All posts tagged: decades

Why US obesity rates fell for the first time in decades

Why US obesity rates fell for the first time in decades

Published by skeptic

Obesity rates in the US have begun falling Evgeniya Pavlova/Getty Images For decades, rates of obesity in the US have climbed – but that trend may be changing. The number of adults with obesity dipped ever so slightly in 2023, suggesting the country has reached a turning point in this public health crisis. The rise of weight-loss drugs, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, has prompted some to suggest these may be driving the shift. But it isn’t that simple. Obesity rates began to rise in the US during the 1970s. Between 1976 and 1980, 15 per cent of adults in… Source link

Caravaggio Portrait Unseen for Decades now on View

Caravaggio Portrait Unseen for Decades now on View

Published by skeptic

A portrait attributed to Italian painter Caravaggio has gone on view in Rome, marking the first time it can be seen by the painting’s existence was made public 60 years ago. The painting depicts Maffeo Barberini, a Florentine aristocrat who was coronated as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. By papal standards, his reign was illustrious reign. Barberini expanded the church’s territories through armed force and keen politicking, even weathering 21 years of the Thirty Years War. Urban VIII was a major patron of the arts (he often commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini), though the same was not true for science. Under pressure from the Vatican, Galileo publicly recanted his astronomical breakthrough, itself derived from the Copernican heliocentric model also rejected by Urban VIII. Related Articles Caravaggio met the one-day pope as a young, ambitious man. Dated to 1598, the painting shows a 30-year-old Barberini wearing a black biretta—a three or four-peaked cap worn by Catholic clergy—and a green sleeveless cassock, another traditional Catholic signifier. Bright-eyed and grasping a letter, he had already obtained a law doctorate …

The Hand: An Anti-Totalitarian Animation, Banned for Two Decades & Now Considered One of the Greatest Animations (1965)

The Hand: An Anti-Totalitarian Animation, Banned for Two Decades & Now Considered One of the Greatest Animations (1965)

Published by José

For obvi­ous rea­sons, most art pro­duced under oppres­sive regimes comes off as painstak­ing­ly inof­fen­sive. For equal­ly obvi­ous rea­sons, the rare works that crit­i­cize the regime tend to do so rather oblique­ly. This was­n’t so much the case with The Hand, the most famous short by Czech artist and stop-motion ani­ma­tor Jiří Trn­ka, “the Walt Dis­ney of East­ern Europe.” In its cen­tral con­flict between a hum­ble har­le­quin who just wants to sculpt flower pots and a giant, inva­sive gloved hand that forces him to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions of itself, one sens­es a cer­tain alle­go­ry to do with the dynam­ic between the artist and the state. “Trnka’s per­son­al expe­ri­ence of total­i­tar­i­an­ism under the com­mu­nist regime is pro­ject­ed and reartic­u­lat­ed in the mean­ing and knowl­edge he trans­mits through his short,” writes Renée-Marie Piz­zar­di in an essay at Fan­ta­sy Ani­ma­tion. “The state-run stu­dios had the pow­er to approve or cen­sor cer­tain top­ics and con­trol fund­ing accord­ing­ly. Trn­ka was thus depen­dent on their fund­ing, yet resis­tant to their pol­i­tics, and this ambi­gu­i­ty lim­it­ed the free­dom of expres­sion in his work.” In the …

Hezbollah’s four decades of war with Israel

Hezbollah’s four decades of war with Israel

Published by Sam

Hassan Nasrallah, then secretary general of Hezbollah, at a ceremony held one year after Israel’s Operation Accountability in southern Lebanon, in Beirut, July 24, 1994. AHMED AZAKIR / AP There were 200 of them, maybe 300. Just as Yasser Arafat and the fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) came under fire in the Israeli army’s siege of West Beirut in the summer of 1982, a group of young men, all Shiites and religious, were being trained to handle weapons in the Beqaa Valley under the secret supervision of Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Among them was a 22-year-old student of religion, Hassan Nasrallah, who had just completed his second cycle of studies to become a cleric. Forty-two years later, the man who had become Hezbollah’s emblematic secretary general died under tons of bombs dropped by the Israeli air force on his headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut. He left behind a sprawling organization, hegemonic in Lebanon and Israel’s number 1 enemy. Read more Subscribers only After series of setbacks, Hezbollah declares it is ‘ready’ to …

