95 Shropshire roads being resurfaced over next three months – see the full list – Shropshire Star

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Shropshire Council is targeting 95 roads for repairs over the next three months

Shropshire Council has said that a total of 95 roads will be improved as part of its road dressing programme. These include roads in Shrewsbury, Minsterley, Westbury, Market Drayton, Whitchurch, Shawbury, Wem, Knockin, Oswestry, Bridgnorth, Claverley, Craven Arms, Clun, and Chirbury.

The work starts on May 3 and will continue until the end of July, and will range from from urban cul-de-sacs to major A and B roads.

Dean Carroll, Shropshire Councils Cabinet member with responsibility for highways, said: As well as improving and protecting our roads, this important programme of work plays a crucial role in helping to prevent potholes and other defects forming in the future.

"Pothole treatment is very much about prevention as well as cure and this is one important way that we can aim to prevent potholes forming next winter.

The full list of roads being resurfaced between May and July is:

C2076 Shotton Lane, Harmer Hill

A488 District Boundary To Roundabout Minsterley

B4380 Roman Road two Sections Either Side Of Longden Road

B4386 B4386 From Yockelton Ford Heath Junction To Junction With A5

A458 Cross Houses End 40mph To Cound Junction

A458 From Atcham Road Jct To Start 60mph

B4394 Norton Cross Roads To Walcot

B5062 End 40mph Sundorne to Telford & Wrekin county boundary, Haughton

B4387 B4387 Halfway House to Westbury

C1061 Montford School to Montford Bridge

C1061 Grange Farm Junction to Preston Gubbals

A488 Main Road, Pontesbury to Hanwood

B4380 Holyhead Road, Montford Bridge to Urban Section

B4379 End 40 Sheriffhales to Heath Hill Junction

U2108 Caldecott Crescent

U2129 Chemistry, Whitchurch

U3011 Glendon Close, Market Drayton

C2092 Haywood Lane, Cheswardine

A41 Southbound Dual, Heath Road Roundabout to Prees Heath Roundabout

C2075 Yorton Station to A49

C2096 Narrow Lane Childs Ercall

U2109 Sharps Drive, Whitchurch

U2130 Smallbrook Road, Whitchurch

B5476 Tilstock Rd, Whitchurch

U3034 Victoria Road, Market Drayton

B5063 Wem Road, Shawbury (30mph To A53)

B5063 Wytheford Road, Shawbury

C2075 Quarry View To 30mph Start A49 Preston Brockhurst Junction

B5395 Old Malpas Road, Grindley Brook (A41 Junction to county boundary)

A49 Preston Brockhurst Village

B5065 Darliston to Crossroads Sandford

A41 Tern Hill Roundabout to start of dual carriageway, Bletchley

B5063 From A49 Rockall crossroads to Wem Road start

C2092 Haywood Lane, Cheswardine (A529 At Woodseaves to canal)

B5063 End of Urban Northwood to Ellesmere Road Wem

C1030 Junction Lion Lane to Penley

C1049 Spunhill crossroads to Colemere Farm

C1018 Crosslanes to Plas Warren

B4397 Marton Junction to Burlton crossroads 60mph to Pickhill

C2062 Marton to Myddle Road (Myddle 30mph West to Myddle 30mph East)

C1041 Gamesters Lane, Sandford two sections classed as one site

U1050 Drenewydd and Inglis Road, Park Hall

B5069 Upper Church Street and Morda Road, Oswestry

U0340 Vyrnwy Road, Oswestry

A495 Whittington Road, Whittington 30mph start west

B4396 From Nant Goch junction B4396A495

C1011 Cydygan Lane, Llansilin

C1013 Sweeney Mountain Road (B5069 to Nuttree crossroads)

C4177 C4177 Pattingham Lane

B4363 from A4117 to Kinlet Bank

B4194 from Clogs Bank to Withybed Villa

B4363 From A4117 to Kinlet Bank

B4194 From Clogs Bank to Withybed Villa

C4267 Heathton from Claverley to Six Ashes Road

B4555 Chelmarsh to Covert Bridge and Ingram Lane

B4363 Kinlet Bank Junction to Rays Bridge

B4363 Priors Morr Bank

A442 Telford & Wrekin district boundary to Sutton Maddock Island

A5 Nty Boundary to Crackleybank crossroads

C4184 County boundary South Home Farm Road A464

A442 Apley Green Gates

B5314 Chatwell Lane A41

B4368 Monkhopton to Aston Eyre

B4555 Eardington to Hay Bridge

B4363 Halfway House North to Manor Farm Lane

B4373 Stocking Lane to School Lane

Monkhopton Junction Old School House Lay-by Junction Farm to Junction B4368

B4176 Littlegain access-county boundary

A454 Royal Oak Island Rudge Heath Road

C4249 Oreton Bank 30mph section

B4364 Lower Faintree Lower Cockshutt

B4364 Track Lower Cockshutt to Eudon Court Junction

B4386 Little Worthen to Winsley Cottages

B4368 Pedlars Rest to Diddlebury

B4368 Diddlebury Village to Aston Munslow

B4368 Clunsford Bridge pedlars Rest

A4117 Ludlow Road from Office Lane to Tenbury Road

B4362 Station Road, Wooferton

C6269 Tenbury Road rural section

C5140 Stocton Road, Marton to B4386

B4386 From Marton to Little Brockton rural section

A488 Clun to Colstey Cottage

B4386 from Monksfield Chirbury to Aylesford Bridge

A490 Shiregrove Bridge Chirbury

B4368 Newcastle to 30mph Clun rural section

B4367 Long Meadowend to Clungunford

B4364 B4364 North of Westview to Stoke turn

B4385 Red House to Little Brampton

A489 From A488 Lydham to Eaton Junction

B4368 Aston Munslow to New House Farm Junction

B4385 Little Brompton county boundary to Brompton

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95 Shropshire roads being resurfaced over next three months - see the full list - Shropshire Star

Tennessee County Gets Permission to Remove Confederate Flag from Seal – The Root

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Photo: PhotoStockImage (Shutterstock)

In case you werent paying attention in history class, the Confederate states lost the Civil War. But yet over 150 years after Robert E. Lee surrendered, weve still got folks that just cant let go of that flag. Now, after a lengthy two-year process, a Tennessee county finally got the go ahead to remove the Confederate flag from its seal. A unanimous vote by the states Historical Commission at an April 22 hearing gave Williamson County permission to redesign its 54-year-old seal.

In 2020, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery inspired county resident Dustin Koctar to launch a change.org petition to have the symbol of slavery removed from the county seal. The petition, which Koctar said was intended to urge county officials to do something to show a commitment to diversity, unity, equity, and justice, received nearly 12,000 signatures.

The Williamson County Commission responded by voting to appeal to the Tennessee Historical Commission for permission to remove the flag from its seal. But the states Heritage Protection Act, which limits the removal or changing of historical memorials, gave those who opposed the change an argument to keep things status quo.

Attorneys for a local chapter of Sons of Confederate Veterans argued that each part of the seal, including the part with the Confederate flag, represents parts of the countys history. The county responded that the Heritage Protection act did not apply to the county seal because the seal is not a memorial. Plans for the new seal design have not been finalized.

Williamson Countys seal was adopted in 1968, the same year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and the height of the Civil Rights movement. But while some were fighting for change and equality, several southern states embraced the Confederate flag during this time as a sign of resistance to the Civil Rights movement.

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Dustin Koctar, who was at the hearing, said he was happy to see that his petition inspired real change. I know members of the community look forward to working with Williamson County and the Board of Commissioners to provide feedback and recommendations on what can be done with our county seal to show that we are a community that is welcoming, compassionate, inclusive and safe for everyone, he told the Tennessean.

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Tennessee County Gets Permission to Remove Confederate Flag from Seal - The Root

Williamsburgs historic Bruton Parish Episcopal Church to …

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Williamsburg As discussions regarding Confederate monuments continue across Virginia and the south, Williamsburgs historical Bruton Parish Episcopal Church is joining in.

A Confederate memorial plaque on the wall of the church sanctuary recognizes the Confederate soldiers who died in the Battle of Williamsburg. Following the Confederate retreat from Yorktown in May 1862, Union troops advanced on them just outside of Williamsburg. The battle ended with the Confederate troops retreating to Richmond, and resulted in 2,283 casualties.

The last line on the parishs memorial plaque reads, They died for us.

According to the parishs rector, the Rev. Chris Epperson, the parish no longer holds the same sentiments. As a result, the church is working to re-interpret the plaque.

Its continued to come up over time, time and time again, so the decision was made very recently, to address the plaque, Epperson said. We decided to do is to contextualize it with a plaque beside the confederate memorial and then to address directly the line, they died for us.

The church met with members of the community and held a series of discussions about the memorial. Ultimately, it decide it would not take the plaque down, but instead, use it as a tool.

According to the churchs Senior Warden of Vestry Melinda Morgan, the contextualization of the memorial is an ongoing process and this is only the early stages as the church learns more about its history and acknowledges its role in slavery.

There is a desire and an interest to do this and it will have a beginning and an end, Morgan said. I think a personal goal and quest is talking to a lot of people to contextualize it and get it up and then focus on how we move forward.

According to Epperson, conversations regarding its memorial have been ongoing since 2002 as parish members raised objections to the last line.

After numerous years of going back and forth on the memorial, it came to the forefront of discussion in 2017 during a forum held by the church and its members.

Bruton Parish is older than the country and this is an important piece of the history of the country, Epperson said. We wanted to keep the plaque as a memorial and also as a way to enable us to tell part of the story of the history it bears.

While it is unclear when the plaque was first placed in the church, Epperson said the wording suggests it was a part of the Lost Cause movement.

The Lost Cause movement was a pseudohistorical mythology perpetuated by the Daughters of the Confederacy in the 1890s that centered around a narrative that the Confederate states actions were heroism and not the continuation of slavery.

During this period, numerous confederate monuments, including those recently removed from Richmonds Monument Ave., were constructed 30 to 50 years after the Civil Wars end.

