BEST AUTHOR BEST : TESS GUNTY

The author whose National Book Award-winning novel, '' The Rabbit Hutch,'' will be out in paperback soon, says her family is surprised she reads physics books :

'' They like to remind me that I am bad at science.''

.- What books are on your night stand?

I'll only include the ones I'm actively reading, or else this list will get rowdy : a collection of Russian fairy tales illustrated by Ivan Bilibin and curated by Gillian Avery; '' Primeval and Other Times,'' by Olga Tokarczuk; '' The Alignment Problem,'' by Brian Christian; ''Leonora Carrington. 

'' Surrealism, Alchemy and Art,'' by Susan L. Aberth; ''Biography of X,'' by Catherine Lacey; ''Strangers to Ourselves,'' by Rachel Aviv; ''Hurricane Season,'' by Fernanda Melchor; ''The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem''; and ''Poverty, by America,'' by Matthew Desmond.

.- What's the last book you read that made you cry?

'' Calling a Wolf a Wolf,'' by Kaveh Akbar, specifically the penultimate poem : 

'' I Won't Lie This plague of Gratitude.''

Akbar alchemizes pain into beauty line after line, but it was an unexpected evocation of hope that made me cry. In this poem, the speaker is thunderstruck by a newfound ''plague of gratitude''.

The speaker says : “Not long ago I was hard to even/hug ... I had to learn to love people one at a time/singing hey diddle diddle will you suffer me/a little ... now I am cheery/and Germanic like a drawer full/of strudel.”

Akbar describes a small psychological sanctuary - a relief, permanent or fleeting, from everything that has haunted the speaker until now.

The poem plugged me into that first miraculous flash of hope that you enjoy after a long storm of bad brain chemistry. The moment you remember that it can be enjoyable to simply exist.

.- The last book that made you furious?

A many come to mind.I guess I'm often furious? I'm certainly reading three impeccably researched works of nonfiction that are informing previously amorphous concerns. '' Poverty, by America,'' by Matthew Desmond, investigates structurally engineered poverty.

One of the many memorable facts that this book dilenates is that America spends over twice as much on tax benefits for the upper class as it does on national defense. 

'' Empire of Pain,'' by Patrick Radden Keefe, makes me enraged about the Sackler family, of course, but more generally about how vulnerable American health care and pharmaceuticals systems are to bad actors - worse, poorly regulated capitalism incentivizes bad actors to do harm.

'' The Alignment Problem,'' by Brian Christian, makes me furious about the myopic tech boys currently pursuing immortality and godlike dominance by summoning the existential threat of A.I. into the world.

They are facilitated by an absence of legal restrictions and the primeval excuse that if We don't do it first, They will.

.- What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

My family is always shocked by how many books on neuroscience and quantum physics I've amassed. They like to remind me that I am bad at science.

Probably most surprising is that I'm still under the delusion that i will someday read all 1,500 pages of ''The Matter With Things,'' by Iain McGilchrist - a blend of neuroscience, metaphysics and epistemology about the hemispheres of the brain and the nature of consciousness.

I think you start levitating as soon as you finish it.

.- What's the best book you've ever received as a gift?

When I graduated college my good friend Alex gave me a beautiful, professionally bound copy of the novella I wrote for my thesis. He even got a mutual friend to blurb it.

The novella itself is a catastrophe - a cluttered story about four characters from different centuries saddled with shared omniscient narration who meet on Purgatory that resembles postindustrial Indiana. Eventually, it collapses into metafictional chaos. 

Flawed as the project is, I had transferred my 21-year-old spirit into pages, and Alex know that if I could hold a leather bound of this effort in my hands, if I could see my name engraved in gold on the spine, some psychological chasm between the life I had and the life I wanted to begin to close.

For years, as I submitted my fiction and accumulated rejections, losing faith that I would ever publish it, I would catch a glimpse of this book on my shelf, and its presence would nourish me. It remains one of the most cherished gifts I've ever received.

.- You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

Dante Alighieri, Hildegerd von Bingen and Anne Carson. I'd rather watch them dine together than participate; I'd have a panic attack if I had to moderate that conversation or cook them food.

But I have a feeling that it would be a very quiet dinner, even if they all spoke the same language.

I can see them elegantly slicing asparagus on their plates, abstemious drinkers submerged in the deep ends of their turbulent intellects. But then each of them would write a masterpiece about it.

The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.

Headline, June 19 2022/ ''' '' LE MANS -HONOURS- LEE WAY '' '''

''' '' LE MANS -HONOURS-

 LEE WAY '' '''

ETERNITY IN PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE AND IN BUILDING A BETTER WORLD : The World Students Society - for every subject in the world - most lovingly and respectfully called !WOW!.

100 YEARS IN PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE : In Le Mans, there's a day dedicated to a singular pursuit and it has been so nearly every year, for the last century.

24 hours of racing during which the best drivers, the world over, push themselves beyond their limits. Ceaselessly striving for progress, any way they can muster it. Building ever more momentum. Harnessing their machine's performance as much as their own.

A century of these 24 hours has seen this gathering become a reference in endurance racing and the pinnacle of the sport. And it knows no end. Welcome all to !WOW!.

