Table of contents for No 457 in Speak Up

Según el filósofo sueco Nick Bostrom, existe un cincuenta por ciento de posibilidades de que todo esto que consideramos la realidad sea tan solo una simulación. Desde un punto de vista de lógica analítica, su razonamiento es irrebatible: si, como demuestra el curso de la Historia, aceptamos que la tecnología tiende a avanzar imparable e inexorablemente, solo es cuestión de tiempo que la inteligencia artificial supere a la humana. Llegados a este punto — que los tecnoutópicos denominan la Singularidad—, es igualmente solo cuestión de tiempo que a esa IA se le antoje programar una simulación para recrear lo que fue (o lo que podía haber sido) la civilización humana en un bonito planeta azul. Si ese escenario es seguro, entonces solo hay dos posibilidades: que ese momento aún no…

TOP BRITS The world’s most famous writer of high fantasy fiction, J. R. R. Tolkien, was born in 1892. He lost both his parents before he was thirteen, leaving him the ward1 of a Catholic priest2, a family friend. As a teenager, he mastered3 Latin and Greek, and even invented his own languages. In 1915, he went to France to fight in the First World War – during which he lost most of his friends. One year later, he married his childhood sweetheart4, Edith Bratt, another orphan. OXFORD UNIVERSITY Tolkien had received a degree5 in Old English in 1911 from Oxford University. In 1925, after years of working in the field, he won the prestigious chair6 of Anglo-Saxon at the same university. He would teach there for the next thirty-four…

PLACES Stretching1 2.7 miles along the southern shore2 of Coney Island, a peninsular neighborhood in the New York City borough3 of Brooklyn, the Riegelmann Boardwalk4 (also known as the Coney Island Boardwalk) is a famous seafront promenade5. It opened in 1923 and was named after Edward J. Riegelmann, the Brooklyn borough president who was among the promoters of the project. The boardwalk runs between West 37th Street to the west and Brighton 15th Street to the east. It ends in Brighton Beach, a neighbourhood nicknamed6 Little Odessa after Odesa, the Ukrainian port city that came to symbolise mass immigration of mainly Ashkenazi Jews from the Soviet Union in the first half of the 20th century. The wooden planks7 of the boardwalk are always full of people, walking, exercising, enjoying some…

Known as The Greatest Show on Earth, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has been captivating audiences, with incredible acrobatics and death-defying1 stunts2, for almost one hundred and fifty years. And after a hiatus of six years, it’s returning this autumn, with a promise by its owners, Feld Entertainment, “to make The Greatest Show On Earth even greater!” BRIEF HISTORY A cohort of several different circus troupes3, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is famously associated with the Ringling brothers, a family of circus owners and performers who had their first performance in Mazomanie, Wisconsin in 1882. The brothers went on4 to create one of the biggest travelling circuses in the US, and began buying other circuses too. For years, their biggest rival was the Barnum…

CULTURE Bank holidays are national public holidays that take place in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and the Crown Dependencies. The secular holiday is a relatively recent invention. It began with the Bank Holiday Act1 of 1871, which established a day off2 exclusively for banks. BEFORE THE BILL In the early 19th century the Bank of England had about forty holidays a year celebrating saints’ days, Christian festivities or royal occasions. In 1830, however, it was decided that this was simply too many: the number of holidays was slashed3 to eighteen days, and three years later cut again to just four: Good Friday4, 1 May, 1 November, and Christmas Day. Factory workers, however, enjoyed more days off, as a trend for local holidays had spread after the Industrial Revolution…

CULTURE Think about Scotland and many will picture1 men in kilts. Never is this more the case than during the Highland Games. From May through September, clubs and clans compete in a series of sporting challenges across Scotland. Some games are more well-known than others, ranging2 from the tug o’ war and hammer throw, to the shot put3 and the most famous of all: tossing4 the caber5, where contestants6 must throw a heavy log7 of Scottish pine to land8 as upright9 as possible and tip over10 to the other side. MEDIEVAL ORIGINS The games date back to medieval times. Clans competed as preparation for battle. Clan chiefs were able11 to assess12 participants to select bodyguards, fighters and messengers, as well as entertainers to keep them amused13 in their free time.…

