ISSUES & IDEAS

BETWEEN THE POSTS: 2

Robert Butler — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:02:57 +0000

~ Posted by Robert Butler, February 3rd 2012

In From Here to New Hampshire we blogged about the view from our office (with the Shard and the London Eye in the distance) and the beneficial effects, generally, of looking out of the window—whether you're a blogger in London or a former poet laureate in New Hampshire. It turns out the view from our window is also a barometer of the city's financial health. From my desk I can count 25 building cranes, which the chancellor of the exchequer may not consider good news. The Financial Times reports that only 300 tower cranes went up in London in the second half of 2011 compared with 371 in the previous six months. And who's patient enough to count 300 tower cranes? The Health and Safety Executive receives notification of each one that goes up.

In Another Top 40 for Dickens, we noted Penguin Classics' online poll of favourite Dickens characters and suggested another Top 40 poll for favourite minor ones. We put forward five. One of our expert readers wrote in to suggest another 14 including one dog (Bullseye from "Oliver Twist"). The Daily Telegraph is running a series in which 29 journalists write about their favourite Dickens character (one for each day of this month). That discussion continues on Twitter, where there's a shout-out for Tommy Traddles, David Copperfield's endearing pal. The tweet is from the great-great-great-great-grandson of Judge Thomas Noon Talfourd, who is said to have inspired the character and who is the dedicatee of "The Pickwick Papers".
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BETWEEN THE POSTS

Robert Butler — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:52:22 +0000

~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 2nd 2012

An update on some recent stories:

There's another good reason why there's a fresh audience for Sherlock. The BBC series "Sherlock" returned yesterday, with the dominatrix in "A Scandal
in Belgravia" telling Holmes that "brainy is the new sexy". The Daily Telegraph
says one of the joys of the series is the way its creators have "devised ways of showing its protagonist’s mind working".

After hearing saxophonist Jorja Chalmers take centre stage with Bryan Ferry, we noted the return of the sax. Rolling Stone has a slideshow on the same theme with last year's 10 best pop songs featuring the sax.

David Hockney was just one in 23,000 British artists having their work uploaded to Your Paintings. In the New Year's Honours list he became one of only 24 holders of the Order of Merit. (We preview his new exhibition in Hockney thinks big.) read more »

NEW ISSUE, NEW BLOG

Robert Butler — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:34:54 +0000

~ Posted by Robert Butler, December 8th 2011

The January/February issue of Intelligent Life is on newsstands today, with a very different cover star from the last two: Thomas Heatherwick, the designer of benches and buses who may also be the future of architecture.

The first issue of 2012 also brings a reshuffle in the editorial team, and two of the changes involve the website. The online editor for the past three years, Emily Bobrow, becomes a contributing editor of Intelligent Life magazine, while continuing to edit the culture channel of The Economist online. Since Emily took over, More Intelligent Life has grown dramatically in its reach and stature, a fact reflected in the number of page views, which have more than doubled in the past year. "Emily has done a fine job," said Tim de Lisle, editor of Intelligent Life. "In fact two of them. She has fully earned the chance to have only one job, rather than having to run two websites dancing to the very different rhythms of a weekly and a bi-monthly. And we look forward to having her input on the magazine."

The other change is that The Blog gets a different name today, The Editors' Blog. It struck us that the editorial team, through their contact with our wide circle of contributors, come across many more insights and observations than we can fit into a 150-page bi-monthly.

One of my tasks, as the new online editor, will be to pass some of these on. There will be more blog posts, and they will be shorter. The magazine tries to serve slow food, and you will continue to find a choice of main courses on the home page—but this will be the place to come for tapas.

YOUR LETTERS ARE LIVE!

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:44:25 +0000

Since 2008 we have published a letters page in Intelligent Life to showcase the best comments—and occasional quibbles—from our readers. Now that we are publishing the print magazine six times a year, it's a fine time to publish the letters page online, too.

You are a lively bunch, hailing from all over the world, with differing tastes and eclectic experiences. And we love to hear from you. Whether it is voting in the poll on the Big Question, commenting on articles online or putting pen to paper, we are always glad when you feel inspired to join in.

Emails are welcome at intelligentlife@economist.com. Letters should be sent to The Editor, Intelligent Life, 25 St James’s Street, London SW1A 1HG. And follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

When commenting online, please leave your name and location so you can be properly attributed.

~ GEORGIA GRIMOND

THE Q&A: THE FRANCIS BROTHERS, FILM-MAKERS

Giovanna Dunmall — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:01:29 +0000

When Marc and Nick Francis came across Chinese workers building a road in the Ethiopian countryside in 2005, they felt like they were seeing the future. China’s footprint on Africa's soil was expanding in front of their eyes.

The film-makers had been interested in China since the 1990s, when Marc lived in Shenzhen. But it wasn’t until they encountered fast-growing Asian investment in Africa that they knew which story they wanted to tell, and how. “When China met Africa” follows three men in Zambia, who help to illustrate the Afro-Cino relationship: the country’s trade minister, Felix Mutati; a Chinese farm-owner; and a project manager for a Chinese multinational. The film explores the daily dependency and friction between them in their jobs.

