She got ill when the pandemic hit - and still is, six months later

Monique Jackson believes she caught Covid-19 early in the pandemic and nearly six months later she's still unwell. One of thousands in this position, she has been keeping an illustrated diary about her symptoms and her vain attempts to get treatment.

About a year ago, Monique Jackson watched a Ted talk about mushrooms and was enthralled. Fungi, the speaker said, are the original world wide web, they have a network that runs under entire forests; it enables trees to help each other if they get into trouble.

MONIQUE JACKSON

These days, as she battles the coronavirus for the 24th week in a row, it's something she thinks about often.

She has suspected "long-tail Covid" a distinct reaction to the virus that doctors are just beginning to study. She got sick in March and at first it seemed to be a mild version of the disease but her symptoms have never gone away. Months later, she is struggling to understand what is happening to her body.

Monique is an extrovert, almost hyperactive she says. In normal times, she practises Thai boxing and jiu-jitsu and cycles 12 miles a day to and from her job in an art gallery in central London.

But the past few months have profoundly changed her life. Now, she has a list on her bedroom wall reminding her to save enough energy each day to brush her teeth.

"I'm not a lazy person," she says. Some days, though, it's all she can do to get down the stairs.

While her body refuses to co-operate she's found an outlet for her restlessness in Instagram, where she's started an illustrated diary of her symptoms.

MONIQUE JACKSON

She's using the diary to tell people about this new condition and to connect with others in the same position, the "long-haulers".

Much about coronavirus is confounding doctors but "long-tail" Covid is one of the most puzzling features of the pandemic. Why are some people getting a version of the illness that just isn't going away - often those who were only mildly affected in the first place?

MONIQUE JACKSON

Monique got sick at the same time as a friend, after they took a train journey together. At the beginning they would keep in touch, their symptoms mirrored each other almost perfectly but then they broke off contact for a while.

"I had to stop, it was too freaky," Monique says.

For the first two weeks she felt fluey - she was so tired she could barely get out of bed. It was still cold in London yet she was barely dressed and held a bag of ice to her head to keep cool. Thermometers were sold out but she thinks she must have had a temperature.

"It's weird saying 'I think'. So much of this is just, you think - but you just don't know."

By week two she was struggling to breathe. An ambulance came but said her oxygen levels were OK. "They told me I was having a panic attack, potentially off the back of symptoms." She wasn't tested for Covid-19 then because in March the UK was reserving the small number of test kits it had for the most extreme cases.

MONIQUE JACKSON

She tried to treat herself with natural remedies. When eating raw garlic and whole chilli peppers, she remembers thinking it was weird that she couldn't taste anything. And she was tired. "I didn't have energy to text more than two people a day," she says.

After two weeks, some of the symptoms lifted but they just seemed to be replaced with new ones. "I had this pinch in the centre of my chest. And that pinch turned into what felt like a sort of fire," she says. "It was like teeth-gritting pain on the left side. I thought I was having a heart attack."

MONIQUE JACKSON

She called 111 and they advised taking paracetamol. They said it seemed to make the pain disappear for some people though they didn't fully understand why.

The paracetamol worked but almost as soon as that pain went her stomach and throat began to burn "like fire" when she ate. Doctors thought she had an ulcer. It wasn't until later that gastric problems were recognised as a symptom of the virus.

About six weeks in, Monique started having burning sensations when she urinated and pain in her lower back. The doctor put her on three different rounds of antibiotics before deciding it wasn't a bacterial infection.

"It was just agony," she says. "And then it just went."

MONIQUE JACKSON

Monique cut herself off from social media. Even listening to podcasts was difficult because any mention of Covid would make her anxious and affect her breathing. A self-confessed news junkie, now she couldn't face it.

She was afraid that if she went on social media she would see post after post of dead bodies. She found solace in online shopping but even entering a dress size in the search tab brought up horror stories about new symptoms of the disease. 

"I was actually scared of going on Google," she says.

After a while she asked a friend to fill her in on what had been happening in the world. One of the first things she learned was that a higher proportion of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds were dying. Monique is mixed-race and she was scared.

"It felt like a horror film where all the black people died off," she says.

