“How are they losing their children like this, all over the country? They aren’t used to the desert.” These are the thoughts of a Pashtun cameleer in Fiona McFarlane’s second novel, The Sun Walks Down, set in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges in 1883. This “bit part” cameleer is one of the few characters with a first-person address in McFarlane’s polyphonic, multifaceted saga that explores the cultural narrative, anxiety, and stain of white Australian presence on arid Australian land. Bruce Chatwin, in his seminal novel The Songlines (1987), suggests “Australia […] is the country of lost children”. Indeed, the figure of…
Author: World News Intel
We humans can’t stop playing with our food. Just think of all the different ways of serving potatoes—entire books have been written about potato recipes alone. The restaurant industry was born from our love of flavoring food in new and interesting ways. My team’s analysis of the oldest charred food remains ever found show that jazzing up your dinner is a human habit dating back at least 70,000 years. Imagine ancient people sharing a meal. You would be forgiven for picturing people tearing into raw ingredients or maybe roasting meat over a fire, as that is the stereotype. But our…
“Skalk,” I cursed in Kelvak. It’s my favourite language to curse in – there is nothing as satisfying as the harsh consonants and default imperatives of the primary Kelvaki language. This quote is by the main character in sci-fi novel The Widening Gyre by Michael R. Johnston. Writers like Johnston who invent alien profanity rely on their intuitions about what sounds offensive here on Earth. We wanted to explore whether there are universal sound patterns in profanity. So we designed a series of studies involving speakers of different languages and found surprising patterns in how swear words sound across the…
A man reviews a betting guide after placing a wager at the Harrington Raceway and Casino in Harrington, Delaware. (Mark Makela/Getty Images) Around one-in-five U.S. adults (19%) say they have personally bet money on sports in some way in the last 12 months, whether with friends or family, in person at a casino or other gambling venue, or online with a betting app, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The survey comes more than four years after the Supreme Court effectively legalized commercial sports betting in the United States. As of this month, 35 states and the District…
Majorities of teens credit social media with strengthening their friendships and providing support while also noting the emotionally charged side of these platforms (FatCamera/Getty Images) Pew Research Center conducted this study to better understand the experiences American teens are having with social media. For this analysis, we surveyed 1,316 U.S. teens. The survey was conducted online by Ipsos from April 14 to May 4, 2022. This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, which is an independent committee of experts that specializes in helping to protect the rights of research participants. Ipsos recruited the…
According to a ruling by the UN Human Rights Committee, Australia has not sufficiently protected the inhabitants of the Torres Strait Islands from the consequences of the climate crisis. Rising sea levels threaten the lives, homes, and culture of the indigenous people who have lived on the island for centuries. The government must now compensate the affected people and take measures to protect them. The climate crisis threatens the lives and culture of the inhabitants of the Torres Strait Islands. Yessie Mosby is one of them. He has long been concerned about rising sea levels. The salt water not only…
(Brandon Bell/Getty Images) Earlier this month, Pew Research Center released a study exploring how the religious composition of the United States might change by 2070. One of the conclusions of the study that drew widespread attention is that Christians – who constituted 64% of the nation’s population in 2020 – may no longer be the majority five decades from now. But the future course of Christianity in the U.S. is not set in stone. Whether the U.S. will continue to have a Christian majority in 2070 will depend on many factors, including one that was a key focus of the…
(SDI Productions via Getty Images) Women have overtaken men and now account for more than half (50.7%) of the college-educated labor force in the United States, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. The change occurred in the fourth quarter of 2019 and remains the case today, even though the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a sharp recession and an overall decline in the size of the nation’s labor force. Today, there are more women ages 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or more education in the labor force than before the pandemic: 31.3 million in the…
In front of the Supreme Court justices on Dec. 5, 2022 was 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis – a major case regarding LGBTQ rights and free speech. The petitioner, Colorado-based web designer Lorie Smith, is looking to expand her business, 303 Creative, by making wedding websites for couples that consist of one man and one woman. She wants to refuse wedding website services to same-sex couples planning to marry. Smith also wants to write on the 303 Creative website that she has been called by God to make wedding websites only for mixed-sex couples in order to promote “God’s true…
New activity/unrest was reported for 6 volcanoes from November 23 to 29, 2022. During the same period, ongoing activity was reported for 17 volcanoes. New activity/unrest: Ahyi, Mariana Islands (USA) | Cotopaxi, Ecuador | Etna, Sicily (Italy) | Klyuchevskoy, Central Kamchatka (Russia) | Mauna Loa, Hawaiian Islands (USA) | San Miguel, Eastern El Salvador. Ongoing activity: Aira, Kyushu (Japan) | Alaid, Kuril Islands (Russia) | Ebeko, Paramushir Island (Russia) | Great Sitkin, Andreanof Islands (USA) | Kerinci, Central Sumatra | Kilauea, Hawaiian Islands (USA) | Merapi, Central Java | Pavlof, Alaska Peninsula, Alaska | Rincon de la Vieja, Costa Rica…