Joe Biden’s political career across the decades – in pictures | US news

Joe Biden’s political career across the decades – in pictures | US news

Published by skeptic

The oldest-ever American president’s political career is coming to an end as he yields to pressure to step aside. We look back at a journey that began in 1972 Main image: Portrait of Senator Joe Biden in his office shot in September of 1988. The Senator had just returned at this point to his duties having suffered an aneurysm which was life threatening. Photograph: Joe McNally/Getty Images Mon 22 Jul 2024 10.00 BST Last modified on Mon 22 Jul 2024 14.08 BST Source link

British farmer finds Rolex watch decades after he thought a cow ate it

British farmer finds Rolex watch decades after he thought a cow ate it

Published by Sam

James Steele had saved up all the extra money he made from milk deliveries in his early 20s to buy a silver Air-King Rolex around 1950. He’d paid about 100 British pounds for the white-faced watch and proudly wore it, whether sporting dress clothes or riding a tractor on his family’s dairy farm about 150 miles northwest of London. But one day in the 1970s, Steele was bringing in his cows for milking when the Rolex broke off his wrist and fell into a grassy pasture. He searched for it for days but eventually gave up, figuring the watch had ended up in a cow’s stomach. Confident he would never see it again, Steele bought a few replacements over the following decades. Now 95, Steele has been reunited with his long-lost Rolex after a metal-detector enthusiast recently found it on the family’s land in Shropshire, England. “I’d written it off,” Steele said, adding that he recognized the Rolex immediately, even after five decades. “I never thought I’d see it again, but I was over the …

Decades of politicians toying with A-levels and GCSEs have left students a confusing and unfair system

Decades of politicians toying with A-levels and GCSEs have left students a confusing and unfair system

Published by skeptic

In 2023, Rishi Sunak outlined a proposed change to the education system in England: scrapping the current A-level system and introducing the Advanced British Standard. This would see students study more subjects after 16 in a baccalaureate-style system. The outcome of the general election may decide whether any students will actually complete this qualification. But this shake-up of how student achievement is measured would only be the latest in a series of significant changes made since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition came to power in 2010. Michael Gove, secretary of state for education from 2010 to 2014, has been the architect of much of this change in England. Gove argued in 2009 that educational standards were “dumbing down”. His solution was to change the modular structure of qualifications, which was introduced under the Labour government. This had allowed students to accrue modules over time, completing coursework throughout the year, rather than studying for two years and taking a series of exams at the end. Want more election coverage from The Conversation’s academic experts? Over the coming …

U.S. Considers Expanded Nuclear Arsenal, a Reversal of Decades of Cuts

U.S. Considers Expanded Nuclear Arsenal, a Reversal of Decades of Cuts

Published by Sam

A senior Biden administration official warned on Friday that “absent a change” in nuclear strategy by China and Russia, the United States may be forced to expand its nuclear arsenal, after decades of cutting back through now largely abandoned arms control agreements. The comments on Friday from Pranay Vaddi, a senior director of the National Security Council, were the most explicit public warning yet that the United States was prepared to shift from simply modernizing its arsenal to expanding it. They were also a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia about the likely U.S. reaction if the last major nuclear arms control agreement, called New START, expires in February 2026 with no replacement. Mr. Vaddi, speaking at the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association, a group that advocates limits on nuclear weapons, confirmed what officials have been saying in private conversations and closed congressional testimony for more than a year. It is the inevitable outgrowth, they have argued, of China’s rapid nuclear expansion and Russia’s repeated threats to use tactical nuclear weapons …