MONIQUE JACKSON

One day she was lying in the bath listening to a podcast when the two white hosts casually mentioned that a lot of African Americans were dying from Covid-19.

She sat bolt upright and immediately grabbed her phone to email black relatives in the US.

And she reflected on the fact that the majority of people she had relied on lately had been members of minorities - the Uber drivers who took her to appointments, the hospital workers, the people in the corner shop where her food came from. "Everyone who I was seeing on my Covid journey," she says.

In her regular day-to-day life, it wasn't like that.

MONIQUE JACKSON

As weeks went by, some symptoms swapped out for others, getting more and more bizarre. A pain in her neck was accompanied by a strange sensation in her ear, like a packet of crisps being crushed in someone's hand. Her hands went blue and she had to rush to a warm tap to try to bring the blood back into them. The doctor later asked if she had taken a picture, but it had been the last thing on her mind.

"I kept calling about new symptoms and I would be asked, 'How's your mental health doing?'" she says. "The implication being that these symptoms weren't treatable or weren't real pain."

She got strange rashes all over her body or her toes would go bright red, sometimes she would wake up with stabbing pains in different parts of her torso.

One night, as she was talking to her friend on the phone she felt the right side of her face drop. She went straight to the mirror but her face looked normal. She was worried she was having a stroke but the doctors found no evidence of one.

MONIQUE JACKSON

She's had strange sensations all over her body too. Sometimes it feels like someone is grabbing her leg with their hands or hairs are being dragged across her face - even inside her mouth.

She spent a lot of time trying to explain what was happening to doctors. Often she only had a five or 10-minute call in which to try to relay everything that was happening in her body and it wasn't enough.

"If they'd said to me, 'Look, you've got Covid, and we have no idea how to treat this,' then that'd be fine," she says.

She squirms as she tries to summarise how she was treated. She's reluctant to criticise staff of the NHS, many of whom have given her excellent care but she says the system isn't working for people in her position.

It was nine weeks before Monique could get a test for coronavirus. During that time, she was terrified of passing the virus to someone else.

Government advice said to isolate for seven days or until symptoms went away - but what if they never went away, she thought.

MONIQUE JACKSON

Her flatmates devised a system to avoid contact in the house - they each had a spot on the fridge they'd use to pull it open.

Then they would go to their rooms to eat alone.

One day she went to get some fresh air at a park near her house with a friend when a small child ran up close to her. 

Monique jumped up to get away from the toddler. The mother was indignant. "The child was nowhere near you!" she said. 

Monique tried to explain, she wasn't afraid of getting infected, she was afraid of passing the virus on. Sick people should stay at home, the mother told her.

She hopes that her diary will help people to understand that it's not always that simple.

MONIQUE JACKSON

While friends went out of their way to help her, Monique could tell that others were getting fed up. None of what was happening to her made sense to anyone. "One person said I was becoming obsessed with having Covid," she says.

Finally the UK government opened up testing to anyone showing symptoms. She was thrilled but there was a catch - the only centre she could find was a drive-in and she didn't have a car. "Most of my friends can't even drive," she says.

One friend did step up and give her a lift, and the fact that he put himself at risk in the process isn't lost on her.

MONIQUE JACKSON

At the testing centre she expected to be reassured by nurses and doctors but instead it was staffed by soldiers, their khakis soaked on a sweaty day in June. As she stuck a cotton swab up her nose it struck her how young they were.

The results came back negative - proving that she no longer had the virus, though not that she had never had it. It was a huge relief because she'd been told this meant she couldn't infect her friends and family. But she felt strange. "The feeling of being contagious is psychologically very hard to move on from," she wrote in her diary later. It was also confusing because she wasn't feeling any better.

Four months after she first got sick, she decided to move out of her house-share in East London. Keeping up with simple things like cleaning was difficult and she wanted to be around family who could help her.

Her breathing had improved, whereas at the beginning she couldn't make it up the stairs without stopping to catch her breath by July she could do it one go.

But after picking up the hoover for about four minutes to try to clean her room she collapsed from breathlessness. She was in bed for three weeks after that.

