentary on the fentanyl epidemic is a disturbing glimpse of the human cost of this crisis:
Itās set in Vancouver, but from what I understand a similar story could be told in basically any major West Coast city. DW zoom in on a motley cast of junkies - all of whom are walking warnings about the dangers of drugs - to show you what an opioid epidemic looks like in practice. The general vibe is of suffering and despair. In one particularly heartbreaking scene, a young man shoots up on camera then expounds at length about the misery that addiction has wrought upon his life and family. Iāll show this clip to my kids if I want to make sure they stay sober.
The film concludes by extolling the success of Vancouverās āharm reductionā programs - needle exchanges, safe-injection sites, etc. - and advocating their expansion. On the other hand, the journalist Chris Rufo casts doubt upon the supposed success of these initiatives and questions the underlying philosophy of harm reduction. Iām not sure what to think, but I know the DW film is well worth 40 minutes of your time.
Reading Material
Some good articles Iāve read lately:
You know what the best thing is about successfully completing a job search? Finally being able to deactivate my LinkedIn account again. The site is insufferable, and this is a great article about exactly that: LinkedInās Alternate Universe.
This short biography of Xi Jinping taught me a few things about modern China.
Writing in The Atlantic, Gary Kayima has said everything Iād want to say and more about San Franscisoās recent decision (now postponed, thankfully) to rename a swathe of its schools.
I donāt know how much sense it will make if you donāt have a background in software, but I learned a lot from āDNA seen through the eyes of a coderā an introduction to DNA explained through analogies to coding.
Thereās a lot of buzz these days about the therapeutical potential of psychedelic drugs, but Tim Ferriss urges us to consider the environmental cost. If current trends continue we might drive certain psychedelic-producing species extinct within years, and their loss will be a spiritual tragedy. I canāt say Iād considered this side of the equation before.
Have you ever wondered what it would take to destroy the Earth? Not just wiping out humanity - thatās way too easy - I mean destroying the big ball of rock weāre standing on, Death Star-style. Someone with more free time than me has catalogued all the ways in which one could obliterate, disintegrate or otherwise annihilate the planet we call home, ranking the methods by feasibility, and it makes for surprisingly entertaining reading: How to destroy the Earth.
The U.K.'s vaccination rollout appears to be going well, but we canāt hold a menorah to Israel, which has by far the highest vaccination rate of any country so far. How did they do it? This article explains the various reasons why; thereās a lot for other countries to learn.
Want to lower your heating bills? One blogger has an ingenious solution: use the waste heat from Bitcoin mining to warm up your home.
As for books, I recently read Kim Stanley Robinsonās Red Mars, the first in a trilogy of novels about colonisation of the Red Planet. All I can say is that I hope the real-life colonisation of Mars is more exciting than this snooze-fest. Read my full review here, and if you want a good novel about Mars exploration I recommend The Martian (the source material for that Matt Damon movie) much more than this.
I also wrote a review of Ryan Holidayās book Conspiracy; read it here.
Donāt Check This Out
Thanks to COVID Iāve been watching more movies-per-month lately than I typically get through in a year. The recommendable ones have all been big, popular titles youāve already heard of (except maybe the Iranian film A Separation; watch it), but the least recommendable was definitely Annihilation, a total waste of two hours. Iād write a full review, but thereās nothing I can add to the Critical Drinkerās profane, poop-joke-filled analysis below:
Alright, as the Drinker himself would say: thatās all Iāve got for today. Go away now.
Thanks for reading. For more, follow me on Twitter and Goodreads, and please consider subscribing.
Image credit: Bjorn Snelders on Unsplash
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