In terms of its own history, Epperson said the church benefitted from slavery as the church was built by numerous laborers including those that were enslaved.

Thats how weve approached the whole thing to continue to be able to tell the story and the complete story, Epperson said. We are really geared toward telling a more complete history of the parish, and recognizing the role of the enslaved.

For more information, visit brutonparish.org.

Em Holter. emily.holter@virginiamedia.com, 757-256-6657, @EmHolterNews.

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Williamsburgs historic Bruton Parish Episcopal Church to ...

Confederate flag enthusiast loses attempt to stop the return of beachfront property to the black family from which it was wrongly taken – Boing Boing

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A gentleman better known for creating controversy by flying the Confederate battle flag over his home, Joseph Ryan, once again demonstrated who he is by filing suit against the County of Los Angeles in an attempt to stop the return of beachfront real estate stripped from a black family, the Bruces, almost a century ago.

The County continues forward with restoring the land to its rightful owners.

Easy Reader News:

Joseph Ryan, an attorney from Palos Verdes Estates, filed a complaint with the court in November seeking an injunction against the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Ryan argued the land transfer does not serve a public purpose and the state law recently enacted to enable it, S.B. 796, is therefore unconstitutional under California law. The Bruce family joined the County in defending against the lawsuit.

Judge Mitchell Beckloff, in a ruling issued April 14, rejected Ryan's argument, paving the way for the land transfer. The Bruce's are expected to take ownership of the land within months. The judge wrote that redressing a past governent wrong in order to remedy racial discrimination serves a public purpose.

Ryan did not respond to a request for comment. He drew attention four years ago for his practice of raising Confederate battle flags over his PVE home, which upset some neighbors. He is a Civil War buff who publishes a blog called "Joe Ryan's American Civil War." In a 2018 Daily Breeze article about his Confederate flags, Ryan noted that he also flies Union flags and said that he was simply trying to bring attention to the racial underpinnings of American history.

"I don't really give a damn about the politics of liberal idiots who want to look at that flag and say, 'Oh that's racist,'" Ryan told the Daily Breeze. "The last person you can call a racist is me."

Apparently, Mr. Ryan and I disagree on what a racist is.

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Confederate flag enthusiast loses attempt to stop the return of beachfront property to the black family from which it was wrongly taken - Boing Boing

Settlement reached after Jefferson City sued for removing Confederate-related stones – KOMU 8

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JEFFERSON CITY - The city of Jefferson and a former councilwoman who sued the cityin late March have reached a settlement regarding the removal of Confederate-related paving stones on city property.

Bradbury Law Firm, who represented Edith Vogel in the lawsuit, announced that a settlement between Vogel and the city is awaiting a signature from a judge.

In the settlement, the city has agreed to reinstall the pavers within 15 days and pay Vogels attorneys fees.

Vogelsued Jefferson Cityand Mayor Carrie Terginin late March, alleging the city violated her free speech rights when two paving stones with messages about a Confederate general were removed from city property.

Vogel paid to have the two engraved paving stones installed at a new park on a city greenway known as Adrians Island as part of a fundraising campaign.

The pavers read: Union Camp Lillie notes: deciding against attack the confederate army under Gen. Sterling Price turned from Jefferson City Oct. 7, 1864.

The pavers were similar to theanother paving stone the city council voted to remove from a roadway in October 2021.

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Vogel, in a press release sent from her lawyers, said that her victory was a win for history.

I feel vindicated, Vogel said. I didnt think what they mayor did was right."

Vogel's attorneys also announced that she will donate $2,000 to the Parks Foundation to make up for the amount the city had refunded to her.

Though the settlement doesn't require it, Vogel said "it's just the right thing to do."

KOMU 8 has reached to Mayor Tergin for a statement regarding the settlement.

This story will be updated.

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Settlement reached after Jefferson City sued for removing Confederate-related stones - KOMU 8

The Wolf of Crypto and the Confederate Statue Remover: The Week in Narrated Articles – The New York Times

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This weekend, listen to a collection of narrated articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them.

Jordan Belfort, 59, is best known for The Wolf of Wall Street, a tell-all memoir about his debauched 1990s career in high finance, which the director Martin Scorsese adapted into a 2013 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the hard-partying protagonist. These days, the real-life Mr. Belfort is a consultant and sales coach, charging tens of thousands of dollars for private sessions.

In 2018, he filmed a YouTube video about the dangers of Bitcoin, which he called frickin insanity and mass delusion. Over the years, he said, he gradually changed his mind, as he learned more about cryptocurrencies and prices skyrocketed.

Now, Mr. Belfort is an investor in a handful of start-ups, including a new NFT platform and an animal-themed crypto project that he said was trying to take the dog-and-pet ecosystem and put it onto the blockchain.

Statue removal has become a lucrative line of work amid the ongoing national reckoning over traumas past and present. But in Richmond, Va., where a 21-foot figure of Robert E. Lee towered over the city for more than a century, officials say no amount of government pleading produced a volunteer interested in dismantling the citys many Confederate monuments during the tense and sometimes violent days of summer 2020.

Except Devon Henry. He and his general contracting company, Team Henry Enterprises, have hauled away 15 pieces of Confederate statuary in Richmond and a total of 23 monuments across the Southeast in less than two years.

But the work has come with considerable personal risk: Mr. Henry, 45, has been repeatedly threatened, carries a firearm and often wears a bulletproof vest on job sites.

You start thinking, Damn, was it worth it? Mr. Henry said. But then there are moments; my daughter, in her interview for college, said I was her hero.

Written and narrated by Emily Anthes

Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, the worlds attention has been focused on the nations heavily shelled cities. But Ukraine, in an ecological transition zone, is also home to vibrant wetlands and forests and a large part of virgin steppe. Russian troops have already entered or conducted military operations in more than one-third of the nations protected natural areas, Oleksandr Krasnolutskyi, a deputy minister of environmental protection and natural resources in Ukraine, said: Their ecosystems and species have become vulnerable.

Reports from the ground, and research on previous armed conflicts, suggest that the ecological impact of the conflict could be profound. Wars destroy habitats, kill wildlife, generate pollution and remake ecosystems entirely, with consequences that ripple through the decades.

Written and narrated by Michael Corkery

Mary Gundel loved her job managing the Dollar General store in Tampa, Fla. It was fast-paced, unpredictable and even exciting.

But the job had its challenges: Delivery trucks that would show up unannounced, leaving boxes piled up in the aisles because there werent enough workers to unpack them. Days spent running the store for long stretches by herself because the company allotted only so many hours for other employees to work. Cranky customers complaining about out of stock items.

So one morning, in between running the register and putting tags on clothing, Ms. Gundel, 33, propped up her iPhone and hit record. The result was a six-part critique, Retail Store Manager Life, in which Ms. Gundel laid bare the working conditions inside the fast-growing retail chain.

Her videos, which she posted on TikTok, went viral.

Written and narrated by Thomas Fuller

Their bodies were found on public benches, lying next to bike paths, crumpled under freeway overpasses and stranded on the sun-drenched beach. Across Los Angeles County last year, unsheltered people died in record numbers, an average of five homeless deaths a day, most in plain view of the world around them.

Two hundred eighty-seven homeless people took their last breath on the sidewalk, 24 died in alleys and 72 were found on the pavement, according to data from the county coroner. They were a small fraction of the thousands of homeless people across the country who die each year.

Its like a wartime death toll in places where there is no war, said Maria Raven, an emergency room doctor in San Francisco who co-wrote a study about homeless deaths.

More than ever it has become deadly to be homeless in America.

The Timess narrated articles are made by Tally Abecassis, Parin Behrooz, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Jack DIsidoro, Aaron Esposito, Dan Farrell, Elena Hecht, Adrienne Hurst, Elisheba Ittoop, Emma Kehlbeck, Marion Lozano, Tanya Prez, Krish Seenivasan, Margaret H. Willison, Kate Winslett, John Woo and Tiana Young. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Desiree Ibekwe.

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The Wolf of Crypto and the Confederate Statue Remover: The Week in Narrated Articles - The New York Times

University of Hawaii – Wikipedia

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College and university system in the US state of Hawaii

The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public college and university system that confers associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees through three universities, seven community colleges, an employment training center, three university centers, four education centers and various other research facilities distributed across six islands throughout the state of Hawaii in the United States. All schools of the University of Hawaii system are accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The UH system's main administrative offices are located on the property of the University of Hawaii at Mnoa in Honolulu CDP.[4][5][6]

The present-day University of Hawai'i System was created in 1965 which combined the State of Hawai'i's technical and community colleges under one system within the University of Hawai'i.

The University of Hawai'i was created by the Territory of Hawai'i in 1907 as a land-grant college of agriculture and mechanical arts and held its first classes in 1907. In 1912 it moved to its present location in Mnoa Valley and being renamed College of Hawaii. In 1919 the College of Hawai'i obtained university status by the Hawai'i Territorial Legislature and was renamed the University of Hawai'i.

In 1965, the state legislature created a system of community colleges and placed it within the university. The university was renamed the University of Hawai'i at Mnoa to distinguish it from other campuses in the University of Hawai'i System in 1972.

The University of Hawaii at Mnoa is the flagship institution of the University of Hawaii system. It was founded as a land-grant college under the terms of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. Programs include Hawaiian/Pacific Studies, Astronomy, East Asian Languages and Literature, Asian Studies, Comparative Philosophy, Marine Science, Second Language Studies, along with Botany, Engineering, Ethnomusicology, Geophysics, Law, Business, Linguistics, Mathematics, and Medicine.

The second-largest institution is the University of Hawaii at Hilo on the "Big Island" of Hawaii, with over 3,000 students. The University of Hawaii-West Oahu in Kapolei primarily serves students who reside in Honolulu's western and central suburban communities.

The University of Hawaii Community College System comprises four community colleges island campuses on O'ahu and one each on Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii. The colleges were created to improve accessibility of courses to more Hawaii residents and provide an affordable means of easing the transition from secondary school/high school to college for many students. University of Hawaii education centers are located in more remote areas of the State and its several islands, supporting rural communities via distance education.