PLACES Thousands of people in period costume1 flock2 to the streets of Bath every September. The historic city in Somerset, England, becomes an immersive Regency experience, thanks to the Jane Austen Festival. Organised by the Jane Austen Centre, the annual event celebrates the well-loved author during ten days of walks, talks, shows and balls3. Jane Austen lived in Bath from 1801 to 1806 and the city is featured in her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published after her death, in 1817. A LUSH HISTORY In the late 18th and early 19th century, Bath was a popular spa resort frequented by fashionable society. They visited the thermal baths that had existed since Roman times, as ‘taking the waters’ was considered good for health. The Grand Pump4 Room, a building adjacent…

Forests are amazing1 places, and so are the animals that live in them. We enjoy watching television programmes about bears, bats or monkeys. We know a lot about their lives: how they find food or what they do at different times of the year. But what about2 smaller animals that are more difficult to see or film? THE IMPORTANCE OF LEAVES Many small animals that live in forests are very important for the soil3. A French scientist, Francois-Xavier Joly, is studying one of them — the millipede4. When the leaves5 begin to die in autumn, they turn from green to yellow and fall from the trees. As they decompose on the ground, nutrients are returned to the soil and carbon dioxide to the air. Life in the forest needs these…

To see eye to eye with someone” means to be in full agreement with them about or on a particular subject. An example of use is: “I see eye to eye with my friend about prioritising health over money”. Sadly, these days, the expression is often used in the negative: if you don’t see eye to eye with someone, you disagree with them. The saying comes from the Bible. The King James Version of the Old Testament’s book of Isaiah contains the line: “Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion.” Here, there is peace and harmony because a group of people see eye to eye. Can you think of…

I saac Newton was baffled1. He was already famous for discovering how gravity holds the universe together and for using that knowledge to predict the movements of celestial bodies, such as the moon’s path around the Earth. Now, by taking the sun’s gravitational tugs2 into account, he sought to improve his lunar predictions. Instead, it made them worse. The setback3, Newton’s friend Edmond Halley reported, “made his head ache4, and kept him awake so often, that he would think of it no more.” Newton felt his defeat so keenly5 that he recalled it more than once in his old age. Today it’s called the three-body problem. Famous in science and science fiction for orbital perturbations and chaotic phenomena, it’s recently become a concern of atomic experts and military planners. As…

Elon Musk thinks you don’t exist. But it’s nothing personal: he thinks he doesn’t exist either. At least, not in the normal sense of existing. Instead we are just immaterial software constructs running1 on a gigantic alien computer simulation. Musk has stated that the odds2 are billions to one that we are actually living in “base reality”, i.e. the physical universe. At the end of last year, he responded to a tweet about the anniversary of the crude tennis video game Pong (1972) by writing: “49 years later, games are photo-realistic 3D worlds. What does that trend continuing imply about our reality?” This idea is surprisingly popular among philosophers and even some scientists. Its modern version is based on a seminal 2003 paper, “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?”,…

CROSSWORD Across 1 Incredible. Difficult or impossible to believe.7 Conjunction used to introduce a contrasting concept.9 Verb meaning ‘to stop living’.11 ‘False friend’ adjective meaning final, ultimate, coming at the end.13 Sound often found with lightning during a storm.14 Unit of measure of liquid, typically beer.15 Not tested.18 To be of the same opinion.21 The opposite of ‘love’.22 A measure, quantity, frequency, ratio; (____ of interest, for example).24 Money risked on an unpredictable event; a gamble.25 Religious act or action always repeated in the same ceremonial way.28 Things to play with (plural).30 Preposition often indicating movement.31 Revolve, rotate. ‘Move’ to the left or right.32 Not fat.33 Like. While. Adverb used in comparisons.34 Device for slowing or stopping a moving vehicle.36 Attach or fasten with string or rope.37 Abbreviated form of…

Killers of the Flower Moon Martin Scorsese dirige a Robert De Niro y Leonardo DiCaprio en una adaptación del libro de David Grann sobre la ola de asesinatos ocurridos a principios de los años 20 del siglo XX en una reserva de nativos americanos donde se descubrió un yacimiento de petróleo. The Tube at 160 Inaugurado en enero de 1863, el metro de Londres fue pionero en muchos aspectos: fue el primer sistema ferroviario subterráneo y, posteriormente, el primero en usar trenes impulsados por electricidad. Revisaremos el modo en que la expansión de este revolucionario modo de transporte contribuyó al crecimiento de la capital. Columbus Day Desde hace tiempo, la comunidad italoamericana aprovecha el 12 de octubre para celebrar su historia y cultura. Sin embargo, cada vez son más las…