There are broadly two kinds of readers — Finishers and Abandoners — and they are completely baffled by each other’s reading habits. I used to be a Finisher. If I started a book, I had to read to the l

I realise this is rather an odd introduction to a plant, but if you’ve never tasted the nectar of a hoya flower, you’re missing out. It is so sweet and rich that it forms into globules that hang off e

Jul 15th 2021 T he Olympic powers, unlike the old Greek gods from whom they inherited their territory, love order. Zeus and Athena trolled human lives with their lusts and caprices. Their successors p

There’s almost no sport or physical activity where that advice isn’t useful. Golf. Ping pong. Dancing. The more likely it is that people are tempted to focus on their hands or feet, the more the hips

Jul 1st 2021 C ITY AIR is in a sorry state. It is dirty and hot. Outdoor pollution kills 4.2m people a year, according to the World Health Organisation. Concrete and tarmac, meanwhile, absorb the sun’

On the surface, the findings from a new study—among the first to harvest biomechanical data from top runners during the heat of real-world competition using wearable technology—seem to support one of

When we marvel at the incredible feats and rippling muscles of the world's greatest athletes, we're not usually thinking about their ankles. But, that may be an oversight, according to a series of rec

May 29th 2021 “H AVE A BREAK” is a slogan associated with the popular chocolate snack, KitKat. But it may be pretty good advice for any manager or worker, minus the calories. The longer the shift, the

First-year of college at UCSC. First computer science class. Introduction to Programming. The language: Pascal. Failed it. Failed it badly. Knew I was going to fail it halfway through the class. This

Almost everyone training with a goal and a purpose has some form of structured training which is based on different training zones, intensities and workouts spread through a week or a training block,

65% of women have school-age children work. Over 3m women have dropped out of the workforce compared to a quarter of that for men. Why? It’s the children. Someone has to take care of the children. Dat

Apr 22nd 2021 I s there an occasion where it would be inappropriate to serve biryani? I can’t think of one. For my Pakistani family, and for many people from South Asia, the slow-cooked mix of rice, m

Categories Management Each morning during the week, after morning coffee together, Amy says, “Ok, time to go eat my frogs.” She’s usually told me about the one or two or three frogs she has for the da

Britain’s post-Brexit future was determined by “the quarrels, low blows, multiple betrayals and thwarted ambitions of a certain number of Tory MPs”, the EU’s chief negotiator has said in his long-awai

There’s been a little pushback to this claim by Ezra Klein, but I suspect there’s a lot in it: I’ve been struck by the generational divide within the Democratic Party. Washington is run by 20- and 30-

You are in the last five minutes of the job interview, and the interviewer asks: “ What questions do you have?” Time is limited, so you ask the question you think will be most helpful: “What is the cu

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Tags Movies Categories Quotes Amy and I watched Bridge of Spies over the weekend. We enjoyed it, but particularly loved one interaction between the lawyer (James Donovan) and the accused Russian spy (

Apr 14th 2021 C OLIN CHAPMAN , the founder of Lotus Cars, was one of motor racing’s most influential engineers. He summed up his philosophy as “simplify, then add lightness”. A stripped-down, featherw

Apr 7th 2021 ERNEST HEMINGWAY was a “man’s man”. He was a battle-hardened war veteran. A bullfighting aficionado. A lion-hunter. A deep-sea fisherman. A boozer. A brawler. A seducer of women (the wome

That power in Indian cricket rests today with the BCCI secretary, Jay Shah, the son of the home minister, Amit Shah, is not a new phenomenon. Both Jagmohan Dalmiya and N. Srinivasan occupied that post

F or most of us, and certainly for most of your team, meetings are the least productive part of our day . Yet too many brilliant people are stuck in too many meetings. Meeting cultures begat more meet

Ramkrishna Bhandarkar was a towering Indian scholar who has left behind a huge corpus of work in Sanskrit studies, and in the history and culture of India. Pune’s prestigious Bhandarkar Oriental Resea

It’s more productive to offer directions to someone who has already decided to go on the journey. “How do I get there?” is a much easier transaction than, “you must go.” When there’s mutual enrollment

Jan 16th 2021 MOSCOW A DRESSING ROOM , two makeup stations and two mirrors. A selection of wigs and dresses. A pair of actors—a man and a woman—enter and sit on stools, facing the audience. They speak

Feb 25th 2021 “I RESENT THAT ,” said the secretary of state. He spoke firmly. He had been accused in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1986 of “lack of moral backbone” on economic sanctions ag

Mar 20th 2021 T HERE WAS a time, Wang Fuchun remembered, when all the people on Chinese trains looked more or less the same. In the late 1970s, when he started taking his photographs, everyone seemed

Mar 25th 2021 O NE DAY, AT the age of ten, Nawal El-Saadawi was sent to put on her cream dress. Such a thing was special in their poor household, in the huddled village of Kafr Tahla in the delta of t

Sports of the Times Elgin Baylor’s N.B.A. legacy will loom large in basketball history. But the time our columnist’s father managed to defend Baylor for a half became a cherished part of family lore.

Khwaja Moinuddin from Hyderabad uploads videos of his mass cooking efforts on Nawab’s Kitchen, his YouTube channel. There are massive, Domino’s-inspired cheese burst pizzas on a large iron plate over

Mar 27th 2021 T HERE IS SOMETHING of the “Herbie” about Herbert Diess, boss of Volkswagen Group. Like his four-wheeled namesake, the star of several Disney films, he has a mind of his own and a flair

Mar 18th 2021 T HE MODERN manager has to play the role of coach in charge of their team. And that requires an understanding of the different personality types they may be managing, and indeed the role

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Mar 11th 2021 G AZING IN THE mirror, Mourid Barghouti had no problem with himself. He looked all right, and some girls might even find his grey hair attractive. His spectacles were well-made, his temp

Mar 9th 2021 RECORD LABELS realised long ago that there was money to be gained from repackaging the past. It is a rare rock band that has not had its catalogue compiled into an affordable box set with

Mar 6th 2021 O FF THE coast of Formentera, an island in the Spanish Mediterranean, lives an organism that stretches 15km from one end to the other. Posidonia oceanica , more prosaically known as seagr

With vaccinations topping 90mm doses in the US and upwards of 75mm doses likely to be injected into arms in the US in March, many companies are starting to think about what a return to the office migh

On Beethoven and the Gifts of Silence February 5th, 2021 · 53 comments Writing in 1801, at the age of 30, Ludwig van Beethoven complained about his diminishing hearing: “from a distance I do not hear

S pring doesn’t officially arrive until 20 March, but our gardens are already starting to wake up: from frogspawn lacing ponds to crocuses poking through the grass. Now is the time to get busy with pl