Talk about an obsolete idea. It seems the people who prosper too much these days are the cheaters themselves. But I leave that discussion to the clerics and philosophers. What gets me is the speed of cheating. It’s spreading from poker to fishing, to chess, where a report this week found that American phenom Hans Niemann had likely cheated over 100 times. As one pharma executive told me years ago, cheating is behind pretty much every scandal in his industry, and lest we forget, it’s not only rampant in American and global politics, it’s their defining quality.
Meanwhile…
1. I’d rather be dissected. It’s nice to donate your heart or lungs when you die. But it’s so much more valuable and generous to donate your whole body. Beats a-mouldering in a grave.
2. The 33 coolest streets in the world include, thank heavens for our fragile esteem, Toronto (Ossington – #14) and Montreal (Rue Wellington). In fact, it’s Number 1!
3. Pretty pictures. From smashing a asteroid, to scuba videos, to stunning technology images.
4. It doesn’t pay to be a woman doctor. Robyn Doolittle’s and Chen Wang’s investigation for the Globe and Mail found female doctors persistently paid less than their male counterparts – even in specialties like obstetrics and gynecology where they vastly outnumber men. Sure, most medical school graduates are women, but that makes no difference either. Is it even possible that this is a case of systemic sexism?
5. The last typewriter shop in Melbourne. A heartening 9-minute documentary about surviving technology creatively.
6. You think Harvard’s hard to get into. Try Iran. Or Syria. Or Somalia. If you love adventure not wisely but too well, this travel service may be just for you.
7. The lethargy emergency. What’s disturbing about the rising number of crises in the world is our reaction to them. It used to be “The sky is falling!” Now, it’s “Ho hum”. As Venkatesh Rao points out in this brilliant essay on our failure to mobilize our fear, “there is something exhausted about the collective human psyche right now.”
8. The war against women has a bad week. Especially in Iran, where tens of thousands of women, including schoolgirls, are rising up against the compulsory wearing of the hijab. Take this high school principal whose female pupils simply threw him out. He may feel like the Russians do in Ukraine.
9. The case of the legless Dutchess. As The Browser says: “This story has it all: The world’s most expensive painting; the model for Holmes’s Professor Moriarty; J.P. Morgan (twice); a ransomed prisoner; a gambler and sometime art dealer named Patrick Francis Sheedy; a casino in Constantinople; a Murillo stolen from a monastery in Mexico; a chief of police who kept his composure while a tiger ate his arm; and the 11th Duke of Devonshire.” All in 907 words which should take you 4 minutes to read.
10. What better tribute to Levon Helm than The Weight? This one performed by Amy Helm, Teresa Williams, Larry Campbell, Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Sam Bush, Booker T. Jones, Richard Thompson, Bonnie Raitt, Brittany Howard and more.