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How our brains work when we love a book or audiobookEmpathy and imagination help us to engage when we enjoy a book or an...
09/05/2022

How our brains work when we love a book or audiobook
Empathy and imagination help us to engage when we enjoy a book or an audiobook – but why do we feel so sad when we come to the end? Howard Timberlake survives the post-book blues.
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In recent weeks my world has been tainted by a break-up… I've ended a month-long relationship with Billy Connolly, the much-loved Scottish comedian – via my audiobook app. I've spent hours listening to Billy reading his life story – his comedy, his music, his love of digestive biscuits, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do without his lilting Scottish tones. It was the same with past audio-based chums: Dave Grohl, Peter Frampton, Barack Obama, Roger Daltrey. And where would I be without comedian Bob Mortimer, with his relatable life story and tips for carrying "pocket meat"? (…For those who don't know who or what Bob Mortimer is, "pocket meat" is more innocent than you think.)

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This "post-book blues" thing is a side-effect that doesn't seem to get mentioned much, if at all. It's not an in-person relationship as such, but it is one forged in a unique, unwritten contract with the reader or listener – signed by your subconscious when turning to the first page, or hitting "play".

How Taipei discovered an active volcano on its doorstepWhen Taiwan's capital discovered an active volcano on its doorste...
07/05/2022

How Taipei discovered an active volcano on its doorstep
When Taiwan's capital discovered an active volcano on its doorstep, it found itself hastily setting up a system to monitor it for dangerous signs.
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Steam billows from cracks in rocks stained a sickly yellow-green. Pools of cloudy water bubble like a pan on the boil. The sharp stench of sulphur laces the air.

This smouldering moonscape is Xiaoyoukeng, an impressive collection of steam vents in Yangmingshan National Park, an 11,000-hectare (42 sq-mile) expanse of hiking trails lying within Taipei's city limits.

Xiaoyoukeng is the best place to get up close to the park's geothermal activity – it is pitted with fumaroles (natural vents in the Earth's surface that allow gases to escape like steam from a kettle's spout) and hot springs, some just a metre (39in) or so from the paths.

For decades, most residents of the Taiwanese capital simply thought they were lucky to have such a striking national park on their doorstep. Geologists knew about the Datun (sometimes spelt Tatun) Volcano Group, a body of around 20 peaks, in the park, but they largely thought that the fumaroles and hot springs were simply remnants of its fiery past. With no historical records of an eruption, the accepted view was that the group was extinct and no longer posed a risk.

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In a worst-case eruption scenario, hot lava could engulf residential settlements at the foot of the park, while the cities could be covered in swirling clouds of volcanic ash
But in February 2017, the media reported on a recent paper by Lin Cheng-Horng, director of the Taiwan Volcano Observatory, that argued there was a magma chamber beneath Datun – the hallmark of an active volcano. Downtown Taipei, with its skyscrapers, bars and restaurants, is just 15km (9 miles) away. Five million people in Taipei and New Taipei cities are well within reach of the impacts of an eruption. In a worst-case eruption scenario, hot lava could engulf residential settlements at the foot of the park, while the cities could be covered in swirling clouds of volcanic ash.

Behind the scenes, Taiwan's government swung into action. First, it ordered scientists to find out as much as they could about the volcanoes and the risks. Then, in May 2018, it tasked the Central Weather Bureau (CWB), its meteorological and forecasting agency, to work with scientists, government agencies and officials to hammer out procedures for an early warning system. It was unveiled to the public little more than two years later, in September 2020.

Why Sam Raimi's Spider-Man shows what's wrong with MarvelTwenty years ago, the first in the director's web-slinger trilo...
06/05/2022

Why Sam Raimi's Spider-Man shows what's wrong with Marvel
Twenty years ago, the first in the director's web-slinger trilogy set the course for the modern superhero film – but none of its descendants have ever matched it, writes Kambole Campbell
"With great power, there must also come great responsibility." Through all of Spider-Man’s variations and different authors and artists, those final words from Amazing Fantasy #15 – the 1962 comic book that first introduced the spectacular superhero – remain the focal point of the story of Peter Parker, the teenage boy bitten by a radioactive spider that grants him arachnid-like powers – and Parker's struggle to live up to that adage has remained the same throughout the decades since.

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When it comes to Spider-Man's multiple big-screen iterations, though, the films that have perhaps best embodied this timeless quest are Sam Raimi's early Noughties Spider-Man series – with Tobey Maguire as the eponymous web-slinger – a trilogy as swooningly romantic and tragic as it is high-flying and colourful. Twenty years ago this week, the first of the films opened in US cinemas, and it was both instrumental to – and really, completely unlike – the superhero films that followed it.

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вУлица Митрополита Андрія Шептицького, 22, ТЦ Фуршет, 2 поверх, "Українські Коноплі"
Kyiv
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