In accordance with Article X, Section 6 of the Hawaii State Constitution, the University of Hawaii is governed by a Board of Regents, composed of 15 unpaid members who are nominated by a Regents Candidate Advisory Council, appointed by the governor, and confirmed by the state legislature. The board oversees all aspects of governance for the university system, including its internal structure and management. The board also appoints, evaluates, and if necessary removes the President of the University of Hawaii.[9]

The university's governing board includes a current student appointed by the Governor of Hawaii to serve a two-year term as a full voting regent. The practice of appointing a student to the board was approved by the Hawaii State Legislature in 1997.

Alumni of the University of Hawaii system include many notable persons in various walks of life. Senator Daniel Inouye and Tammy Duckworth both are veterans of the US military who were injured in the line of duty then later entered government service. Bette Midler and Georgia Engel are successful entertainers on the national stage. Composer Hsiung-Zee Wong also attended the University of Hawai'i. President Barack Obama's parents, Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham, and half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, also earned degrees from the Mnoa campus, where his parents met in a Russian language class. His mother earned three degrees from the University of Hawaii including a PhD in anthropology.

Mazie Hirono is a current U.S. Senator. She graduated from the University of Hawaii with a BA in Psychology. She is the first elected female senator from Hawaii, the first Asian-American woman elected to the Senate, the first U.S. senator born in Japan, and the nation's first Buddhist senator.

Alice Augusta Ball was not only the first woman to graduate from the College of Hawaii (now the University of Hawaii) in 1915, but was also the first African American research chemist and instructor in the college's chemistry department. In addition, she was the first person to successfully develop a water-soluble form of chaulmoogra oil that was used for decades to relieve the symptoms of Hansen's disease (leprosy).[10]

The University of Hawaii system has had many faculty members of note. Many were visiting faculty or came after they won major awards like Nobel Laureate Georg von Bksy. Ryuzo Yanagimachi, principal investigator of the research group that developed a method of cloning from adult animal cells, is still on the faculty.

In July 2019, Bob Huey, a professor of Japanese literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, was presented the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, one of Japan's highest honors for those without Japanese citizenship.[11]

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Carl Sagan – Biography – IMDb

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Overview (4) Mini Bio (1)

Astronomer, educator and author Carl Sagan was perhaps the world's greatest popularizer of science, reaching millions of people through newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts. He is well-known for his work on the PBS series Cosmos (1980), the Emmy Award and Peabody Award-winning show that became the most watched series in public-television history. This was seen by more than 500 million people in 60 countries. The accompanying book, "Cosmos" (1980), was on the New York Times bestseller list for 70 weeks and was the best-selling science book ever published in English.

Carl Edward Sagan was born November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. Having taught at Cornell University since 1968, Sagan received a bachelor's degree (1955) and a master's degree (1956), both in physics, and a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics (1960), all from the University of Chicago. He taught at Harvard University in the early 1960s before coming to Cornell, where he became a full professor in 1971. Sagan played a leading role in NASA's Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Galileo expeditions to other planets. He received NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and twice for Distinguished Public Service and the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. His research focused on topics such as the greenhouse effect on Venus; windblown dust as an explanation for the seasonal changes on Mars; organic aerosols on Titan, Saturn's moon; the long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war; and the origin of life on Earth. A pioneer in the field of exobiology, he continued to teach graduate and undergraduate students in courses in astronomy and space sciences and in critical thinking at Cornell.

The breadth of his interests were made evident in October 1994, at a Cornell-sponsored symposium in honor of Sagan's 60th birthday. The two-day event featured speakers in areas of planetary exploration, life in the cosmos, science education, public policy and government regulation of science and the environment -- all fields in which Sagan had worked or had a strong interest. Sagan was the recipient of numerous awards in addition to his NASA recognition. He received 22 honorary degrees from American colleges and universities for his contributions to science, literature, education and the preservation of the environment and many awards for his work on the long-term consequences of nuclear war and reversing the nuclear arms race. Among his other awards were: the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society; the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award; the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society. He also was the recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences, "for distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare".

Sagan was elected chairman of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, president of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union and chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For 12 years, he was editor of Icarus, the leading professional journal devoted to planetary research. He was co-founder of the Planetary Society, a 100,000-member organization and the largest space-interest group in the world. The society supports major research programs in the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the investigation of near-Earth asteroids and, with the French and Russian space agencies, the development and testing of balloon and mobile robotic exploration of Mars. Sagan also was Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and was contributing editor of Parade magazine, where he published many articles about science and about the disease that he battled for the last two years of his life.

On December 20, 1996, Carl Sagan died at age 62 of pneumonia at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Marcos Eduardo Acosta Aldrete

He mostly wore turtlenecks with suit coats.

Received his bachelor's degree (1955) and his master's degree (1956), both in physics, from the University of Chicago.

Received his Ph.D degree (Doctor of Philosophy) in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Chicago (1960).

Suffered from a rare blood disorder that led to cancer and ultimately his death.

Named 1981 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association "in recognition of his work as an educator, skeptic, activist, and populizer of science".

Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 537-540. New York: Oxford University Press (2002).

He was elected into the 2009 New Jersey Hall of Fame for his services in the Enterprise category.

Attended and graduated from Bahway High School from Bahway, New Jersey (1951).

He has an Erds-Bacon-Sabbath number of 9, which is among the lowest on the planet.

Following his death, he was interred at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York.

Grand-Cross of the Ancient, Most Noble and Enlightened Military Order of Saint James of the Sword, of the Scientific, Literary and Artistic Merit of Portugal (23 November 1998).

Billions upon billions...

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

[About religion] "I don't want to believe. I want to know."

The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.

"I never said it. Honest." - The opening line in his last book called "Billions and Billions." He was right -- the phrase was coined by Johnny Carson imitating him.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion." "The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.

To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. [Cosmos, PBS TV, 23 November 1980]

When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions. That is the heart of science.

[Cosmos, PBS TV, 21 December 1980] The only sacred truth is that there are no sacred truths.

[About "Blue Pale Dot", a photo taken by space probe Voyager I in 14 February 1990] Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

[Cosmos, PBS TV, 21 December 1980] We are one planet.

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‘New hidden world’ discovered in Earth’s inner core | Live …

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Earth's "solid" inner core might actually be a bit mushy, researchers now find.

For over half a century, the scientific community thought that Earth's inner core was a solid ball of compressed iron alloy surrounded by a liquid outer core. But new research, published Sept. 20 in the journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, suggests that the firmness of the planetary ball ranges from hard to semisoft to liquid metal.

"The more that we look at it, the more we realize it's not one boring blob of iron," Jessica Irving, a seismologist at the University of Bristol in England, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science. "We're finding a whole new hidden world."

Related: 50 interesting facts about Earth

In some ways, Earth's inner core remains as mysterious as it was when Jules Verne published his fanciful "Journey to the Center of the Earth" in 1864. Though scientists have known since the 1950s that our planet isn't hollow as Verne predicted, the planet's interior is still unexplored; the immense heat and pressure are simply too great for any human or human-made probe to travel there. "Unless something awful happens to our planet, we will never have a direct observation of Earth's core," Irving said.

Instead, geophysicists rely on seismic waves generated by earthquakes. By measuring these massive vibrations, scientists can reconstruct a picture of the planet's inner workings in a way that's "akin to a CT scan of a person," Irving said. These waves come in two main flavors: straight-line compressional waves and undulating shear waves. Each wave can speed up, slow down or bounce off of different mediums as it travels through the ground.

For Rhett Butler, a geophysicist at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, the new study started as a question of mismatched numbers. Butler was looking at how the seismic waves created by large earthquakes in five different locations travel through Earth's core to the exact opposite side of the globe. But something was off the quakes' shear waves, which should have passed through a solid ball of metal, were instead being deflected in certain areas.

The numbers surprised Butler. He knew the seismic wave math was correct, which could mean only one thing: Scientists had the structure wrong. "When you're in this business, you've got to match the data," he said. So Butler and his co-author reevaluated their base assumption that Earth's inner core was solid all the way through. They discovered that the waves they observed worked if, rather than being a solid ball, the core had pockets of liquid and "mushy," semisolid iron near its surface.

The range of iron consistencies was particularly striking, according to Butler. "We've seen evidence that not only is it not soft everywhere; it's really hard in some places," he said. "It's got hard surfaces right up against melted or mushy iron. So we're seeing a lot of detail within the inner core that we didn't see before."

This research could potentially revolutionize our understanding of Earth's magnetic field. While the swirling liquid outer core drives our planet's magnetic field, the inner core helps to modify the field, according to research published in 2019 in the journal Science Advances. Other planets, like Mars, have a liquid center but lack both an inner core and a magnetic field, according to research from NASA. Therefore, Butler and Irving believe, a deeper understanding of the inner core will help scientists understand the relationship between a planet's interior and its magnetic activity.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Relative dating – Wikipedia

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Not to be confused with Incest. The Permian through Jurassic stratigraphy of the Colorado Plateau area of southeastern Utah is a great example of Original Horizontality and the Law of Superposition, two important ideas used in relative dating. These strata make up much of the famous prominent rock formations in widely spaced protected areas such as Capitol Reef National Park and Canyonlands National Park. From top to bottom: Rounded tan domes of the Navajo Sandstone, layered red Kayenta Formation, cliff-forming, vertically jointed, red Wingate Sandstone, slope-forming, purplish Chinle Formation, layered, lighter-red Moenkopi Formation, and white, layered Cutler Formation sandstone. Photo from Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah.

Relative dating is the science of determining the relative order of past events (i.e., the age of an object in comparison to another), without necessarily determining their absolute age (i.e. estimated age). In geology, rock or superficial deposits, fossils and lithologies can be used to correlate one stratigraphic column with another. Prior to the discovery of radiometric dating in the early 20th century, which provided a means of absolute dating, archaeologists and geologists used relative dating to determine ages of materials. Though relative dating can only determine the sequential order in which a series of events occurred, not when they occurred, it remains a useful technique. Relative dating by biostratigraphy is the preferred method in paleontology and is, in some respects, more accurate.[1] The Law of Superposition, which states that older layers will be deeper in a site than more recent layers, was the summary outcome of 'relative dating' as observed in geology from the 17th century to the early 20th century.