MONIQUE JACKSON

Monique has no idea how to get better. She may never know for sure that she had Covid-19 but many Londoners were catching it in March and loss of taste is a strong indicator. She recently had an antibody test that came back negative, but as the NHS points out, some people who've had the virus do not have antibodies.

"A lot of people tell me, 'Monique, you will be able to cycle again and you will be able to box and you can come around to my house when you're feeling better.' But for me, that's not really that helpful."

Doctors still don't know how to help people with these symptoms that won't go away.

"It's been about acceptance of what I can and can't do and just being flexible because sometimes you'll have plans for the day and your body just doesn't care about those plans," Monique says.

"The thing is, I would get stuck into doing emails or talking to doctors, and then I'd speak to my friends and then I'd be exhausted and I wouldn't brush my teeth."

She has managed to get mental health therapy which gives her tools to manage the new reality of her ill-health and she's campaigning for this support to be available to everyone on the NHS.

One thing she never expected was that her illness would connect her to other mushroom enthusiasts.

Mushrooms have antiviral properties, she explains in one of her posts. But they're also part of something bigger and more beautiful.

MONIQUE JACKSON

They're the fruit of the mycelium - a network of underground threads, which are in contact with the roots of nearby trees. 

The mycelium swaps nutrients with these roots. Many fungi experts believe they also help trees to communicate with each other, taking nutrients from one healthy tree to another that is struggling.

It reminds her of the friends that brought food to her door, month after month. The people that she has relied on so much since she got sick.

"Isolated in my room," she posted on her Instagram diary, "I felt more connected than ever."

Follow Monique's diary on Instagram @_coronadiary

(Source: BBC)

Honeybee venom 'kills some breast cancer cells'

Australian scientists say the venom from honeybees has been found to destroy aggressive breast cancer cells in a lab setting.

The venom - and a compound in it called melittin - were used against two cancer types which are hard to treat: triple-negative and HER2-enriched.

Getty Images

The discovery has been described as "exciting", but scientists caution that further testing is needed.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women around the world.

While there are thousands of chemical compounds which can fight cancer cells in a lab setting, scientists say there are few which can be produced as treatment for humans.

Bee venom has previously been found to have anti-cancer properties for other types of cancer such as melanoma.

The study by the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Western Australia was published in Nature Precision Oncology, a peer-reviewed journal.

What did the researchers find?

It tested venom from over 300 honeybees and bumblebees.

The honeybee extracts were found to be "extremely potent", said Ciara Duffy, a 25-year-old PhD researcher who led the study.

One concentration of the venom was found to kill cancer cells within an hour, with minimal harm to the other cells. But the toxicity increased for other dosage levels.

The researchers also found the melittin compound on its own was effective in "shutting down" or disrupting cancer cell growth.

While melittin naturally occurs in honeybee venom, it can also be synthetically produced.

Dr Ciara Duffy led the research. HARRY PERKINS INSTITUTE

Traditionally, triple-negative breast cancer - one of the most aggressive types - has been treated with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. It accounts for 10-15% of breast cancers.

Could it be used in the future?

On Wednesday, Western Australia's chief scientist described the research as "incredibly exciting".

"Significantly, this study demonstrates how melittin interferes with signalling pathways within breast cancer cells to reduce cell replication," said Prof Peter Klinken.

"It provides another wonderful example of where compounds in nature can be used to treat human diseases."

But the researchers warn more work is needed to see if the venom could actually work on scale as a cancer-fighting drug.

Other cancer researchers concur. "It's very early days," said Associate Prof Alex Swarbrick, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney.

"Many compounds can kill a breast cancer cell in a dish or in a mouse. But there's a long way to go from those discoveries to something that can change clinical practice," he told the BBC.

(Source: BBC)

Tempura - How to enjoy one of Japan's most popular dishes

Tempura stands as one of the top three classic Japanese dishes along with sushi and soba noodles. Discover the various types of tempura, how to eat it and find out more about great places to enjoy tempura!

Basic Information on Tempura

A staple dish among the Japanese cuisine is tempura. A simple dish, tempura is made from various ingredients which are coated in a batter of flour and water then fried. The history of tempura is said to go back to the fifteenth century when fried food was introduced in Japan from Portugal, along with guns and Christianity.

