Saturday, June 13, 2015

Magazine Monitor

Weekend Edition: The week's best reads

Magazine MonitorA collection of cultural artefacts

A collection of some of the best features from the BBC News website this week, with an injection of your comments.

"This is absolutely fascinating, both culturally and technologically," tweeted Julie Fergusson. Zhang Yue built a 57-storey tower block in just 19 days. Now he wants to build the world's tallest skyscraper and says it will take just seven months. He explains how he plans to do it so quickly in the latest of our immersive long-form stories told using pictures, video and text.

The rise of Chairman Zhang's flatpack skyscrapers

Mine terror

"Great read written with a lot of affection and really places you in the mine," commented Barry Byrne. Who in their right mind would take a 10-year-old boy down a working coal mine? And yet that's exactly what happened to Bernard Hare, who has been recalling the experience of going down a pit in Methley, a village near Castleford. The value of that trip underground would only dawn on him years later.

How my father gave me a terrifying lesson at 10

'My name is...'

"Fascinating article about the efficacy of 12-step programmes and the impact of the AA," tweeted Hack Circus. Eighty years ago Alcoholics Anonymous came into existence. Today, there are 115,326 AA groups in 175 different countries, according to the group's latest estimates, with more than two million members. We look at the 12 steps to recovery and the other groups which have imitated their formula.

The many groups that have copied Alcoholics Anonymous

Shark with a grudge

"This article is brilliant," posted Joseph Alexander. When the movie Jaws hit the big screen 40 years ago, it portrayed sharks as vengeful creatures. "A collective testosterone rush certainly swept through the east coast of the US," says George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research in Gainesville. "Thousands of fishers set out to catch trophy sharks after seeing Jaws." But do the creatures really deserve their vicious reputation?

How Jaws misrepresented the great white

Torn apart

The children gathered together in Greenland — Helene Thiesen is on the far right of this picture, taken in Greenland

"What a heartbreaking story," posted Evgeny Tsiklauri. "So sad, should never have happened," commented Stefanie. In 1951, Helene Thiesen and 21 other young Inuit children were taken away from their parents in Greenland as part of a social experiment. They were sent to Denmark to be re-educated as "little Danes". When they returned to Greenland the following year, they were not allowed to go back to their families but had to live in a children's home. Sixty-four years later, Thiesen has still not forgiven the Danish authorities.

The children taken from home for a social experiment

One from the archives

"He must go through a lot of sunscreen," tweeted Mycroft & Anthea. After the naked rambler appeared nude in court this week via video link, it felt like the optimum time to revisit our piece from October 2012 looking at the UK's most unusual legal stand-off.

Naked rambler: The UK's oddest legal stand-off