A Century Of Innovation : The 24 Hours of Le Mans tests new automotive ideas, and its drivers.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which was first held in May 1923 to help spur innovations in the growing automotive industry by emphasizing not just speed, but also efficiency, reliability and endurance.

'' It is a demanding race, and the greatest race,'' said Tom Kristensen, who has won Le Mans a record nine times.

The Automobile Club de L'Ouest organized that first race, designing a course on public roads that bisected forests and passed residential areas.

''It's one of the biggest events on the calendar, up there with Monaco Grand Prix, the Indianapolis 500, Daytona 500,'' said Anthony Davidson, who has competed in the race 13 times.

The circuit layout, which still uses public roads, has had only minor revisions, mostly for safety, and is usually held around midsummer for maximum daylight. Limits on driving time were gradually introduced, and now each car has three drivers.

Companies have used Le Mans to test automotive innovations, like seatbelts. Twenty-five auto manufacturers have taken an overall Le Mans victory, with Porsche's 19 wins the most.

It is the main race of the F.I.A. World Endurance Championship, which has races all over the world.

'' The cars we see in W.E.C. are very much designed just to win Le Mans,'' Davidson said. ''It's every manufacturer's sole goal to win that race. When it hits June, all the attention is on Le Mans.''

The race starts on a Saturday afternoon and finishes a day later after almost 400 laps of the about 13-kilometer, or eight-mile, circuit.

'' You're constantly having to think of something,'' Kristensen said. ''You're thinking about the driving, the setup, the race itself; it's just enormous.''

Drivers have to balance total commitment with a daylong focus.

'' In Formula 1, it's a maximum of two hours,'' said Nico Hulkenberg, who won Le Mans in 2015. '' It's 24 hours. It's a much-longer term game. You need to carefully choose risks; it's more about getting through without incidents, staying alive. And you share a car with teammates : It's not just about you.''

Adapting to developing conditions and battling fatigue are other elements. Participants will try to sleep but rarely for more than a couple of hours.

'' You have to be good in all circumstances,'' Davidson said, ''at night when it's colder, maybe in wet conditions, moments where the sun's rising and setting.''

Spectators, many of whom camp for the week, play a large role in enhancing the event. About 244,000 people attended in 2022.

'' When you arrive for the week and feel the whole buildup, that's something : the history, the heritage,'' said Kristensen.

Hulkenberg explained that he could ''smell the barbecues'' from the campsites while lapping in the evening.

Le Mans is also about heartbreaks. Davidson, who broke two vertebrae in a crash in 2022, was part of the Toyota crew that led 2016's race until a power failure near the finish. He has never won Le Mans.

'' I'm not sure I'll ever get over it,'' he said. '' It was mentally very scarring. As it unfolded, I remember saying to myself, 'You're going to have to be really kind to yourself over the next couple of days, because this is massive.''

Le Mans has its darker moments. It was cancelled in 1936 because of a strike in France and did not take place from 1940 to 1948 because of World War II and its aftermath.

In 1955, 84 people were killed when a car crashed into the crowd. In total, 22 drivers have died in connection with the race, most recently in 2013.

As Le Mans enters its second century, Kristensen thinks the event will prosper.

''At the moment, it looks incredibly healthy : it has very good leadership,'' he said,  To have the manufacturers coming, and more for ''24 with Alpine, BMW, Lamborghini, it's very interesting.

There's a big push from A.C.O. with hydrogen [power] - electric for 24 hours is a big challenge - but motorsport is the place where you bring in new technologies.''

'' If you look at the whole history : disc brakes, windscreen wipers, seatbelts, it went into Le Mans during all this period,'' he said, adding : '' In just the first 100 years, it developed quite a lot, and over 24 hours you can't cheat it, you can't make a shortcut.

Le Mans will bite you.''

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Le Mans, History, Innovation and Technology, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Phillip Horton.

With most respectful dedication to Racing Fans and Enthusiasts the world over, and then Le Mans, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society -the exclusive ownership of every student in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

SCIENCE LAB SPECIAL : NATURE'S UNIQUE

 

Peculiar Pollinators

Fruitarian Frogs Give

Flowers a Jump-star.

On warming evenings near Rio de Janeiro, you might find milk fruit trees covered in brownish-orange frogs. While many frogs eat insects, the tree frog species Xenohula truncata has a taste for the pulp of bulbous fruits and the nectar in the tree's flowers.

As they seek that nectar, the frogs dunk their entire bodies into the plant's flowers, only their butts sticking out.

When they emerge, pollen gets stuck to their heads and backs. Then they hop off, potentially transporting the pollen from their previous stop at the tropical buffet into the next milk fruit flower they encounter.

In other words, the frogs may disperse the plant's seeds and pollinate its flowers - which would be the first time this has been seen in an amphibian.

'' That's completely, completely new, till now, nobody saw them actually doing that, '' said Luis Felipe Toledo, head of the Amphibians Natural History Lab at the State University of Campinas in Brazil and an author of a study suggesting the existence of this ecological relationship between frog and flowering tree.

'' This is a very exciting and intriguing first observation,'' said Ruth Cozien, an expert on plant-animal interactions at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, who was not involved in the study.

She said more observations were needed to confirm pollination, but called the early evidence ''incredible.''  [Sofia Quaglia]