At the time of its introduction to Japan, cooking oil was very expensive and tempura was considered to be a high-end dish. However, during the Edo period, the production of cooking oil spread and tempura became a favored dish among the commoners as well. Currently, along with sushi and soba noodles, tempura is a local dish that is known to be one of the "top three dishes of Edo (Tokyo)". However, depending on the region in Japan, the ingredients used, along with how it is eaten, varies. Recipes using tempura also have been growing among home-cooks and shops in recent years. Tempura is increasingly becoming known as a household dish that can be arranged and enjoyed in various ways.

Tempura Recipe

Making tempura is not very difficult, and you can use a variety of ingredients, so don’t worry if you can’t find tempura flour.

How to Make Tempura Batter

It depends on how many people you are serving, or how many portions you want to make, but this is a good standard recipe to follow, with substitutions included if you can’t find all of the ingredients at your supermarket.

1 egg

1 cup of water (the water must be very cold - room temperature water isn’t good for batter)

1 cup of flour (tempura flour, cake flour, corn flour)

2 tablespoons of cornstarch or potato starch

If you want a more flavorful batter, you can add a pinch of salt, pepper, chili flakes, or even green tea powder to the mix.

In a large bowl, mix the above ingredients together and lightly whip them with a fork by hand. Try to leave some lumps in the mix. You should avoid using an electric mixer, this will overblend the batter and make it less crispy when fried.

Heat the oil to 180 degrees Celsius. You can tell that you have gotten the correct temperature of the oil when you drop a bit of the batter into the pan. If the batter sinks and floats quickly, the oil has reached its optimal temperature for frying. 

The frying time for each piece is approximately 50 seconds, but this depends on the size of what you are making.

Dip your choice of prepared vegetables, seafood, or other foods in the batter and fry them in the oil until they have a light, golden color to them. Put them on a drying rack or on some paper towels to absorb the extra oil, then serve them.

Types of Tempura

Shrimp Tempura

Frequently referred to as “ebiten" in Japanese, shrimp is a classic ingredient used to make tempura.

The plumpness of the shrimp combined with the crispy coating make ebiten one of the most popular types of tempura available. It can be eaten on its own, but it is also good when combined with other dishes such as udon noodles, soba noodles, sushi, onigiri rice balls and more. Perhaps shrimp tempura has the most recipes and variations out of all tempura ingredients.

Vegetable Tempura

Vegetables are also must-have ingredients. The classics are as follows.

Eggplant: it is very juicy and scrumptious.

Lotus root: not only is it a tasty vegetable, but the texture when you bite in is also enjoyable.

Sweet potato: there are many fans of the light sweetness of this potato.

Pumpkin: the sweetness of the vegetable can be enjoyed here too.

Carrot: most of the time, the carrots are thinly sliced and combined with the batter when fried.

Okra: not too common, but can be found on occasion.

Perilla (Shiso) leaf: enjoy the scent of the herb along with the flavor.

Green bean: a perennial favorite.

These are only examples, but there are plenty of other seasonal vegetables that are made into tempura. For instance, in the spring, the bog rhubarb (fuki no tou) and snow peas are made into tempura as well. Wild mountain vegetables are also a common ingredient made into tempura. This is one of the great ways you can enjoy the taste of each season through Japanese food culture.

Chicken Tempura

Chicken tempura is frequently referred to as toriten or kashiwaten in Japanese. Many imagine karaage when hearing Japanese fried chicken, but tempura fried chicken is just as good. Unlike the other ingredients, the way to prepare chicken tempura is slightly different. When eaten, the chicken tempura is frequently enjoyed with ponzu sauce (citrus based soy sauce) or original sauces.

Fish Tempura

Whitefish are usually used for fish tempura, but the eel tempura is the most popular fish-type tempura. Like the chicken, removing the bones and preparing the eel is quite difficult, so many tend to eat it at restaurants rather than making it at home.

Squid Tempura

Another classic seafood used to make tempura is squid. The firm texture of squid makes it a very popular ingredient used to make tempura. There are also many cases where octopus is used along with squid.

