Latest news with #Nobel
Sydney Morning Herald
10 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Swallowed by white, this is a different sort of hike
The '80s-brown digital alarm clock crows. The window glows a gradually whitening aurora. I gracelessly roll off my futon like an anaesthetised horse, shuffle down the corridor in ill-fitting slippers, swaddled in a yukata, thwacking my forehead on a hefty low beam that's been thwacked by generations of yawning pilgrims. Togakushi Pilgrims' Inn owner, Gokui-san, 78, is regaled in a black conical hat and powder-blue robe. The bespectacled, rally-driving Shinto priest thumps a taiko drum, chants metallically, executing the purification ceremony's esoteric formalities, by proxy launching my seven-day guided snowshoe tour of rural Nagano with Walk Japan. This week, three metres of powder snow will coat Japan's Central Alps, a region Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata labelled 'Snow Country'. Sky and earth become one profoundly white realm. Cloistered senses sharpen. Time compresses into exhilarating snippets, like a real-time slide-night. Morning rituals develop. Devour teeny bowls of provincial scrumptiousness. Squeak into snug, snow-resistant synthetic layers. Tether snowshoes to hiking boots; affix gaiters. Follow Walk Japan's chirpy guides, Nick and Shiori, into the snowscape, shepherded by local enigmas like Hata-san. An Italian restaurateur-cum-ski-slopes-groomer, Hata-san knows the most intriguing forest paths between Togakushi's five shrines; centuries-old Buddhist/Shinto structures where divinity dances on weathered woodwork, where 'treasure meets light', and where water-breathing dragons safeguard trees. Hata-san's owl-strength eyes and wisdom breathe life into Nagano's backcountry. Simple scratches in mossy tree bark become claw-marks of now-hibernating Asian black bears. He occasionally hears them thud to the forest floor from their precarious tree-top perches in warmer months, fixated on nothing but scoffing acorns. Criss-crossing indents in the snow become a fox pursuing her bunny-rabbit feast. My own snowshoe-track trajectory reminds Hata-san of the common raccoon dog's. I cagily crunch across Lake Kagami-ike, trout swimming under 50 frozen centimetres. Sapphire sky perforates clouds briefly, uncloaking formidable Togakushi Range, home to cave-dwelling monks, life-extinguishing mountain-climbing routes and, reportedly, Momiji – a murderous female demon exiled from Kyoto. A stupendous avenue of 400-year-old, sky-tickling cedars preludes Togakushi's Okusha shrine. Instagramming day-trippers and pilgrims alike approach this 'power spot' reverently: toss a coin, bow twice, clap twice, pray, bow again.
The Age
10 hours ago
- The Age
Swallowed by white, this is a different sort of hike
The '80s-brown digital alarm clock crows. The window glows a gradually whitening aurora. I gracelessly roll off my futon like an anaesthetised horse, shuffle down the corridor in ill-fitting slippers, swaddled in a yukata, thwacking my forehead on a hefty low beam that's been thwacked by generations of yawning pilgrims. Togakushi Pilgrims' Inn owner, Gokui-san, 78, is regaled in a black conical hat and powder-blue robe. The bespectacled, rally-driving Shinto priest thumps a taiko drum, chants metallically, executing the purification ceremony's esoteric formalities, by proxy launching my seven-day guided snowshoe tour of rural Nagano with Walk Japan. This week, three metres of powder snow will coat Japan's Central Alps, a region Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata labelled 'Snow Country'. Sky and earth become one profoundly white realm. Cloistered senses sharpen. Time compresses into exhilarating snippets, like a real-time slide-night. Morning rituals develop. Devour teeny bowls of provincial scrumptiousness. Squeak into snug, snow-resistant synthetic layers. Tether snowshoes to hiking boots; affix gaiters. Follow Walk Japan's chirpy guides, Nick and Shiori, into the snowscape, shepherded by local enigmas like Hata-san. An Italian restaurateur-cum-ski-slopes-groomer, Hata-san knows the most intriguing forest paths between Togakushi's five shrines; centuries-old Buddhist/Shinto structures where divinity dances on weathered woodwork, where 'treasure meets light', and where water-breathing dragons safeguard trees. Hata-san's owl-strength eyes and wisdom breathe life into Nagano's backcountry. Simple scratches in mossy tree bark become claw-marks of now-hibernating Asian black bears. He occasionally hears them thud to the forest floor from their precarious tree-top perches in warmer months, fixated on nothing but scoffing acorns. Criss-crossing indents in the snow become a fox pursuing her bunny-rabbit feast. My own snowshoe-track trajectory reminds Hata-san of the common raccoon dog's. I cagily crunch across Lake Kagami-ike, trout swimming under 50 frozen centimetres. Sapphire sky perforates clouds briefly, uncloaking formidable Togakushi Range, home to cave-dwelling monks, life-extinguishing mountain-climbing routes and, reportedly, Momiji – a murderous female demon exiled from Kyoto. A stupendous avenue of 400-year-old, sky-tickling cedars preludes Togakushi's Okusha shrine. Instagramming day-trippers and pilgrims alike approach this 'power spot' reverently: toss a coin, bow twice, clap twice, pray, bow again.