The regular order of the occurrence of fossils in rock layers was discovered around 1800 by William Smith. While digging the Somerset Coal Canal in southwest England, he found that fossils were always in the same order in the rock layers. As he continued his job as a surveyor, he found the same patterns across England. He also found that certain animals were in only certain layers and that they were in the same layers all across England. Due to that discovery, Smith was able to recognize the order that the rocks were formed. Sixteen years after his discovery, he published a geological map of England showing the rocks of different geologic time eras.

Methods for relative dating were developed when geology first emerged as a natural science in the 18th century. Geologists still use the following principles today as a means to provide information about geologic history and the timing of geologic events.

The principle of Uniformitarianism states that the geologic processes observed in operation that modify the Earth's crust at present have worked in much the same way over geologic time.[2] A fundamental principle of geology advanced by the 18th century Scottish physician and geologist James Hutton, is that "the present is the key to the past." In Hutton's words: "the past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now."[3]

The principle of intrusive relationships concerns crosscutting intrusions. In geology, when an igneous intrusion cuts across a formation of sedimentary rock, it can be determined that the igneous intrusion is younger than the sedimentary rock. There are a number of different types of intrusions, including stocks, laccoliths, batholiths, sills and dikes.

The principle of cross-cutting relationships pertains to the formation of faults and the age of the sequences through which they cut. Faults are younger than the rocks they cut; accordingly, if a fault is found that penetrates some formations but not those on top of it, then the formations that were cut are older than the fault, and the ones that are not cut must be younger than the fault. Finding the key bed in these situations may help determine whether the fault is a normal fault or a thrust fault.[4]

The principle of inclusions and components explains that, with sedimentary rocks, if inclusions (or clasts) are found in a formation, then the inclusions must be older than the formation that contains them. For example, in sedimentary rocks, it is common for gravel from an older formation to be ripped up and included in a newer layer. A similar situation with igneous rocks occurs when xenoliths are found. These foreign bodies are picked up as magma or lava flows, and are incorporated, later to cool in the matrix. As a result, xenoliths are older than the rock which contains them.

The principle of original horizontality states that the deposition of sediments occurs as essentially horizontal beds. Observation of modern marine and non-marine sediments in a wide variety of environments supports this generalization (although cross-bedding is inclined, the overall orientation of cross-bedded units is horizontal).[4]

The law of superposition states that a sedimentary rock layer in a tectonically undisturbed sequence is younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it. This is because it is not possible for a younger layer to slip beneath a layer previously deposited. The only disturbance that the layers experience is bioturbation, in which animals and/or plants move things in the layers. however, this process is not enough to allow the layers to change their positions. This principle allows sedimentary layers to be viewed as a form of vertical time line, a partial or complete record of the time elapsed from deposition of the lowest layer to deposition of the highest bed.[4]

The principle of faunal succession is based on the appearance of fossils in sedimentary rocks. As organisms exist at the same time period throughout the world, their presence or (sometimes) absence may be used to provide a relative age of the formations in which they are found. Based on principles laid out by William Smith almost a hundred years before the publication of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the principles of succession were developed independently of evolutionary thought. The principle becomes quite complex, however, given the uncertainties of fossilization, the localization of fossil types due to lateral changes in habitat (facies change in sedimentary strata), and that not all fossils may be found globally at the same time.[5]

The principle of lateral continuity states that layers of sediment initially extend laterally in all directions; in other words, they are laterally continuous. As a result, rocks that are otherwise similar, but are now separated by a valley or other erosional feature, can be assumed to be originally continuous.

Layers of sediment do not extend indefinitely; rather, the limits can be recognized and are controlled by the amount and type of sediment available and the size and shape of the sedimentary basin. Sediment will continue to be transported to an area and it will eventually be deposited. However, the layer of that material will become thinner as the amount of material lessens away from the source.

Often, coarser-grained material can no longer be transported to an area because the transporting medium has insufficient energy to carry it to that location. In its place, the particles that settle from the transporting medium will be finer-grained, and there will be a lateral transition from coarser- to finer-grained material. The lateral variation in sediment within a stratum is known as sedimentary facies.

If sufficient sedimentary material is available, it will be deposited up to the limits of the sedimentary basin. Often, the sedimentary basin is within rocks that are very different from the sediments that are being deposited, in which the lateral limits of the sedimentary layer will be marked by an abrupt change in rock type.

Melt inclusions are small parcels or "blobs" of molten rock that are trapped within crystals that grow in the magmas that form igneous rocks. In many respects they are analogous to fluid inclusions. Melt inclusions are generally small most are less than 100 micrometres across (a micrometre is one thousandth of a millimeter, or about 0.00004inches). Nevertheless, they can provide an abundance of useful information. Using microscopic observations and a range of chemical microanalysis techniques geochemists and igneous petrologists can obtain a range of useful information from melt inclusions. Two of the most common uses of melt inclusions are to study the compositions of magmas present early in the history of specific magma systems. This is because inclusions can act like "fossils" trapping and preserving these early melts before they are modified by later igneous processes. In addition, because they are trapped at high pressures many melt inclusions also provide important information about the contents of volatile elements (such as H2O, CO2, S and Cl) that drive explosive volcanic eruptions.

Sorby (1858) was the first to document microscopic melt inclusions in crystals. The study of melt inclusions has been driven more recently by the development of sophisticated chemical analysis techniques. Scientists from the former Soviet Union lead the study of melt inclusions in the decades after World War II (Sobolev and Kostyuk, 1975), and developed methods for heating melt inclusions under a microscope, so changes could be directly observed.

Although they are small, melt inclusions may contain a number of different constituents, including glass (which represents magma that has been quenched by rapid cooling), small crystals and a separate vapour-rich bubble. They occur in most of the crystals found in igneous rocks and are common in the minerals quartz, feldspar, olivine and pyroxene. The formation of melt inclusions appears to be a normal part of the crystallization of minerals within magmas, and they can be found in both volcanic and plutonic rocks.

The law of included fragments is a method of relative dating in geology. Essentially, this law states that clasts in a rock are older than the rock itself.[6] One example of this is a xenolith, which is a fragment of country rock that fell into passing magma as a result of stoping. Another example is a derived fossil, which is a fossil that has been eroded from an older bed and redeposited into a younger one.[7]

This is a restatement of Charles Lyell's original principle of inclusions and components from his 1830 to 1833 multi-volume Principles of Geology, which states that, with sedimentary rocks, if inclusions (or clasts) are found in a formation, then the inclusions must be older than the formation that contains them. For example, in sedimentary rocks, it is common for gravel from an older formation to be ripped up and included in a newer layer. A similar situation with igneous rocks occurs when xenoliths are found. These foreign bodies are picked up as magma or lava flows, and are incorporated, later to cool in the matrix. As a result, xenoliths are older than the rock which contains them...

Relative dating is used to determine the order of events on Solar System objects other than Earth; for decades, planetary scientists have used it to decipher the development of bodies in the Solar System, particularly in the vast majority of cases for which we have no surface samples. Many of the same principles are applied. For example, if a valley is formed inside an impact crater, the valley must be younger than the crater.

Craters are very useful in relative dating; as a general rule, the younger a planetary surface is, the fewer craters it has. If long-term cratering rates are known to enough precision, crude absolute dates can be applied based on craters alone; however, cratering rates outside the Earth-Moon system are poorly known.[8]

Relative dating methods in archaeology are similar to some of those applied in geology. The principles of typology can be compared to the biostratigraphic approach in geology.

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Finding Joy in the Dark: The Bold Prayer of Psalm 70 – Desiring God

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I recently spent three days with a group of pastors, almost all our time devoted to deep sharing of our life stories. We laughed at the silly things weve done. We marveled at the lineaments of Gods grace. We wept over sins, wounds, and struggles, both past and present.

I drove home pondering the fact that when ten tenderhearted, Jesus-loving, spiritually alive pastors get into a room and are honest with each other, we share stories of theft, pornography, broken families, paralyzing anxiety, suicidal thoughts, marital struggles, and unfulfilled longings. If theres such brokenness in the histories and hearts of godly shepherds, what must be the inner reality of the sheep in our churches? Surrounded by such brokenness within and without, how can the people of God possibly hope to sustain their joy in God?

The odds seem long and the situation bleak. But Psalm 70 gives me strong hope.

Ive been drawn to Psalm 70:4 for many years, because it brings together two awesome truths that thrill the heart of every Christian Hedonist:

May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, God is great!

Only a capacious heart could breathe such an expansive prayer. Notice that David isnt content for just a few (or even most) seekers of God to rejoice. No, he longs for all to experience God-centered gladness. And Davids requesting more than just a flickering, intermittent passion for the glory of God among the people of God; rather, he prays for their lips and lives to communicate Gods worth continually, at all times, without interruption.

This is a plus-sized prayer. Its so big that many millions of people can (and have) fit inside it. David was surely praying it for himself. He was also praying it for those of his generation and all future generations. In fact, if were seeking God and loving Gods salvation, Davids prayer is for us. David is asking God to sweeten our joy and strengthen our passion for his glory. He doesnt specify how these two prayers might fit together, but John Piper has helped many of us treasure the biblical teaching that they are in fact one. As we find our deepest joy in God (in you), we display his worth to the world.

Though Ive loved Psalm 70:4 for years, it wasnt until recently that I noticed the context. And its the context that has filled me with hope.

Heres what Ive noticed: Psalm 70 is not a sunny psalm. Its not a walk in the park or a day at the beach. Life is not good in this psalm. Instead, its hard very hard. In fact, the psalm is an almost-unremittingly desperate plea for Gods help. Verse 1 (the first verse) and verse 5 (the last verse) are bookends:

Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O Lord, make haste to help me!

Hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay!

Theres a focused urgency here. David sounds like a soldier pinned down by enemy fire, radioing desperately to central command. His enemies want David dead, and they gloat over Davids misfortunes (Aha, Aha! verse 3).