Mushroom Tempura

Another popular seasonal tempura ingredient are mushrooms, such as shiitake and maitake. Many people enjoy savoring mushroom tempura with just salt rather than dipping it in tempura sauce. This is a dish where you can enjoy the crispy coat of the tempura along with the fresh texture of the mushroom.

Kakiage

Despite the different name, kakiage is a type of tempura. Vegetables such as those listed above and seafood are finely sliced and fried together in the batter. Kakiage is not eaten by itself but frequently eaten as a topping on udon or soba noodles and on top of rice.

Unique Tempura

Ice Cream Tempura

Since tempura is a simple dish where only the batter is needed before frying, there are plenty of unique tempura made using various ingredients. One very unique tempura that even surprises the Japanese is ‘ice cream tempura’.

The hot and crispy outside with the cold ice cream on the inside makes this tempura a popular sweet treat. There are shops that serve it as a dessert, but it is a fun tempura that you may want to try making at home.

Mozuku Seaweed Tempura

In Okinawa, a different kind of classic regional dish called mozuku seaweed tempura exists. Mozuku is a type of seaweed that is typically eaten in miso soup or simply dipped in soy sauce with vinegar.

Japanese Maple Tempura

Another surprising tempura is the momiji (Japanese maple) tempura! This is a specialty of Minoo in Osaka and during the autumn, it becomes very popular among tourists. True to its name, it is a Japanese maple leaf that is batter and fried in tempura style. The leaf itself is a product that has been carefully grown specially to be eaten and is pickled in salt before being made into tempura. It would be a nice treat to enjoy a little bit of autumn by trying ‘Japanese maple tempura’ out in Minoo.

Tempura Sushi and Onigiri Rice Balls

From here, you will find variations on dishes made using tempura.

Lately, tempura has become a popular ingredient used in sushi in many places around the world. A classic menu you can find in a sushi-go-round is ‘shrimp tempura’ sushi. It can be found as regular sushi or sometimes inside a roll.

Shrimp tempura is not only found in sushi, but also used often as an ingredient for onigiri rice balls. Commonly referred to as ‘tenmusu’, it is known as a specialty of Nagoya but can be found nationwide, including at convenience stores.

Ten-don is a typical Japanese dish where pieces of tempura sit atop a bed of rice and are drizzled with sauce. One of the best food matches with tempura is rice.

A simple dish with a dizzying array of ingredients to choose from, tempura is a food that can be enjoyed in countless ways. Even now there are new and unique tempura recipes being created - there are limitless possibilities with this dish!

How To Eat Tempura

The standard way of eating tempura is with a dipping sauce called ‘tentsuyu’.

Tentsuyu is made after boiling broth, soy sauce, and mirin together. Inside the tentsuyu, daikon oroshi (daikon radish ground to a liquidy paste) or ground ginger is added for flavor.

Aside from the tentsuyu, tempura can also be eaten simply with just salt or matcha salt (green tea powder mixed with salt). Aside from the flavor of the ingredient, tempura can be enjoyed with various different condiments.

Another popular way of eating tempura with sauce is the ten-don rice bowl we mentioned earlier.

Another common way of eating tempura is by putting it on top of udon or soba noodles. Shrimp tempura and the kakiage are the typical tempura toppings for noodles. Sometimes they are served on the side though, if you have ordered a set meal.

Tempura soba or tempura udon are usually available at soba or udon noodle shops, so for those who are curious by all means please give these dishes a try.

Please read "What You Need To Know About Eating Tempura" for more information on how to eat tempura.

Prices For Tempura

Tempura is usually priced very reasonably. At soba or udon noodle shops, you can select from one piece of tempura, which ranges from about 100-200 yen per piece.

The ten-don rice bowl with tempura on top typically costs about 600-1000 yen. Even at a high-end shop, you will probably find a bowl for an average of 2000 yen.

Tempura Restaurants

Tempura is served in high-end restaurants and banquets at times, but it is also a dish that can be enjoyed casually at home. Therefore tempura can be found in a range of dining places such as chain restaurants, izakaya bars, luxurious Japanese restaurants and more.

