Probes
On a Sussex pig farm in 1963, Brian Fawcett is thinking about the intelligence of pigs, dogs, humans, and nuclear missiles.
Mikhail Iossel is on the Red Arrow night express train from Moscow to Leningrad on January 9, 1986, when he meets a fellow traveler with two bottles of brandy and a box of chocolates. It’s a journey that can be told in a sentence.
In Ch. 5 of Brian Fawcett’s “Sussex Variations,” there’s courage, war, character and a dying boar.
Vian Andrews is out in the olive orchards, clearing brush from under the trees and thinking about ChatGPT and the future of artificial and other kinds of intelligence. The latest passage from Andrews’ journal about life in the Umbrian countryside, “Scribbles from Italy.”
A tour through the history of writing. From David Shields’ 2010 manifesto, “Reality Hunger.” Time for a second look.
Brian Fawcett learns about the gory details of life on the farm. Ch. 4 of “The Sussex Variations.”
From the Archives: Twenty years ago, the U.S. invaded Iraq. Here’s what Dooney’s said two decades ago about the American imperial “punitive expedition,” as it rolled across Iraq.
Brian Fawcett learns about males and females, both human and porcine, on a pig farm in Sussex, England in the early 1960s.
Vian Andrews hiking and thinking in the Umbrian countryside, amid olive groves in the rain and “sentieri” paths between mountain hamlets.
An International Women’s Day game: who would be on your list? One way to mark IWD: thinking about the women writers we read.