What we've been reading

This week in forgotten wars

It’s grim in Sudan and it has been for a long time. The conflict is compounded by famine, foreign interests and mercenary interventions. “ 730,000 Sudanese children are now thought to be suffering from ‘severe malnutrition’. Diseases such as cholera are on the increase, while about 80 per cent of the country’s hospitals and clinics have ceased to function due to the fighting. Yet for all the catalogue of horrors, having asked donor countries for $2.7bn to provide aid and food, the UN has received just a paltry $131.5m, or five per cent of the request. That is the very definition of a forgotten war.” Engelsberg Ideas provides useful context and analysis.?

This week in justice

The European Court of Human Rights , which rules on potential violations of the civil and political rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights, has been reviewing a few climate related cases (with varying outcomes) and “found that the Convention encompasses a right to effective protection by the State authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life.”?

This week in business strategy

“Traditionalist” bakeries in France have been able to compete with more modern, cost-effective ones by locating closeby. While counter intuitive, it works because it helps them highlight their distinctiveness, according to the Harvard Business Review .

Redesigning cities for changing social needs, and climate adaptation?

The 15 minute city, the brainchild of Urbanist Carlos Moreno, is gaining huge? traction in places from Paris to Buenos Aires while facing opposition from car drivers and assorted lobbies, The Guardian reports. The theory is appealing:: “When many modern cities were designed, they were for men to work in. Their wives and family stayed in the suburbs, while the workers drove in. So they have been designed around the car, and segmented into different districts….Moreno thinks this segregation leads to a poorer quality of life, one designed around outdated “masculine desires”. He wants to mix things up and bring things closer together.?

Not music to everyone’s ears

CNN reports on a new Directive in Chechnya which requires? “all musical, vocal and choreographic works to correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute” to “align with the Chechen mentality and musical rhythm.” Honestly, this feels a tad drastic. Maybe they should try the Reggaeton-be-gone machine instead.

This week in the path of totality

FEED Media Art Center, the brainchild of Benton C Bainbridge and, dare we say it, a WhiteLabel client, opened in Erie, Pennsylvania this winter, with Eclipsing Stars, a collaboration between artist Alex “LoneSav” Staley and astrophysicist Moiya McTier. FEED is part of a growing revitalization effort in Erie. The eclipse is over but the exhibition lives on until May 27th.?

Elsewhere in space, scientists are getting seemingly reassuring clues about dark energy, which may not be a constant after all. Reassuring because “that conclusion, if confirmed, could liberate astronomers — and the rest of us — from a longstanding, grim prediction about the ultimate fate of the universe. If the work of dark energy were constant over time, it would eventually push all the stars and galaxies so far apart that even atoms could be torn asunder, sapping the universe of all life, light, energy and thought, and condemning it to an everlasting case of the cosmic blahs. Instead, it seems, dark energy is capable of changing course and pointing the cosmos toward a richer future.”

A sign that the dark of the moral universe is long, but might, indeed, bend towards justice?

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