Tempura meal sets and ten-don are commonly found on menus, but trying professionally made tempura in specialty shops is highly recommended. Below is a selection of high-end to casual restaurants you can enjoy according to your budget.

Tendon Ten-ya

Ten-ya is a chain restaurant serving ten-don that can be found all over Japan. You can enjoy tempura at very reasonable prices, so feel free to casually stop by.

Address (Ueno branch): Tokyo, Taito Ward, Ueno 6-13-15 Ono Building

Phone number (Ueno branch): 03-5807-8422

Website: http://www.tenya.co.jp/english/

Ginza Hageten

Aside from Ginza and Shinjuku, this is a tempura specialty shop that has branches mainly in the Kanto area. You will be able to enjoy a course tempura meal in a relaxing restaurant.

Address (Ginza main branch): Tokyo, Chuo ward, Ginza 3-4-6

Phone number (Ginza main branch): 03-3561-1668

Website: https://www.hageten.com/english/

Daikokuya Tempura

This is a historical ten-don specialty shop in Asakusa. Their classic dish is the ten-don with four giant shrimp tempura sitting on a bowl of rice!

Address (Daikokuya main branch): Tokyo, Taito ward, Asakusa 1-38-10

Phone number: 03-3844-1111 or 03-3844-2222

Website: http://www.tempura.co.jp/access.html (Japanese)

Tempura Shinjuku Tsunahachi

With shops in Shinjuku, Sapporo, Sendai, Toyama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Fukuoka and more, this is a ninety-year-old shop with 31 branches nationwide.

Address: Tokyo, Shinjuku ward, Shinjuku 3-31-8

Phone number: 03-3352-1012

Website: http://www.tunahachi.co.jp/en/index.html

Despite its simplicity, tempura is a dish with many possibilities. It is definitely worth it to savor some tasty tempura at a specialty shop the next time you are in Japan!

(Source: Matcha)

Black holes: Cosmic signal rattles Earth after 7 billion years

Imagine the energy of eight Suns released in an instant.

This is the gravitational "shockwave" that spread out from the biggest merger yet observed between two black holes.

The signal from this event travelled for some seven billion years to reach Earth but was still sufficiently strong to rattle laser detectors in the US and Italy in May last year.

Researchers say the colliding black holes produced a single entity with a mass 142 times that of our Sun.

This is noteworthy. Science has long traced the presence of black holes on the sky that are quite a bit smaller or even very much larger. But this new observation inaugurates a novel class of so-called intermediate-sized black holes in the range of 100-1,000 Sun (or solar) masses.

The analysis is the latest to come out of the international LIGO-VIRGO collaboration, which operates three super-sensitive gravitational wave-detection systems in America and Europe.

An artist's impression of the last moments before the merger of two black holes. LIGO-VIRGO COLLABORATION

The collaboration's laser interferometer instruments "listen" for the vibrations in space-time that are generated by truly cataclysmic cosmic events - and on 21 May, 2019, they were all triggered by a sharp signal lasting just one-tenth of a second.

Computer algorithms determined the source to be the end-stage moments of two in-spiralling black holes - one with a mass 66 times that of our Sun, and the other with 85 solar masses.

The distance to the merger was calculated to be the equivalent of 150 billion trillion km.

"It's astounding, really," said Prof Nelson Christensen from the Côte d'Azur Observatory in France. "This signal propagated for seven billion years. So this event happened 'just before halftime' for the Universe, and now it's mechanically moved our detectors here on Earth," he explained to BBC News.

The involvement of an 85-solar-mass object in the collision has made collaboration scientists sit up because their understanding of how black holes form from the death of a star can't really account for something on this scale.

Stars, when they exhaust their nuclear fuel, will experience an explosive core collapse to produce a black hole - if they're sufficiently big. But the physics that's assumed to operate inside stars suggests the production of black holes in the particular mass range between 65 and 120 solar masses is impossible. Dying stars that might yield such entities actually tear themselves apart and leave nothing behind.

If the science is correct on this point then the most likely explanation for the existence of an 85-solar-mass object is that it was itself the result of an even earlier black hole union.

And that, believes Prof Martin Hendry, from Glasgow University, UK, has implications for how the Universe evolved.

