Author: Neelabh

I am always back to where I begin.

In Search of Lost Time on YouTube


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Like the fossilized mosquito in Jurassic Park, these scraps of cultural ephemera hold the DNA of a lost world. From them I can extract and return from extinction a long-ago living room, with its red carpet and exposed-brick chimney. These drops of preserved time are generous, containing in miniature a thousand blueprints for memories: a suburban swimming pool sealed up for the winter, along with school friends’ train-track smiles, a history project on George Washington, neon highlighters, sour candies in the shape of keys fizzing on the tongue, social anxieties and family worries, the touch of a cousin’s warm, bald head, the starship Enterprise hanging among the stars (shot from below), the white noise of space.

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Laurence Scott — The New Atlantis

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A Friends-and-Family Intervention for Preventing Teen Suicide


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A meaningful article on how to prevent teen suicide.

In King’s approach, teens nominate trusted adults — for example, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, family friends, teachers, and clergy — to serve as a support team. (Parents have veto power.) The adults then get an hour-long training session and weekly phone calls from King’s intervention specialists to talk about how things are going. They are cautioned to not feel responsible for the teen’s behavior — “We’re not asking them to be mental health professionals,” King said — but they agree to check-in with their teens once a week by phone, a face-to-face meeting, or an outing.

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Jill U. Adams — Undark

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Evolution: as a religious professor of science education, we need to rethink how we teach it


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As both a professor of science education, with research expertise in evolutionary biology, and a priest in the Church of England, I believe that we need to rethink the way we teach evolution. I’ve spent 30 years teaching evolution to school students, undergraduates and teachers in training. It is clear to me that the way the subject is typically taught in schools can force religious children to choose between their faith and evolution. This is as true for Christian students as it is for Muslims, Orthodox Jews and members of other religions.

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Michael Reiss — The Conversation

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The underwater Indian village that emerges once a year


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The village of Curdi was nestled between two hills in the Western Ghats with the Salaulim river – a tributary of one of the major rivers in Goa – running through it.

It was once a thriving village in south-eastern Goa.

In 1986, the village as its residents knew it ceased to exist. The state’s first dam was constructed and, as a consequence, the village was completely submerged.

But every year in May, the water recedes to reveal what is left of it.

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Supriya Vohra — BBC

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A New York literary agent, editor and author reveal how bestsellers are born


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Budding authors are usually extremely curious about the slush pile, because it’s where their work is most likely to end up. So let’s stop and think about unsolicited submission and their place in an agent’s life for a bit. For Barbara, his reading system is “a pyramid of sorts”. “The things I have to read first are new manuscripts from my existing clients,” he says. “Then come works that arrive highly recommended from clients. We call those referrals, and they’re a great way to find new business. For “slush” – unsolicited manuscripts – we have interns and assistants who comb through those submissions and they might identify certain projects as having promise.”

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Clemence Michallon — The Independent

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A Foreigner in Beijing


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Chinese people are used to feeling ashamed of themselves on their home turf. The ancient sage Zengzi taught everyone to “reflect on [yourself] three times a day.” Modern prime minister Zhou Enlai famously pledged to “work hard for the rise of China,” mobilizing generations of Chinese youth into action – JFK would not have needed to admonish us. In addition, our post-1989 textbooks urge us to “let the Western imperialists who had trampled our land witness our strength with regret.” Further, because family scandals are not to be broadcasted, we see our faults but resent external criticisms. At last, we find ourselves torn between the alternating angst of humiliation and indignation.

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Liuyu Chen — China Channel

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The Billionaires and The Guru: How a Family Burned Through $2 Billion


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But they also said it would be “untrue” to suggest that the guru was a cause of their group’s financial troubles. “Malvinder and Shivinder are unequivocal about this: Mr. Dhillon is their spiritual Master,” the brothers wrote. “He has only ever acted out of love and has only ever had their best interests at heart.”

They’re less generous to another follower of the spiritual group, Sunil Godhwani, whom they say was appointed to lead Religare at Dhillon’s recommendation. They say Godhwani was also in charge of their holding company, RHC Holding Pvt., and often took decisions without informing them. They say he was the architect of the financial structures, including the loans to the Dhillon family and companies, that led to their financial troubles.

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Ari Altstedter — Bloomberg

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