China has recently become Africa’s largest trading partner, lending more money to the continent than the World Bank, so the film is a timely observation of geo-political change. “China’s foray into Africa is indicative of a wider shift in power from West to East,” says Nick, “and something we all need to try to understand”.

The brothers are drawn to deconstructing big global issues. Their last film, “Black Gold”, which premiered at the Sundance film festival, was about the struggle of one man against the multi-billion dollar coffee industry. It brought the topic to the attention of thousands. “When China met Africa”, now available on DVD, continues to travel on the international festival circuit.

More Intelligent Life interviewed the brothers over e-mail, and asked them about some of the challenges and revelations involved in making this film. read more »

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:22:03 +0000

Africa has made a phenomenal leap in the last decade. Its economy is growing faster than that of any other continent. Foreign investment is at an all-time high; Senegal has lower borrowing costs than Ireland. The idea of a black African billionaire—once outlandish except for kleptocratic dictators—is commonplace now. At the same time an expanding African middle class (similar in size to those in India and China) is sucking in consumer goods. Poverty, famine and disease are still a problem but less so than in the late 20th century, not least thanks to advances in combating HIV and malaria.

Africa’s mood is more optimistic than at any time since the independence era of the 1960s. This appears to be a real turning point for the continent. About a third of its growth is due to the (probably temporary) rise in commodity prices. Some countries have been clever enough to use profits to build new infrastructure. The arrival of China on the scene—as investor and a low-cost builder—has accelerated this trend. Other Asian economies are following its lead, from Korea to Turkey.

Yet factors unconnected to resources have been equally or even more important. Africans are taking a greater interest in each other. Regional economic cooperation has improved markedly—borders are easier to cross now, especially in the east. Technology helps too. Africa has 400m mobile-phone users—more than America. Such tools boost local economies, especially through mobile banking and the distribution of agricultural information. read more »

NO MANUAL NECESSARY

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:55:32 +0000

Yesterday, Joe Biden praised Steve Jobs with a simple line: he democratised technology. He did, but he did so in a very specific way.

While writing an article on Google and Apple for Intelligent Life, I knew little about design. So I called someone who did, my former colleague Cliff Kuang, now the editor of Fast Company's award-winning design blog. He put Apple's great achievement better than anyone I've heard, and so I paraphrase it here: it used to be that when you got a computer or a gadget, you had to read a long manual or spend forever fiddling with it to learn how to use it. One person in the family might take the time to do so, and then spend the rest of the Christmas holiday teaching everyone else how to do the things they wanted to do.

Apple changed all that. Take the iPad: an extremely expensive bit of high-tech kit, it comes with no instruction manual. You open a luxuriously thick cardboard box and behold what looks like a piece of art. What next? You press the one big button on the front. The iPad jumps to life and starts setting itself up to work for you. Then you start playing with it. How many people have ever downloaded, printed or read a bit of the instruction manual? After using an iPhone, there are few things more complicated than figuring out how to work a Blackberry. read more »

MAKING THE FUNCTIONAL BEAUTIFUL

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:52:30 +0000

Industrial art is thriving. The shortlist has just been announced for a new pylon design in Britain, a government-sponsored competition run by the Royal Institute of British Architects. The finalists have all come up with possible replacements to the 1927 construction of Sir Reginald Blomfeld, which continues to march across the landscape barely changed (except a little taller). The winner is announced on October 5th and National Grid, the company that runs the electricity network, will consider whether to use that design in the future.

There are some interesting structures in the mix: one is a painted, lattice cylinder; another has slivers of steel pointing up to the sun. Others seem to perform the function—there is a Y-shaped offering, for example—albeit with a less striking form.

My personal favourite in design terms, though, is a pylon that didn’t make this list but won the 2010 Boston Society of Architects Unbuilt Architecture award. Called “The Land of Giants” (below), it features huge lattice men who look as though they’re carrying the wires across the landscape. It was designed by Choi+Shine Architects, and the images on the firm’s site are simply stunning. A feasibility study was under way in Iceland to see if the figures could be used, but when things got a little tricky in the Icelandic economy in 2010, the project was put on hold. It’s unlikely to thaw any time soon. read more »

IT'S STILL GOOD TO HAVE GATEKEEPERS

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:45:12 +0000

The rise of e-readers has already introduced big changes for both publishers and readers. Electronic publications can be turned out faster than the paper kind, and the devices allow for more flexible formatting and pricing. We have already seen, for example, a rise in short books and free-standing articles presented as one-off downloads, as in Amazon's Kindle Singles. One contemporaneous example is Sasha Issenberg's "Rick Perry and his Eggheads". Originally part of a longer book about the science and analytics of political campaigns—called "The Victory Lab" and due next year—the chapter about the Texas governor was brought forward and published electronically just days after Mr Perry announced that he is running for president.

What will this mean for traditional books and magazines? Gabe Habash, writing at Publisher's Weekly, is worried. He notes that Amazon has just published a one-off short story from Tom Rachman, author of the novel "The Imperfectionists": read more »

THE PERSONAL IS TOO POLITICAL

Lee Siegel — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:10:37 +0000

Lee Siegel takes a step back from the surreal antagonism on Capitol Hill to figure out how we got here ... read more »