Side View: the week in Trump

THE WEEK IN TRUMP

So Trump’s dealmaking genius in Singapore produced a major concession to North Korea and China in exchange merely for something various Kims have promised before, but what does “denuclearisation” actually mean? See, there’s your problem right there.

With the smoke still wafting from the ruins of the G7, former senior US diplomat Strobe Talbott explains exactly why Russia should not be anywhere near the G7. Also, Miranda Carter offers a history lesson on what happens when an idiot is allowed to run a major power — just a world war and the conditions for the rise of the greatest evil in history. Uh-huh.

Meanwhile, according to the World Health Organisation, a couple of years ago, China overtook the United States on the measure Healthy Life Expectancy at birth. Chinese people can expect to live healthily for 68.7 years at birth compared to 68.5 years for US people. At the top is Singapore, at 76.2 years; Australia is equal tenth with Norway on 73. Others ahead of the US include Cuba, Panama and the Maldives.

THE SPICE MUST FLOW

Vanilla is now worth more than silver and it’s proving a potent lure for thieves. And speaking of silver, James Toth calls bullshit on the resurgence of vinyl, and celebrates the humble CD as the last pressings of the little silver disc come to an end. Meantime, another old tech form is enjoying a resurgence: the relative strength of mobile coverage compared to internet coverage in African countries means a 20-year-old form of coding is providing the basis for mobile phone apps that don’t need online connectivity from the handset. 

ST PAUL’S LETTER TO THE VANDALS

Along with Arab scholars, the Christian church was crucial to the protection of many classical texts through the Middle Ages for their eventual dissemination, when the third renaissance to break out in Europe finally stuck in the 15th century. But did Christianity destroy far more than it ever protected? A new book from Catherine Nixey examines the extraordinary trail of destruction wreaked by early Christians against the triumphs and achievements of pagan tradition.

PLEAS TO MEAT YOU

OK I’m pescatarian with vegetarian tendencies but don’t judge other people’s dietary habits. A recent report suggesting that ditching meat and dairy would be the most effective means of curbing our environmental impact attracted quite a bit of attention but this piece from Ben Brooker at Overland explores the contrasting fates of tobacco and meat in the public consciousness. By way of balance and tribute to Anthony Bourdain, here’s his lasagna recipe.

BEING AND TIME

Most of us are familiar with the sensation of time slowing down during a moment of panic. What specifically is happening? It may relate to our critical fusion frequency, or CFF — the point at which a series of light stimuli blur into what appears to be continuous movement (so, the speed above which images must be projected or refreshed on a movie or TV screen to appear to move convincingly).

Different people have different CFFs and it changes during moments of stress. It may also have dramatic impacts on our mental health, skills and perception. A new study raises the possibility of improving human CFF, thus enabling us to have “more time” in everything we do.

STAT OF THE WEEK

How wealthy would humanity be if women earned as much as men? The World Bank has had a stab at working it out and come up with a figure: a lazy $160 trillion. You can see the research here. If nothing else, it’s clear that while the gender earnings gap reduced in the 2000s, it hasn’t narrowed much in recent years. 

BUT WHO WATCHES THE WATCHES?

From the Good To Know department: a 14-year experiment in clock-watching has compiled the best evidence yet that the laws of physics don’t change depending on where you are. The trick is, the laboratories were all moving across vast areas of space without ever leaving Earth.