Weve already seen Davids response to this dark situation. He feels two overwhelming desires, one expected and the other exceptional. First, David wants out of the situation. In four out of five verses, he pleads with God for speedy deliverance. This reaction is perfectly natural and completely understandable. Who wouldnt want this? Of course, wed all be asking for the same rescue.

Second, however, the intense pressure of Davids circumstances also squeezes from his heart another cry, this one much more unusual. Stunningly, the request in verse 4 is not just for himself, but for others. Its nothing short of miraculous that David, in his foxhole, under heavy fire, prays not simply for personal escape, but for gladness among all Gods people, and for the continual glorifying of God. What is going on here?

Some of us hear the Bibles repeated calls to pursue our joy and believe that its simply beyond us in our present state. For the moment, our attention is occupied by other matters: sin, sickness, loneliness, financial difficulty, opposition, relational pain. We feel were in the 101 class of Surviving Our Problems and not quite ready for the 201 class of Pursuing Our Joy. Verse 4, we think, is for people who have it all together (or at least more together).

And this is why the context of verse 4 is so challenging and so encouraging, because verse 4 exists in a sea of suffering. David doesnt say, Once I get free from my enemies, then Ill start to care about the gladness of Gods people and the glory of God. His foxhole prayer, in worrying and uncomfortable circumstances, is for gladness and glory. This is a real-world prayer. Christian Hedonism is as much for bleak days as it is for bright ones.

If God can work this extraordinary impulse in Davids heart, why cant he do the same in us? Why cant he implant a renewed passion for our joy and his glory even in the midst of intense suffering? Could it be that God might even use the desperation of our brokenness to drive us to him?

In his poem The Storm, George Herbert ponders how, like the violent force of a terrible rainstorm,

A throbbing conscience spurred by remorseHath a strange force: It quits the earth, and mounting more and more,Dares to assault thee, and besiege thy doore. (lines 1012)

Our inner and outer conflicts may produce something good. They purge the aire without, within the breast (line 18). This was certainly the case for David in Psalm 70. His desperation yielded a passionate cry to God that continues to encourage followers of God to this day.

You can pray a David-like prayer in your own bleak situation by taking two cues from David himself.

First, seek God. May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! Joy and gladness are the unassailable possession of those who fix their eyes on Jesus in the storms of life. Look more deeply and more often at Jesus than you look at your enemies or your troubles.

Second, love Gods salvation. May those who love your salvation say evermore, God is great! Consider frequently how God has saved you (and how hes saving many others). Delight in this salvation. Rest in it. Love it. The more you love your salvation, the more readily your lips will spill over with natural praise of the God who saved you.

Please dont wait to pursue your joy in God until God has healed your brokenness and resolved your problems. Verse 4 isnt a postscript to Psalm 70; it doesnt come after Davids crisis. It emerges from the midst of it. This is an example and invitation for us. Dont wait to pursue your joy. Start right now.

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The Gulps Announce New Single ‘King Of The Disco’ – Broadway World

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Alan McGee's hotly-tipped new signing - THE GULPS - have announced a UK Tour this June.

With dates in Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester, London and more, the tour will follow the release of hotly anticipated new single: "King of the Disco" (out 27th May 2022, via It's Creation Baby).With a guest DJ set from Alan McGee across multiple dates, further support sets come from acts including Mark McLean, The Head-Up Displays, Dirty English, Zoe + Linnie and others - full details can be found below.

Released 27 May, The Gulps' upcoming second single, "King of the Disco" is a bubbling petri-dish of rock, pop and disco influences that pulsates with a raucous, live-ready energy and an all-out party atmosphere. Pre-save the new single here.

With its beats and grooves overseen by the legendary Danny Saber (Black Grape) on mastering, the resultant track is a swirling indie-disco earworm landing just in time for manic summer nights under flashing lights and Dyonisian blow-outs on sticky dancefloors.

Inspired by post-Covid craziness and the exhilaration of being set free from lockdown, frontman Javier Sola says of the single:

"King of the Disco" is about instigating partying, hedonism and chaos and losing control. Everyone was sporadically locked up over the last two years, so this track is about celebrating the moment you were allowed onto the dancefloor again; dictating craziness, and spitting euphoria and absolute mania."

Confident and heady with an infectious dance undercurrent enough to tip any room on its head, the single arrives in the wake of the quintet's recently signed publishing deal with Mike Smith and Downtown Music.

Ready to take the summer airwaves by storm, "King of the Disco" arrives as the thrilling follow-up to '"Stuck In The City", a single which has already seen The Gulps earn key support from the likes of BBC Radio 6 and Radio X and many more.

02 - GLASGOW - The Hug & Pint(w/ Mark McLean // Tonto // Alan McGee (DJ Set))03 - CARDIFF - Tramshed (supporting Cast)(w/ CAST)04 - BIRMINGHAM - Dead Wax(Sonic Wave Festival)06 - BRISTOL - Louisiana(w/ Zoe + Linnie // Alan McGee (DJ Set) + More TBA)07 - LONDON - Camden Assembly(w/ Dirty English // Naked RA // Alan McGee (DJ Set))08 - MANCHESTER - The Castle Hotel(w/ The Head-Up Displays // The Red Stains // Alan McGee (DJ Set))

Tickets for all dates are on sale now here.

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The Gulps Announce New Single 'King Of The Disco' - Broadway World

Gemma Atkinson to headline massive festival dedicated to health and happiness in Manchester – The Manc

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A huge new wellbeing festival is heading to Manchester this summer, with Gemma Atkinson as a headliner.

The Manchester Wellbeing Festival will take over the enormous space at Manchester Central for a weekend focused on health and happiness.

Taking place over the weekend of 11 and 12 June, the huge event will feature talks, fitness classes and more.

The line-up includes TV personalities, influencers, authors, scientists, doctors, fitness instructors, therapists and yogis.

One of the biggest names will be Burys Gemma Atkinson, an actress, fitness guru and Hits Radio host.

Gemma will share advice on how to feel stronger, healthier, more confident and comfortable in your own body.

Former Geordie Shore star Vicky Pattison will also appear to chat about her book The Secret to Happy, followed by a signing.

Womens Health columnist, author and personal trainer Alice Liveing will kickstart each day of the festival with a strength workout, as well as interviewing special guests.

Another familiar face will be Dr Alex George, formerly of Love Island fame and now a TV presenter, doctor and UK Government ambassador for mental health hell be addressing modern health issues and signing copies of his book Live Well Every Day.

DJ Fat Tony will tell stories of hedonism and self-destruction, as well as of recovery, redemption and friendship, while This Mornings agony couple The Speakmans will share secrets to unshakeable confidence.

Dr Hazel Wallace, aka The Food Medic, is joining the bill to discuss female health with her forthcoming book The Female Factor, including advice for women on nutrition, sleep, hormones, PMS, periods and the menopause.

TikTok star and A&E doctor Emeka Okorocha will be offering up simple lifestyle advice for mind and body, and Sober Girl Society founder Millie Gooch will show how to go sober in a world obsessed with booze.

Completing the line-up is Faisal Abdalla (who has trained Harry Styles and Ellie Goulding) with a workout, and Hussain Manawer (who has worked with Marcus Rashford, Anthony Joshua and the Royal Family) with a discussion on surviving depression and grief.

Read more: Daredevil Mancs invited to abseil off a 26-storey building in new charity challenge

Youll be able to take on a barre class with Sophie Ritchies Disco Barre, or do yoga with either The Kilted Yogi aka Finlay Wilson, Braxton, or Sasha Bates.

Manchesters leading fitness studio Blok will host classes to suit every level too.

The brand new Manchester Wellbeing Festival will take place at Manchester Central on 11 and 12 June.

For more information and to book tickets, visit manchesterwellbeingfestival.com.

Featured image: Manchester Wellbeing Festival

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Gemma Atkinson to headline massive festival dedicated to health and happiness in Manchester - The Manc

Sex, blood and strangeness reign in The Northman – Cult MTL

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In The Northman, a child born to be king grows up to be a wild man rippling with muscle and consumed by revenge. In a loose reworking of Hamlet, set in the heyday of Vikings and old religion, a man will do anything to avenge his family. He will pillage and plunge, and will voluntarily subject himself to slavery, all in pursuit of his goal. His single-mindedness reduces him to a shell of a person, an almost mythical beast driven by a single, all-consuming purpose.

Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) continues to explore his fascination with the intersection of the folkloric and the grotesque in The Northman. Following very much in the footsteps of his previous films, he manages to zero in on the strangeness of the world to retell an otherwise familiar story. The film is at its best when he leans into that aspect of the world, exploring the rituals and practices of the old religion, particularly how those beliefs break down the line between man and animal.

Eggers understands that folklore is a set of stories told by a community in order to make sense of themselves and the world around them. In the savage world of The Northman, the gods need to be ruthless and earthy to align with how the Vikings see themselves and their lives. Hedonism and brutality play equal roles in this system, which sees blood as a symbol of power. Blood lineages may birth future kings but blood spilled can make anyone a royal. The religion paradoxically inscribes power in both conformity and rebellion all at once. As a viewer, we sense the liberating power of this system of belief, particularly as rituals allow people to explore hidden parts of themselves. In a dark wood, as a fire crackles, everyone regardless of social status wanders through the trees searching for a mate. For one night, slave and owner become equals, able to live free and carnally, at least until the sun rises.

The earthiness of these pleasures, though, is the same earthiness of the carnal violence inscribed in religion. In images evoking The Wicker Man and the opening sequence of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a monstrous God rips people apart only to arrange them back together again into an unholy horse sculpture as a warning of impending divine vengeance. As shocking as this may be to the people of the small Icelandic farm where much of the film takes place, they also readily accept it as part of a world forged through blood and violence.

