Margaret Hamilton, trailblazer whose software powered Apollo 11 moon landing, dies at 90
MIT computer scientist led development of software for moon mission and earned Presidential Medal of Freedom Margaret Hamilton, the computer pioneer whose software powered the first moon landing, has died, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced on Wednesday. She was 90. In an era before titles such as software engineer and computer scientist became mainstream, Hamilton, who died on 30 September, learned to program under the tutelage of a renowned MIT meteorologist. Continue reading...
A good friend brings her dogs when she stays with me. I kind of dread it. What can I do? | Leading questions
People often forget social rules when dogs are involved, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But you’ll have to say something if you want things to change * Read more Leading questions A good friend of mine stays with me regularly when she comes into town. She brings her husband and two dogs that don’t get along with my dog. They’ve “used the bathroom” in our house before. I try to be nice and help clean or pretend it doesn’t bother me so that they feel comfortable. But when she asks for a weekend to come back with everyone, I kind of dread it. I enjoy seeing her and she’s a great friend. I think our friendship would be better if she stayed somewhere else, but I would feel bad if she stayed in a hotel and I don’t think she’d visit as often. She cleans up after the dogs and whatnot, but I like my home to be my safe haven. This friend doesn’t handle confrontation well, but is understanding. What can I do to handle this? Eleanor says: It sounds as though you’re in the jam we all get into when we try to smooth things over: you can have the social ease of pretending something is fine; or the outcome from confessing it isn’t, but not both simultaneously. Continue reading...
Six buds in a freaky coat: Split Enz share stories behind their colourful costumes – in pictures
Emerging in early-1970s New Zealand, the band turned pop into surreal theatre. Percussionist Noel Crombie was the band’s visual architect, shaping their looks via outlandish costumes, makeup, hair design, album covers and music videos. In a new book written with music journalist Michael Dwyer, Crombie and the band look back on their chameleonic eras * Split Enz tease new album ahead of first tour in 17 years: ‘We’d make a really good record now’ Continue reading...
The Starving Bride by Catherine Chidgey review – a girl wastes away in a gothic near-future
The New Zealand author’s ninth novel is gorgeously written, but feels tame and almost quaint against the real world of GLP-1 drugs and looksmaxxing Catherine Chidgey’s new novel was inspired by a magnificent piece of archival flotsam: a 1930s newspaper report of a bizarre pay dispute. A young woman had “undertaken to fast for 40 days and 40 nights in a lion’s den” as an attraction in Blackpool – a prowling spectacle of hunger artistry – but abandoned the feat partway. Her employer claimed she had broken the contract; the woman claimed the lion was at fault – it had been set loose. It’s a little hard to skip dinner when you might become one. What writerly catnip: the lion, the kitsch and the wage-probe. The Starving Bride restages this big-cat sideshow act in a near-future where old-timey attractions are being revived in the hope of reviving something else: “A sense of nostalgia, that was the thing. A sense of innocence. Even if the stags and hens still vomited in the gutters.” It’s bread-and-circus misdirection: the sea is rising; the buildings are crumbling; the city is beset by poverty; and the bureaucrats are masters of denial and delay. But at night, on the boardwalk, the lights are shining and the past is alive again – England in its imagined prime (the tourist board hashtag: #Asimplertime). Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...
A Room With a View review – this must-see adaptation is radiant and utterly romantic
Belvoir Upstairs Theatre, Sydney Grace Chapple’s vibrant, clever revision of EM Forster’s 1908 novel is packed with longing, desire and emotional honesty Do you remember when you first shared your own beliefs and convictions with other people? Not the ones you’d read in a book or learned from your parents, but ones you possessed yourself. Do you remember how you felt when you said it – like you were unfurling? Do you remember the first time you fell in love? These flourishing feelings are at the heart of A Room With a View, the 1908 EM Forster novel that has been remade into a radiant and full-hearted stage adaptation by Grace Chapple for Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre. Continue reading...
I spent years postponing my own joy. Here’s how I learned to say yes to the juicy bits of life | Sheree Joseph
Society tells us there is one way to live a life, and joy is a byproduct on the path there. But you don’t need a reason to enjoy the act of being alive I have been dwelling on what it means to live well. Not because I have mastered it, but because I have become very comically bad at it. I have spent years rushing through my life, panicked and convinced I was running out of time. I worried constantly about work – getting it, keeping it, doing it, caring about it too much, hating it and losing it. I obsessed over being more productive. I fretted about money, mostly about not having any left after travelling too much. I poured so much energy into dating that it’s kind of impressive I haven’t had a relationship for the last six years. But most of all I became fixated on my fertility and how it dwindled in my early 30s, leaving me to make choices most women don’t have to until later. I tried to save my eggs and couldn’t. My lack of a partner in a conservative Catholic Lebanese family became a cudgel. Continue reading...
Orphaned cubs abound in Colorado as black bear families struggle to find food
Colorado Parks and Wildlife is rescuing more abandoned black bear cubs this year after environmental conditions strained food sources that bears rely on to fatten up before winter. “Extreme drought conditions have limited natural forage in the higher elevations,” said Rachael Gonzales, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Northwest Region spokesperson, in an email to Colorado Newsline. “Low mountain snowpack and wildfires have added to the reduced availability of natural foods such as berries, fruits, nuts, plants and grasses across Colorado.
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