Stunning shot
Re: F Dilek Yurdakul’s Southern Exposure shot of a traditional potter in Cappadocia, Turkey (NI 562).
The way the light moves through this scene is absolutely beautiful. It turns a simple moment of craftmanship into something almost timeless.
Wasting space
Re: Lucian Walkowicz’s ‘Space: the billionaires’ playground’ (NI 562).
‘Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing’ defines our greedy billionaire class. They are turning our beautiful planet and solar system into junk for the sake of power and money. Turning our planet into trash and polluting space is not progress, it is wanton and idiotic destruction.
‘Get the science right’
Reading Nick Dowson’s piece called ‘Who owns the skies?’ (NI 562), as a retired school physics teacher, I was brought up suddenly by his scientific howler early on. He talks about Sputnik being subject to ‘competing pulls’ with a ‘centrifugal force created by its own speed’.
In classical Newtonian physics, as the satellite is moving forward the only force needed to make it orbit is gravity, providing an inward centripetal force on the satellite causing a curved path around the Earth’s curved surface, sometimes called ‘free fall’.
Newton himself imagined the launch of artificial satellites, a marvellous prediction 300 years before its time, and suggested that the moon orbits the Earth for the same reason.
The editors write:
Thanks for your letter and the clarification. We’re sorry to have pulled you out of retirement!
Centrifugal force is indeed an ‘apparent’ or ‘fictitious’ force which describes the effect of momentum that – from our rotating reference frame here on Earth – appears to stop satellites falling to the ground. Another related inertial ‘force’ is Coriolis, key to hurricane formation.
It seemed a convenient shorthand as a force familiar to many.
Taking it further, even gravity can be seen as an apparent force according to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. According to this, four-dimensional spacetime is curved by massive objects like Earth, and satellites trace the straightest possible paths in those four dimensions, known as geodesics.
Celebrating NI’s story
Re: More than a magazine: New Internationalist aired on Resonance FM on 10 July, a special radio show celebrating NI’s radical history. Listen here: a.nin.tl/show
I thought I understood quite a bit about NI’s history and impact, not least as I have a back collection of magazine issues going back many years, but the stories broadcast here reminded me and expanded my recollection in a humbling and powerful way.
I think this coverage itself warrants editorial attention, even a magazine issue itself on how NI has been at the forefront of independent reporting and analysis of global injustice and resistance for all these years.
This would go beyond mere self-congratulations the rightwing oligarch-controlled mainstream play a large part in perpetuating global injustice. By providing an alternative vision, the indie media movement is part of the solution to building a more just world. This should be a key theme of NI’s issue.
Congrats to Maxine and the team for the radio programme, and may there be many more like it.
‘For 50 years it’s been consistently ahead of the mainstream’.
Dear reader – We did it!
A day before our emergency fundraising campaign was due to close, we smashed the £150,000 target. It was an amazing moment!
But it didn’t stop there! Funds continued flowing in and as we go to press the closing figure stands at £162,147. We are overwhelmed by your generosity, but also by the messages of support for New Internationalist that came with it. You’ve proved that NI is so much more than a magazine.
Independent media that challenges power and is not beholden to billionaires is too important to disappear. That’s why more than 1,600 of you came together to rescue New Internationalist after we launched our More than a Magazine campaign in May.
The campaign has given us some much-needed breathing space to build a sustainable future for NI. We’re already putting plans into action to grow our readership, expand the reach and impact of our journalism, strengthen our finances and refresh our content. From this edition, we’re saying goodbye to the Why I section of this page. In its place, we want to bring you closer to the people who make up our wonderful community. Turn to page 10 to read our first Meet a Co-owner column.
Thanks to you New Internationalist is still here, and crucially, still independent and owned by our readers.