The folkloric aspects elevate The Northman into something a bit more interesting than just a Skyrim-inspired Viking revenge story, but it can only do so much in elevating a rather thin and poorly constructed story. For all the ecstatic folkloric work at play, Eggers has a dull tendency of laying too many of his cards down on the table at once. Almost immediately, we understand that the character relations are not as rosy as seen from a childs POV and that we are missing core pieces of the puzzle. This may be more true to life, in the sense that old gods dont exist and most royal men suck, but it deflates almost all the narrative tension before the movie even gets started. Everything feels carefully set up for a late-movie revelation that anyone with a modicum of social awareness could have spotted a mile away.

These decisions also impact the writing and performance of the main character. While there are many great films about men run ragged by revenge, this one simply does not work. From the get-go, the revenge plot feels misguided, a childish fantasy, therefore we never have time to grow with the character. The normally charismatic Alexander Skarsgrd is demure and flattened here, coming across as a wounded slow-witted animal. Its hard to fault him though, as the script does him very few favours.

Ironically, his parents, played by Nicole Kidman and Ethan Hawke, are too much, taking their performances in a completely different direction. They embrace the most indecent and high-strung aspects of their characterizations and also adopt weirdly SNL-like Scottish accents. Kidman, in particular, creates a character who feels like a cross between Lady Macbeth and the Wicked Witch of the West. Shes maniacal and duplicitous, delivering a performance at a high register of over the topness. Its genuinely entertaining though, much in the same way Ben Afflecks spoiled bottle blonde was in The Last Duel.

If anyone comes out looking good, its Anya Taylor-Joy, whose otherworldly intensity shifts the tone of the entire film. She has a nymph-like quality that draws from the barren landscapes most ethereal and fantastic elements. Her performance, shrewd and open-hearted, offers a clever mirror image to Kidmans more craven mother figure. Both women have contrasting relationships with dignity and power. While they rarely share any screen time, the way their fates intertwine is compelling and rich in its ideas and execution.

Depending on your feelings about Eggers other films, The Northman may or may not be for you. Personally, Ive yet to really connect with any of his movies, though Im happy hes able to draw in audiences hungry for dirty, subversive and smart genre cinema. The Northman is certainly flawed, perhaps more so than his previous films, but it more than makes up for it with its strangeness and spectacle.

The Northman opens in Montrealtheatreson Friday, April 22.

For the latest in film and TV, please visit ourFilm & TVsection.

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FilmWatch Weekly: ‘Hit the Road,’ ‘Inland Empire,’ ‘Firebird,’ and more – Oregon ArtsWatch

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With an array of noteworthy films dropping at Portlands arthouse theaters this week, including several directing debuts and one of an iconic auteurs most gloriously baffling efforts, theres no time to waste. Lets run down the offerings on tap:

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Hit the Road: It has become almost a clich that Iranian films take place largely in cars. From the first stirrings of post-revolutionary cinema the work of Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, and others used the tropes of the road movie as a way to work within the constraints of limited budgets and government censorship. Now, Jafars son Panah Panahi has directed his first feature, which follows a lengthy car journey taken by a family of four and their adorable but ailing dog.

Hit the Road nonetheless displays a level of humanism and insight that, like its predecessors, transcends the limitations of its genre. Reflecting universal family dynamics, this quartet consists of a father (Hassan Madjooni), confined to the back seat because his leg is in a cast; a mother (Pantea Panahiha) who rides shotgun and tries to keep the inevitable petty tensions from boiling over; an older brother (Amin Simiar), driving with a quiet intensity; and an impish six-year-old (Rayan Sarlak) who has managed to smuggle his cell phone on the trip in defiance of his parents.

Theyre a modern, urban, ordinary middle-class family. Younger Brother loves superheroes. Dad is a big fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As they leave the city and head into the countryside, we (and the little brother) are led to believe that the destination is the older brothers fianc. But it quickly becomes clear that the real reason for the trip is something more fraught. (Theres a reason cell phones were to be left at home.)

This is a road movie, so there are plenty of detours and diversions along the way, including a very amusing encounter with a traumatized bicyclist. And there are countless genuine moments between the foursome, especially as the trip nears its conclusion near the Turkish border and both parents contemplate the implications of the decision their older son has made. Throughout, Sarlak, a natural ham who effortlessly conveys how annoying young kids can be, provides the comic relief. Sketched broadly, each of the family members would be one-dimensional stereotypes, but the specificity of the dialogue and the authenticity of the performances (Madjooni and Panahiha are both stage veterans) make Hit the Road fresh, vital, and ultimately poignant.

The senior Panahi continues to be persecuted by the Iranian government, forbidden from leaving the country and banned from filmmaking since 2010. (Despite this, he has completed four features in the last decade.) Panah Panahi learned his craft working on his fathers films (and Kiarostamis), and it shows, although this is no slavish paternal imitation. Rather, its a film that builds on time-tested conventions and infuses them with a spirit and personality entirely of its own. (Opens Friday, April 29, at the Living Room Theaters.)

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Inland Empire: Remember that time in 2007 when David Lynch lobbied for Laura Dern to be nominated for an Oscar by sitting in a chair on the corner of La Brea and Hollywood Boulevard with a cow and a sign? Well, that was for this movie, which turned out to be Lynchs last major work until the third season of Twin Peaks ten years later. Its also one of his most bizarre, which is, of course, saying something.

Lynch has described the plot of Inland Empire as simply, a woman in trouble. Dern plays an actress whos hired as the co-lead of a film which had to be postponed after the previous cast leads were murdered. Justin Theroux is the co-star with whom she begins a relationship despite the insane jealousy of her husband (Peter Lucas). Before too long, Derns character finds herself crossing into different realities, and even into the past. Theres also a very creepy TV show with anthropomorphized rabbits. So, your typically surreal Lynchscape, in an especially undiluted form. Familiar faces including Grace Zabriskie, Harry Dean Stanton, and Diane Ladd pop up, as does Jeremy Irons.

Inland Empire was Lynchs first film shot on then-novel digital video, and was criticized on its initial release for its smeary, ugly visuals. Now hes personally supervised the creation of a newly remastered edition, so we can find out to what degree that look was intentional. Either way, revisiting this three-hour excursion into a dimension of mind on the big screen is a cant-miss event. (Opens Friday, April 29, at Cinema 21)

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Firebird: Its 1977 in Soviet-occupied Estonia. Private Sergey Fetisov (Tom Prior) is heading into his final weeks of service on an Air Force base, passing the time with his best pal and Luisa (Diana Pozharskaya), the pretty female comrade who seems to have eyes for him. But when a dashing new jet pilot named Roman (Oleg Zagorodnii) is transferred in, it doesnt take long before he and Sergey are conducting furtive romantic liaisons. This is a dangerous proposition, since homosexual conduct is punishable by five years hard labor.

This isnt the first film to tackle a tale of forbidden same-sex love in an intolerant historical setting. Nor is it the best, although the leads acquit themselves admirably enough. The British Prior, who played Stephen Hawkings son in The Theory of Everything, pulls off an impressive accent (and co-wrote the screenplay), while the rest of the cast (most of them Estonian or Russian) handle the English dialogue with facility. Zagorodnii is a Kyiv native who was last reported to be holding out there in the coffee shop he owns.

This is the first feature for Estonian director Peeter Rebane, and if it lacks a distinct visual style, it remains a competently mounted effort. Based on a memoir by the real Fetisov, it also takes pains to acknowledge the pain of Luisa, who becomes the third wheel to Sergey and Roman. Most notably, its a timely tale given the continued hostility and intolerance toward the LGBTQ community in Russia. (Opens Friday, April 29, at Living Room Theaters)

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Pagan May @ the Clinton Street Theater: Heres one of the more inventive programming series in recent memory. The new owners of the Clinton Street Theater have lined up a series inspired by the ancient traditions surrounding May Day, and all of their attendant witchery. Highlights include Louis Malles Black Moon (May 5), George Romeros Season of the Witch (May 6), and the psychotronic oddity Simon, King of the Witches (Friday the 13th)plus, later in the month, the latest freakout from French director Gaspar Noe, Lux Aeterna.

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To top this week off, a couple of notable streaming releases:

Fabian: Going to the Dogs: Emanating some vaguely Fassbinderian vibes, this three-hour chronicle of Weimar-era decadence and nihilism centers on Jakob Fabian (Tom Schilling), who works as an advertising copywriter for a cigarette company in 1931 Berlin, casting an ironic eye on the urban decay and political chaos around him. His best friend, on the other hand, leaps feet-first into the hedonism of the milieu, while the law student for whom Fabian develops an infatuation takes a similarly amoral approach to her life and career. Veteran German auteur Dominik Graf (The Invincibles) adapts the semi-autobiographical 1931 novel by Erich Kstner, which, even in an expurgated edition, was banned and burned by the Nazis, and was published in its original form only in 2013. (Available to stream via MUBI.com and KinoNow.com)

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Ultrasound: This inventive indie mindbender stars Vincent Kartheiser (a/k/a Pete Campbell from Mad Men) as a hapless traveler who finds himself seeking aid from an isolated rural house one rainy night after he gets a flat tire. His benefactor (Bob Stephenson) offers a warm robe, a cocktail and the opportunity to spend the night in the same bed as his much younger wife (Chelsea Lopez). Thats only the initial setup for a story that involves hypnotic suggestion, illusory pregnancies, and a secret underground medical research facility. Director Rob Schroeder, making his first feature, barely manages to keep the multifarious plot strands coherent, and the performances are sometimes stiff, but it all comes together in a pretty satisfying fashion. Or maybe I just imagined that (Available to stream through a variety of providers.)

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FilmWatch Weekly: 'Hit the Road,' 'Inland Empire,' 'Firebird,' and more - Oregon ArtsWatch

The Corvette’s Junk in the Trunk – Car and Driver

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The 2022 Chevrolet Corvette is 182.3 inches long. That is 7.9 inches longer than the Audi R8, which squeezes a V-10 into its engine bay. Its 3.8 inches longer than the Acura NSX, and 2.6 inches longer than the Ferrari 296 GTB. And much of that extravagant length is concentrated aft of the cabin. The C8 is radically cab-forward, and from a three-quarter view, front or rear, it can look like the front third of the car is being swallowed by an 8/7ths scale version of itself. Or as if its in the process of telescoping, like the Rinspeed Presto. The Corvette looks fantastic in profile and dead on, but it isnt as tidy, visually, as it might be if it didnt have about 20 inches separating the engine bay from the rear bumper. Theres just no disguising the Corvettes big ol trunk.