"We're talking here about a hierarchy of mergers, a possible pathway to make bigger and bigger black holes," he said. 

"So, who knows? This 142-solar-mass black hole may have gone on to have merged with other very massive black holes - as part of a build-up process that goes all the way to those supermassive black holes we think are at the heart of galaxies."

The European VIRGO laser lab is based in Italy's province of Pisa. LIGO-VIRGO COLLABORATION

The LIGO-VIRGO collaboration is reporting the 21 May, 2019, event (catalogued as GW190521) in two scholarly papers.

One is in the journal Physical Review Letters and describes the discovery. The second can be found in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and discusses the signal's physical properties and scientific implications.

GW190521 is one of over 50 gravitational wave triggers presently being investigated at the laser laboratories.

The pace of research has increased rapidly since the collaboration made its first, Nobel-Prize-winning detection of gravitational waves in 2015.

"We are increasing the sensitivity of the detectors and, yes, we could end up making more than one detection a day. We will have a rain of black holes! But this is beautiful because we will learn so much more about them," Prof Alessandra Buonanno, director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, told BBC News.

The discovery suggests there is a hierarchy of mergers that lead to ever bigger black holes. LIGO-VIRGO

Gravitational waves - Ripples in space-time

• Gravitational waves are a prediction of the General Theory of Relativity
• It took decades to develop the technology to directly detect them
• They are ripples in the fabric of space-time generated by violent events
• Accelerating masses will produce waves that propagate at the speed of light
• Detectable sources include merging black holes and neutron stars
• LIGO-VIRGO fire lasers into long, L-shaped tunnels; the waves disturb the light
• Detecting the waves opens up the Universe to completely new investigations

What is a black hole?

• A black hole is a region of space where matter has collapsed in on itself
• The gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not event light, can escape
• Black holes will emerge from the explosive demise of certain large stars
• But some are truly gargantuan and are billions of times the mass of our Sun
• How these monsters - found at galaxy centres - formed is unknown
• Black holes are detected from the way they influence their surroundings
• They produce observable gravitational waves as they spiral in to each other

• A laser is fed into the machine and its beam is split along two paths
• The separate paths bounce back and forth between damped mirrors
• Eventually, the two light parts are recombined and sent to a detector
• Gravitational waves passing through the lab should disturb the set-up
• Theory holds they should very subtly stretch and squeeze its space
• This ought to show itself as a change in the lengths of the light arms
• The photodetector captures this signal in the recombined beam

(Source: BBC)

The pleasures and punishments of reading Franz Kafka

Reading the work of Franz Kafka is a pleasure, whose punishment is this: writing about it, too.

In Kafka, no honor comes without suffering, and no suffering goes unhonored.

Being asked to write about Kafka is like being asked to describe the Great Wall of China by someone who’s standing just next to it. The only honest thing to do is point.

Once, a student approached Rabbi Shalom of Belz and asked, “What is required in order to live a decent life? How do I know what charity is? What lovingkindness is? How can I tell if I’ve ever been in the presence of God’s mercy?” And so on. The Rabbi stood and was silent and let the student talk until the student was all talked out. And even then the Rabbi kept standing in silence, which was—abracadabra—the answer.

Having to explain the meaning of something that to you is utterly plain and obvious is like having to explain the meaning of someone. Providing such an explanation is impossible and so, a variety of torture. One of the lighter varieties, to be sure, but torture nonetheless. It is a job not for a fan, or even for a critic, but for a self-hating crazy person.

FRANZ KAFKA. PUBLIC DOMAIN, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

Kafka’s work should be standard reading for a time that cannot define its standards: a time that treats all identities as spectrums but all judgment as binary (“like” or “dislike”); a time that insists on appropriate behavior but forbids appropriation (people should read more books from other cultures, but must never write a book set in a culture not their own); a time that has replaced literacy with numeracy, but then laments that its only common culture is political (“Remember 2017?” “Whose 2017?”).

Kafka: “What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself, and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.”

*

I’ve been asked to write about Kafka six times in my life. The first five times I said no. Because I was too busy, too depressed, too busy, too busy, too depressed.