Indian Express
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
‘They shoot the White girl first': Toni Morrison's opening line from ‘Paradise' first hooks, then haunts
'They shoot the White girl first.' – Paradise (1997), Toni Morrison Imbrued with violence, the first line of Toni Morrison's Paradise pierces like a gunshot. With just six words, the Nobel laureate grabs us by the collar and hurls us into a world that is a far cry from the Paradise promised. Sentries to this brutal world, her words scream from the pages, warning readers to venture further at their own risk: this is no utopia, but a warped world where young girls are being killed. One is likely to stumble across a massacre at best, and genocide at worst. The title, Paradise, suggests an idyll, a promised land—but Morrison obliterates that expectation at the get go. Instead, we are thrust into a scene of execution. The racial specificity—the White girl—immediately complicates the power dynamics. It is also intriguing. In a nation with a history of racial violence against African Americans, why is the White victim targeted first? Also, if the issue is race, why are only girls being attacked? Morrison doesn't explain why, she drops us into a world where this act is already normalised, demanding we catch up. The lines that follow deepen the dread. Nine men are headed to the Convent with murder on their mind. '…but the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here.' The casual pacing of the attackers ('they have the paraphernalia for either requirement—rope, a palm leaf cross, handcuffs…') makes the scene even more sinister. Clearly, this is no frenzied act—it's planned. The convent, a place meant for refuge, becomes a slaughtering ground. The biblical undertones (the 'palm leaf cross,' the convent as sanctuary-turned-slaughterhouse) underscore that the attackers embody the patriarchy, purity, and the corruption of community. In that first sentence, Morrison plants the seeds of Paradise's central concerns: the corrosive nature of purity, the violence of exclusion, and the ways in which communities turn on themselves in the name of righteousness. The town of Ruby, Oklahoma—founded as an all-Black utopia—has become its own kind of trap, its ideals warped into something monstrous. The white girl's death is not just a plot point; it is a provocation. Morrison forces us to ask: Who gets to define Paradise? Who is allowed inside, and who must be cast out? This opening is a microcosm of Morrison's genius: it confronts race, gender, and power in a single stroke, forcing readers to reckon with America's unresolved sins. Morrison's prose here is clinical, almost detached, which only heightens the horror. There is no sentimentalising, no attempt to soften the blow. The violence is presented as fact, and the reader is left to absorb its weight. The opening line doesn't just hook, it haunts. Decades after its publication, Paradise's first sentence lingers because it refuses to release the reader from its grip. ('Drawing a Line' is an eight-column weekly series exploring the stories behind literature's most iconic opening lines. Each column offers interpretation, not definitive analysis—because great lines, like great books, invite many readings.)