Car and Driver

But that little stretch aft of the engine bay is what transforms the C8 from a gaudy plaything into a real everyday car. When you start seeing Corvettes with 150,000 miles, that wont be because they get great fuel economy or have Barcalounger seats. Itll be because of the trunk. Its easy to take off on a 600-mile trip when you dont have to think about what to pack. And removing a practical obstacle to road trips means racking up more miles, which ought to be the ultimate goal for a car that treats driving as hedonism rather than a chore. And for this glorious flexibility, we can thank the roof.

The C8 can impersonate a practical car. Even in the snow.

Early on in the C8 planning, Chevys focus groups confirmed that a switch to a mid-engine layout would not change customers expectation that all Vettes are convertiblesas in, coupes get a removable roof panel. And if the roof comes off, you need a place to stow it in the car. Hence, the C8s rear trunk isnt designed around your luggage or golf clubs (though itll hold two sets) or the bags of mulch you might throw in to flex at Home Depot. Its designed to store the roof, and this thing aint a T-top. That panel is large. And so the C8s total cargo capacity is 13 cubic feet, which is comparable to one of those rooftop cargo bags you might see on an SUV.

Car and Driver

As a consequence, when I took a 2022 Corvette on an overnight trip to the North Carolina mountains, I had plenty of room for the bulky detritus demanded by winterno cramming every air pocket in the cabin with rolled-up jackets and individual socks, no sliding the seats uncomfortably forward to create a few spare cubic centimeters of cargo space, as Ive done in an R8. Just get in and go, both trunks filled to the brim but the interior uncluttered.

Car and Driver

And that capaciousness leverages what is otherwise a fantastic year-round road-trip car, a grand tourer in track-rat clothes. When I got a ride in a heavily camouflaged pre-production C8 at GMs Milford Proving Grounds back in 2019, chief engineer Tadge Juechter said, It's got 911 performance along with the best attributes of the Boxster and Cayman. And some Lexus refinement thrown in, which might surprise people. While the Corvette can execute brutal launch control clutch-drops and hit 60 mph in 2.8 seconds, it can also mellow out on the highwayactive exhaust muted, magnetic ride control limber, transmission smoothly slurring from gear to gear. With winter tires, you can blast up a snow-covered mountain road with no trouble whatsoever. And the optional front-end lift system helps the C8 shimmy over steep approaches or speed bumps without grinding. The Corvette isnt a normal car, but it can impersonate one.

Car and Driver

Not everyone is satisfied with the Corvettes compromise between aesthetics and utility. I have a friend who bought the past two Z06s, the C6 and C7, but doesnt know if hell go back for a third. The new Corvette just looks weird from some angles, he said. The last one looks much better to me. And I know what he means, but hes also not one of the people who takes advantages of the Corvettes capaciousness (the C7 had even more cargo space). When I asked him how many miles were on his C7 Z06, now four years old, he replied, 3000. I got a long way toward that number in one weekend with the C8.

Back when I visited Milford, Juechter said, There are literally a million decisions on the way to making a new car. Going with the removable roofand hence big trunkwas one of them. And they got it right.

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Ian Winwood’s new book ‘Bodies: Life And Death In Music’: can we build a healthier way of rocking? – NME

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Good-looking rocknroll corpses are few and far between. Those aspic encased icons the Kurts, Jimis, Jims and Amys who glare tragically from atop a million 27 Club articles are but a pinnacle of a far less photogenic iceberg. Behind their tortured glares lie an incalculable number of lesser-sung casualties who got dragged along by the music industry juggernaut and ultimately fell beneath the wheels; the wrecked, burnt-out roadkill of rocknroll.

Bodies: Life And Death In Music, a new book by esteemed rock writer Ian Winwood released last week, delves into the stories of numerous cases of musicians weve lost to a damaging and outdated musical ideology. Arriving in the wake of the loss of Foo Fighters Taylor Hawkins and alongside a documentary on the final years of Blind Melons Shannon Hoon,All I Can Say, the book has opened up a much-needed debate about the nature of the music industry as an insatiable meat grinder for creative souls with an instinct for self-destruction. If musics #MeToo moments have forced a welcome reassessment of the manipulative behaviours lurking behind the sex part of sex, drugs and rocknroll, Bodiesblows apart the rosy mythologies of the drugs (and booze, and prescription medications, and ceremonial Fleetwood Mac sphincter straws) element too.

We have, after all, too long celebrated and encouraged the raging damage that musicians do to themselves in pursuit of the great rock dream. The months of touring surrounded by well-stocked dressing room fridges every night, with local venue contacts on call and a post-gig adrenaline rush to ride out: weve historically spot-lit those who admit they couldnt handle these environments as having a problem, but it takes superhuman restraint and self-control to not fall into harmful habits when your entire world feels like being in a COVID bubble with Boris Johnson.

Add in the short-lived nature of so many pop careers, made or broken on the whims of a fickle public like an emperor at the Coliseum forgetting to do the thumb thing because hes been distracted by a model playing chess with herself on Instagram and youve got the perfect recipe for post-fame overdose and widespread middle-age sclerosis. To come out of rock unscarred and well-adjusted is akin to surfing the lava out of Pompeii.

Its all built on an ancient mindset, smelted in the 60s counterculture the idea of a life in music as outside and beyond the moral expectations and nine-to-five structures of Squaresville, baby. Supposedly unshackled and free-spirited, musicians have been expected to exist in an art-serving, consciousness-expanding dreamworld for decades, the hedonism at its core hyper-charged by the historic excesses of the multi-platinum dinosaurs of the 60s, 70s and 80s. By the 90s, rock bands were already chasing the ghosts of their mushy-livered forebears, living their wildest life because, well, it was what rock bands did.

Now there was and remains a wilful self-sacrifice to much of this. One of the major draws of being a musician is the belief that you can extend your teenage rebel period well into your 40s, rage indefinitely around the world with your best mates on the major label dollar and live a free life of ultimate self-autonomy, unbothered by alarms, train delays, six-month reviews, Excel and lacklustre fire drills. The reality of a musicians life, once you throw in all the travel, promotion, label pressure and hurry-up-and-wait, is a lot more workaday than many expect, but it will always draw people with a thirst for non-conformity and excess. The issue raised by Bodies is: how can we change the music industry so that it no longer spells inevitable disaster for them?

Its a timely question. With tours now the primary source of income for many acts and day jobs often a necessity, rising musicians need to remain fit and functioning without going to the straight-edge extremes of getting Xs tattooed on their wrists and turning into Minor Threat circa 1981. And thats going to be largely down to the industry around them taking their duty of care more seriously.

Lets be honest from managers to promoters, PRs, journalists, A&Rs and so on, the music industry is populated by people who aspire to the same kind of lives of thrill and freedom but via our own skillsets, rather than looking great in plastic trousers. And that plays out when the circus comes to town. The bands, with their riders and aftershows and chase-the-party attitude, become the fount from which the rest of the industry gets its vicarious taste. Acts are encouraged expected, even to drink late, drug hard and sleep when theyre dead, night after night, because their very presence is every new towns one brief chance to binge on the lifestyle it thinks they lead.

Which is not to say the party has to end. Just that, within the industry, the rocknroll lifestyle should be an option, not an expectation. That warning signs need to be spotted early and inner circles must be unafraid of shouldering the responsibility to point them out and offer help. And that the welfare of the talent should always be put before their money-making potential.

Another new book, Touring And Mental Health: The Music Industry Handbook by music psychologist Tamsin Embleton due in October, looks to be the antidote to Bodies, offering guidance on confronting and tackling issues before they become headlines. Required reading, because living fast and dying young has become distinctly over-rated.

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Ian Winwood's new book 'Bodies: Life And Death In Music': can we build a healthier way of rocking? - NME

Forget the likes of Will Smith. Audiences are also behaving badly – The Guardian

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This is not about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars last month. Nobody needs to read more about that. Its swimming in cold water, its how good Succession is: we know, so why hasnt anyone mentioned it before?

But that one rash moment and its afterlife is part of a bigger picture, a sense that something is not quite as it was. Last week, the Hollywood Reporter revealed that the organisers of the Tony awards, the New York ceremony that recognises excellence in Broadway theatre, sent an email revealing they now have a policy for dealing with violent incidents: In the event of an incident, the perpetrator will be removed from the event immediately.

The Tonys, back for the first time since 2020 and celebrating its 75th year, draws no direct connection between this and Smiths actions in March, but surely this has to be the first time that an entertainment awards ceremony has needed to explicitly state that youre not allowed to perpetrate an act of violence while clapping for Moulin Rouge! The Musical.

This protocol is aimed at an audience largely made up of professionals; while I have witnessed how heated feelings can become over whether this or that person more deserved their shiny trophy, the idea that there has to be a plan now for dealing with the possibility of that spilling over into violence is odd, isnt it?

Live entertainment in all forms, cut off during the pandemic, given little support in this country by the government, is now attempting to scratch and claw its way back in a near-impossible landscape. The audiences that feel brave enough to attend events may find themselves in a different world. Comedians talk about a mood shift, post-lockdowns, with audiences behaving badly; last week, Nish Kumar spoke of racist hecklers at his stand-up shows and said other comedians agree that theres something in the water. In an Instagram video, the musician Adrianne Lenker, of the brilliant band Big Thief, said: Try to be mindful of whats happening and pay attention and dont talk.

Trying to manage an audiences behaviour is difficult. It exists on a sliding scale: a sign requesting that a crowd does not take photographs is not the same as an artist berating an audience for not clapping loudly enough, which I have seen before. But after a period away, this seems like a period of great readjustment, in which everyone is trying to find their feet. At least, that is one way to see it, if you want to remain hopeful.

I have written before about how television became a comfort blanket for many over the course of the pandemic, and those big event series such as Bake Off and Strictly were particularly soothing.

