№ 646. What does it mean to discern?

Berean Research

№ 645. Tennis Legend

 

As the story goes, Serena Williams' rise began before she was born.

In 1979, her father Richard watched a women's tennis match on TV and saw the Romanian player Virginia Ruzici win $40,000 - about $4,000 more than his annual salary.

"I went and told my wife we had to have two more girls and make them tennis players," he recalled, 20 years later. "I was 37 and knew nothing about tennis but I thought we could teach them and they could win the US Open."

On 26 September 1981, Williams arrived - 15 months after her sister Venus. By the time the pair turned pro in the mid-1990s they were already making waves.

"There was a rage inside these two little kids," says Rick Macci, the Florida-based coach who helped guide them through their developmental years.

"They were just ready. I called it when they were nine, 10 years old. I said: 'They're gonna be world number one and they're going to transcend the sport.'"

№ 644. Geopolitics and Exit Strategies 3

"To provoke China into a military confrontation today is to trap it into an arena where the US is still superior. The American chess pieces of 800 overseas military bases, gunboat diplomacy in air, land, and sea, and military technology are more than 20 years ahead of China, and are further bolstered by the $850 billion proposed US defense budget for 2023. The US continues to surround China in the Indo-Pacific with bases, carrier fleets, and submarines bristling with conventional and nuclear missiles.

Fortunately, China does not want to fall into the trap that doomed the former Soviet Union in an arms race or commit the mistakes of past colonial big powers.

But this fierce geopolitical competition between the US and China inevitably involves the Philippines because of its geostrategic location. Will we continue to be a de facto US aircraft carrier and part of the US nuclear infrastructure? The Mutual Defense Treaty, the Visiting Forces Agreement, and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement make us part of the offensive island chain of encirclement against neighboring China. There is now an agreement with the US-firm Cerberus for it to take over Hanjin Shipyard at Subic that will allow the regular repair, refueling, and docking of the US Navy."

№ 643. Little Brown Jug

 

№ 642. The Day the Music Died

To deal with its length, McLean’s record company had a clever idea. The first half of the song appeared on the A-side of the single, while the second was consigned to side B. The result turned the A-side into a cliffhanger the listener had to see through to the end. The subsequent demand forced AM radio stations to play both sides. At the same time, FM radio – whose mandate was to go deeper and play longer – was reaching its commercial apex at the time. Issued at the end of 1971, American Pie hit No 1 by January of 72, where it stayed for a full month. For 49 years, it held the record for the longest song to hit No 1 – until Taylor Swift’s 10-minute cut, All Too Well, broke it.

Condenaststore

 

 

№ 641. The Roman Empire

Most ancient societies assumed that being a citizen of a particular place meant not just living in that place, but also speaking the language and sharing in the common culture. Romans, by contrast, could be people who might well not even speak Latin. As Beard notes, in the later periods of the Roman empire, Greek was the lingua franca (or rather, the koine glossa—“common tongue”) in its eastern half. In contrast to many slave-owning societies, both ancient and modern, the Romans allowed large numbers of their slaves to become free, and to acquire at least limited forms of citizenship.
 

Cartoonist Group

 

№ 640. Scientific Method

This section was lifted from one of my favorite textbooks in college. Paul G. Hewitt made Physics interesting, accessible, clear and entertaining. I still have a copy of my textbooks (two volumes!), which are now older than a teenager. Not all books are written equal. Quite a few are outstanding. This one lit fire in our heads.

 

Conceptual Physics by Paul G. Hewitt

№ 639. Cosmos: Webb v Hubble

 

A Technological Marvel

How does the Webb compare with the Hubble telescope? 

The Webb telescope’s primary mirror is 6.5 meters in diameter, compared with Hubble’s, which is 2.4 meters, giving Webb about seven times as much light-gathering capability and thus the ability to see further out in space and so deeper into the past.