“How to sell a country: the booming business of nation branding,” the Guardian
Tourism is big business — and these days, so is the business of coming up with tourism slogans. This report, from the Guardian, talks to the people who help governments develop a brand that will magically lure tourists, students, and/or investment dollars to their corner of the world. Reporter Sumanth Subramanian focuses on a specialized agency trying to develop a brand for Lipetsk, possibly the blandest, sleepiest region of Russia — nation-branding pushed to its most extreme. In the process, Subramanian raises compelling questions: I was left wondering, what makes a place a place, anyway? —Sam Brodey, Washington correspondent
“One Weird Trick to Fix Minneapolis’ Moonbase Problem,” Nick Magrino
Having just walked up and down the almost open Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis, the lack of retail is striking. There are too many intersections with at least one — and sometimes three — empty corners. But downtown doesn’t lack retail as much as it lacks street-level retail. Nick Magrino envisions (with Phil Schwartz illustrations) what it would look like if existing restaurant and retail uses moved down a story. —Peter Callaghan, local government reporter
“A New Study Examines How Consciousness in the Universe is Scale Invariant and Implies an Event Horizon of the Human Brain,” Resonance Science Foundation
This piece takes a quick look at a new paper on the physics of consciousness, which examines evidence for “the scale-free nature of consciousness.” It seems to make the fascinating suggestion that the complexity necessary to create consciousness in a system could be independent of its scale, making it fundamental to nature. —Jonathan Stegall, User Experience Engineer
“Somaliland vote: Young people decry clan politics,” Al Jazeera
It’s difficult to remain optimistic in a country where corruption is widespread and jobs are hard to come by, but this Al Jazeera piece illustrates a different picture. When citizens of Somaliland, a self-declared independent state in Somalia, flocked to the polling stations Monday to choose a new president, young voters demand their share in a political field where clan elders almost always set the rules. —Ibrahim Hirsi, workforce and immigration reporter.