On a personal level, Id add MasterChef to that, and MasterChef: The Professionals, although if the former doesnt implement a ban on fondant potatoes in the early rounds soon, I may switch off in protest (its the new scallops, black pudding and pea puree).

Monica Galetti, the tough but fair judge on The Professionals, whose praise is usually the hardest earned but the most valued, announced last week that she is leaving the show, after 14 years. It is with a heavy heart that I have made this decision to step back from filming this years series of MasterChef: The Professionals, she said, though the this years series allowed for a little sliver of hope that she might return one day. She explained that she felt unable to balance filming the show with her family life and her London restaurant. Those in the hospitality industry know just how tough it is at the moment, she said.

There is something sturdy about MasterChef and its offshoots. It is a reliable perennial, despite the odd attempt to tweak the format, and newcomers to food TV, such as Gordon Ramsays bizarre Future Food Stars, just cannot compete with its familiar elegance. Monica leaving The Professionals is like Oti leaving Strictly or Mary Berry, Mel and Sue walking away from the Bake Off. It feels like more than just a personnel rotation and I hope that she comes back soon.

I have never been to the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, taking place this weekend, though I am imagining it as a kind of Glastonbury for bibliophiles, with all the hedonism yet none of the regrets. The star of this years fair, the Pyramid stage headliner, if you will, is Charlotte Bront, played in the film To Walk Invisible by Finn Atkins, right. In 1829, nearly two decades before she would write Jane Eyre, a 13-year-old Bront compiled A Book of Ryhmes [sic], a handwritten collection of 10 of her poems, sewn into a miniature book, a little smaller than a deck of cards.

It is reassuring that even one of the most celebrated authors of all time could not spell rhyme correctly and I love the teenage petulance of its title page: Sold by nobody and printed by herself, she wrote. The sold by nobody is no longer the case. Last Thursday, it reportedly sold for $1.25m (973,500) to a private collector. This beats the highest price previously paid for a printed work by a woman of $1.17m, for a first edition of Frankenstein in 2021. Funnily enough, that is about what I would pay someone not to read my attempts at writing poetry as a teenager.

Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist

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Forget the likes of Will Smith. Audiences are also behaving badly - The Guardian

My First Sip of Absinthe: ‘Moulin Rouge,’ The Green Fairy and My Delusional Pursuit of Free-Spiritedness – Paste Magazine

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As a teenager, I was much like I am as an adult, which is to say, anxious. There are times, perhaps few and far between, when my anxiety has faltered, leaving me for hours, days, sometimes even weeks at a time feeling generally relaxed and uninhibited, enough to make friends and alert the followers of my social media accounts that I do, sometimes, leave the desk in the corner of my tiny apartment. But these moments where my anxiety takes a backseat have been hard won after years of therapy and forcing myself out of my comfort zone.

I didnt think it would be that much of a challenge. The teenaged version of myself imagined that, at some point, without much effort on my part, I would magically shed the layer of existential dread that clung to the corners of my life like cobwebs and Id be able to welcome people into my inner world and show them around without them whispering to each other about the dilapidated state of the place. I dont know where I got this misguided idea, but it was likely from all the movies I watched that starred self-assured young people, a class of humans Im not entirely sure even exists in the real world.

At 16 years old, my favorite movie of them all was Moulin Rouge, every Millennial angsty art teens go-to watch for old-timey, sepia-toned substance abuse, fornication and general degeneracy. My favorite scenes all took place in the first half of the movie, when the dancing, the drinking, the raucousness was still taking place. I conveniently avoided the second half of the movie, when Satine falls ill and everything falls to shit. Had I watched this part, maybe I would have taken an important lesson about the ills of excess away from it. Instead, after watching the scene where the artists drink absinthe and apparently hallucinate a green fairy seducing them to the party that rages in the city they overlook, my only thought was, That looks fun.

From that moment on, I knew I wanted to try absinthe. But considering I was only 16 at that point, it took me a few years before I finally got the opportunity to try it. One of my best friends from college lives in Brussels, and she invited me to stay with her a few years ago. Brussels is home to Floris Bar, a famous absinthe bar right next to the equally famous Delirium Caf. The bar boasts over 600 types of absinthe, so I imagined there would be no shortage of raucousness.

Granted, I was in my mid-20s at that point and had already made my way through a few dark, alcohol-fueled years of college and come out the other side appropriately jaded about nightlife and unbridled hedonism. But still, I wasnt prepared for the quiet, almost empty bar we entered. It felt cool and hushed, and once we ordered our absinthes and watched them being prepared in their special way with the saturated sugar cube, I drank mine, experienced the touch of licorice the drink is known for and then nothing. No sudden urge to seize the night or go on a drunken romp around the city. Rather, we went to Delirium, drank a few beers and made it back to my friends apartment on the other side of the city by midnight.

I had waited for my first sip of absinthe for so many years, but by the time I had finally gotten it, I had lost most of my childlike optimism that these novel, one-off experiences could be revelatory or even life-changing. Id already discovered that even the seemingly significant lessons Id felt Id learned from experiences that felt transformative at the time soon faded once I was yet again faced with the normal, boring intricacies of reality. And still. There was some hope that the first sip of absinthe could give me a glimpse of the free-spirited version of myself I so longed to be at 16.

As I returned to my friends apartment that night, I was awash with some version of all my usual anxieties: Was I doing a good enough job at work? Had the man I was texting back home responded to me yet? Had I remembered to check in for my return flight? Was my mom, my dad, my brother, my cat okay? The soundtrack of my worries, almost always playing in the background, maintained its steady beat despite the absinthe running through my veins, and I thought of Moulin Rouge and how, in the end, Ewan McGregor finally has something to write about because Satine has (spoiler alert) died. The absinthe wasnt really a part of the inspiration anyway, and his younger selfs free-spiritedness was just a reflection of his naivety and youth. Or something like that.

I fell asleep feeling glad I had waited a decade to try absinthe for the first time after learning about it from the movie. I think I wouldve been more disappointed at 16.

Samantha Maxwell is a food writer and editor based in Boston. Follow her on Twitter at @samseating.

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The New Twinning Trend: Finding Connection Through Fashion – ELLE

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SHARIF HAMZA/Trunk Archive

Scrolling through the Instagram account @starterpacksofnyc feels like flipping through a pack of trading cards, except instead of stats, each archetype comes with outfits and drink orders. Resist all you want, but youll likely identify with one of the curated personalities on the feed. There I was in the binder, I realized: shearling-wearing, whole milkdrinking, Balthazar-dining, Lana Del Reylistening, cozy-inclined woman.

But its not shade. The account isnt mocking the circles that it spoofs. The comments dont suggest offense so much as delighted acknowledgment by fellow teammates. Why, in an era that places so much emphasis on unfettered self-expression, do we find such contrarian joy in looking like others? People are happy to feel seen and be part of a cultural conversation, even if its not an entirely flattering one, says the accounts founder, Sasha Mutchnik. And weve been programmed to define ourselves by what we wear and buy.... So while it may seem counterintuitive, in our hyper-individualized world, to want to admit a collection of six to eight items is literally me, its a way of saying youre a part of a group, and are, by extension, normal.

Christian Vierig/Getty Images

What starts as mere twinning expands into connection in a disconnected time. After a period of not being able to reach out and touch each other, now were just a shared link away from embracing in matching clothes. We can lie on our separate beds, but stare into the same glowing light of our phones, learn the same skin care routines, order from the same vintage stores, watch the same showsand then emerge into the real world and discuss those things with each other, while also looking like each other.

Sameness is no longer a tabooits a form of bonding.

The runways arent immune from this effect. Pradas spring 2022 collection took place in both Milan and Shanghaiat the exact same time. Guests in both cities watched outfits come down the catwalk as their halfway-across-the-planet counterparts were projected onscreen. As cocreative director Raf Simons explained in the shows press notes, Its about sharingnot just sharing imagery, not just sharing through technology, but sharing a physical event. Meanwhile, twinfluencers Hope and Grace Fly and Reese and Molly Blutstein make showing up to Fashion Week in coordinating looks a virtue, not a gaffe.

FELICITY INGRAM/Trunk Archive

There is a sense that similar gates are being opened everywhere, resulting in a mass decentralization of style. Mine is yours, yours is mine, and this whole planet is ours to match on. Influencers painstakingly credit their outfits so you too can get the look (and they can get the affiliate revenue). Newsletters like Jonah Weiner and Erin Wylies Blackbird Spyplane provide friendly sartorial suggestions for their thousands of readers. The common thread is generosity: indulging in the bounty of options, together. Sameness is no longer a tabooits a form of bonding.

Tyler Joe

My friend Krithika Varagur had a group text with fellow wearers of a specific snap cardigan. When she made friends with another aficionado of the Agnes B. style, We immediately felt simpatico in some vague but visceral way that I think was related to our wardrobe choices. (I thought about whether Id be more inclined to trust someone with my secrets if I could trust their taste in knits.) Bonding over having similar style is what brought me to a lot of my most beloved friends, says Avina Patel from the Twitter account @warmtoned. I feel relieved knowing someone else shares an indulgence I do.

IMAXTREE

In photos of Julia Foxs February birthday party, no one in her identically-corseted, baby Birkintoting group of girlfriends appears to believe matching is a fashion dont. Kylie Jenner and her best friend Anastasia Stassie Karanikolaou have been twinning since they were kids. And for actual twins Simi and Haze Khadra, who share an Instagram account, their outfits match as much as their DNA. The thing about twins (noun) who also twin (verb) is that it creates a single, bolded personalitydouble the dose of mesh outfit and moody makeup.

If last summer was symbolized by hedonism and sex, this one appears to be summoning something witchier, beckoning us to observe and mirror one another rather than thrusting us at each other. The game that is life can seem like an unusually competitive one. Something to consider while getting dressed for your next dinner party: Most teams who win games show up in the same uniform.

This article appears in the May 2022 issue of ELLE.

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The New Twinning Trend: Finding Connection Through Fashion - ELLE