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Max Planck Society sees flood of US job applicants amid Trump swoop on universities
By Thomas Escritt BERLIN (Reuters) -Uncertainty over the future of U.S. universities under President Donald Trump's administration has fuelled a threefold surge in U.S. applications to the Max Planck Society, one of Europe's leading research bodies. Changes in funding for research centres, coupled with the administration's move last week - temporarily blocked by a judge - to ban international students from Harvard, have cast a pall over the United States' world-leading science infrastructure. Trump's crackdown, which has already seen prominent academics like historian Timothy Snyder, a scholar on authoritarianism, quit Yale for a post in Canada, has led top scientists to look to Europe, data indicates. The Max Planck Society, a German state-backed network of research centres, received 81 applications from the U.S. this spring in its latest call for promising early-career women scientists looking to set up their own research labs. Last year's call received 25 applications. "What's interesting is the number of applications from other parts of the world remained constant," said Patrick Cramer, president of the Max Planck Society. "If you look at which institutions these applications are coming from, you see almost half are concentrated at five (U.S.) institutions: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, the National Institutes of Health and the University of California." With an annual budget of over 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) and a staff of 25,000 spread over its 84 research centres, as well as 39 Nobel prizes to its name, Max Planck is one of the few outfits worldwide that can offer facilities comparable with top-drawer U.S. institutions. Cramer said the society planned to allocate extra funds to hire as many as 20 of the applicants rather than the planned 12 if the overall quality was as high as expected. Research organisations across Europe are making plans for what they expect to be a glut of top scholars hit by the turbulence in U.S. education. Freshly back from a trip to the U.S., Cramer said the main topic of discussion was how research organisations elsewhere could minimise the damage done to the advancement of science. "It came up again and again: our main concern is to ensure that we don't lose too many talented people in this generation to global science. We have to try and offer a safe haven in Europe where we can absorb talent to bridge the coming years." The Trump administration revoked Harvard University's ability to enrol international students last week and is forcing current foreign students to transfer to other schools or lose legal status, while also threatening to expand the crackdown to other colleges. Germany's new government plans a "1,000 brains" programme of expanded research capacity in response to the upheaval in U.S. higher education but, at a time of economic headwinds, universities across Europe face resource constraints. Regardless, global science cannot shrug off the impact of the winds buffeting U.S. higher education, said Petra Olschowski, research minister in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg who oversees four of Germany's 11 leading universities. "Harvard, the other major U.S. universities set the bar: this is the benchmark we want to achieve," she said. "And it's precisely this constellation that is being wounded." ($1 = 0.8808 euros)
Time of India
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
A PIO physician treats Harvard grads to life lessons
A PIO physician treats Harvard grads to life lessons TOI correspondent from Washington: By his own account, graduates at Harvard University's convocation ceremony on Thursday deserved to hear from a star, a legend, a Nobel prize winner, or perhaps even the Pope. But tasked with delivering the commencement speech by the university's embattled president Alan Garber, currently locked in an epic battle with the Trump White House, Abraham Verghese, physician and author of Indian-origin, proceeded to dissect MAGA-infused USA with the precision of a surgeon, although he is an infectious disease specialist. "When legal immigrants and others who are lawfully in this country including so many of your international students worry about being wrongly detained and even deported, perhaps it's fitting that you hear from an immigrant like me," Dr Verghese told the graduating class, recalling a journey that brought him to America from Ethiopia, where he was born, via India, from where his parents hailed and from where he obtained his MBBS (from Madras Medical College). He recalled that both countries went through authoritarian rule, and the journey had led him to an appreciation of American values that were now under siege. Without once mentioning the US President's name or MAGA, Abraham told the largely anti-Trump assembly that a cascade of draconian government measures had already led to uncertainty, pain, and suffering in America and across the globe—and more has been threatened. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Dermatologista recomenda: simples truque elimina o fungo facilmente Acabe com o Fungo Undo "The outrage you must feel, the outrage so many feel, also must surely lead us to a new appreciation. Appreciation for the rule of law and due process, which till now we took for granted—because this is America after all! And appreciation for those committed to truth—veritas--at a time when the absence of truth has come to feel almost normal," he said to applause. Author of acclaimed novels going back to his 1994 debut with My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, about his experience with the onset of AIDS in America, Verghese said a part of what makes America great is that "it allows an immigrant like me to blossom here, just as generations of other immigrants--and their children--have flourished and contributed in every walk of life, working to keep America great." America also allowed this immigrant to find his voice as a writer, he said, citing the novelist E.L. Doctorow, who wrote, 'It is the immigrant hordes who keep this country alive, the waves of them arriving year after year. Who believes in America more than the people who run down the gangplank and kiss the ground?' The new grads tittered at the many subtle digs Verghese took at the White House occupant, including referring to "the trait of reading fiction in some of the best physicians and leaders I have met, including your President, I mean your university's if you don't read fiction, my considered medical opinion is that a part of your brain responsible for active imagination atrophies." He also referred to courage of the AIDS-afflicted he had treated, and in an oblique dig at MAGA told the graduating class "They taught me about manhood—not the caricature of manliness, not the posturing that has become so fashionable lately—but the manliness that allowed them to be compassionate, generous, and steadfast even in the depths of their suffering."