None of Kafka’s novels were finished, or published, during Kafka’s lifetime. Only nine of the fictions included in He: Shorter Writings of Franz Kafka were published during his lifetime. It’s not clear how many of them were finished. Are finished.

The aspect of essay writing that I loathe the most: giving a biographical account of the author. It’s ridiculous to give an account that I’ve inevitably sourced, at least in part, from the very same online omniscience that’s equally available to the reader. I’ve resolved, then, not to consult the internet for this—not to consult anyone, or anything. If the world burned now, and all of the internet with it, and then all the libraries, and then all the books, this is what I would know and must be judged by: Kafka was born in Prague, the third city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1880-something, and, due to complications from tuberculosis, basically starved to death in a sanatorium located in a town that starts with a K, in post-Empire, independent Austria, in 1920-something. He was trained in law at Charles University and practiced as a lawyer in the insurance industry. 

He was engaged to be married three times, twice to the same woman, whose name was Felice Bauer. He left instructions for all of his work to be burned after his death, which his friend Max Brod disobeyed. In 1918, which year I remember because it’s the last year of the World War I, Kafka wrote in the notebook that he otherwise used for his Hebrew lessons, “Work as joy, inaccessible to the psychologists.” I think I recall a few other Kafka quotations, but this is the one I repeat to myself aloud like a prayer, dragging home after my expensive, every-Wednesday-at-4-P.M. appointment describing my childhood to a stranger: “Work as joy, inaccessible to the psychologists.”

*

Kafka’s characters have no choice but to suffer Kafka. We readers, however, have chosen to submit to his machinery of our own free will, and we have done so in every generation since Kafka’s own, in the process producing thousands of essays and academic papers, more than a hundred biographies, more than a dozen films and TV shows, not to mention the Kafka-branding industry, which includes a computer font that reproduces the author’s handwriting (and features, alongside the author’s signature capital-K, a whimsically anachronistic € sign), T-shirts, hats, keychains, and smartphone covers emblazoned with his face, und so weiter. 

From a psychoanalytic perspective, our Kafka cathexis can be read as a product of the subject’s rejection of us—a reaction to the fact that every time a new merchandiser of scholarly Kafkaiana claims to have finally gotten a grasp on a certain aspect of the author’s life—on his identity as a Germanophone Czech, or Jew, or Zionist, or anti-Zionist, or Marxist, or feminist, or Americophile, or vegetarian, or hypochondriac, or lawyer, or brother, or son—Kafka, whoever Kafka was or is, floats away even further. It’s my conviction that we keep abasing ourselves in this unrequited pursuit because Kafka was the last truly great writer that any of us have had, and by us, I mean Germanophone Czechs, Jews, Zionists, anti-Zionists, Marxists, feminists, Americophiles, vegetarians, hypochondriacs, lawyers, brothers, and sons.

What’s most notably missing from even the major studies of Kafka is a technical consideration of the writing itself—of the style of a Kafka sentence—which typically opens with a perfectly lucid idea and then proceeds to get mired in a murkiness of commas, as it strives to contain all the ideas that might conceivably be derived from that idea, often including even the counter-idea, before the final period. This attempt to present the complete consequences of a single thought within the span of a single sentence—which torrent of thinking would almost always be more comfortably accommodated in two sentences, or even in an amply bourgeois warm-hearthed paragraph—imparts to the prose an accruing intensity that’s constantly being undercut by grammatical delay, which is less evident in English than it is in the original German, with its “inverted” word order. 

English’s SVO (subject-verb-object) order results in sentences about who is doing what to whom, while German’s SOV order is more concerned with who to whom is doing what. This syntactical difference is one reason, but only one reason, why English-language natives tend to expect a sentence to express itself immediately—to state from the start what it’s all about—whereas German-language natives are more conditioned to uncertainty, given that their full comprehension of a sentence must be suspended until its end.

Because an English-language sentence usually announces its basic purpose at the top, it almost always can only amplify or modify that purpose, and never, or rarely, upend it. A German-language sentence, however, can expand a reader’s understanding as it itself expands, becoming less provisional as it heads past the object toward the concluding verb of each subordinate clause, as the sentence itself heads toward its ultimate semantic consummation.

Here is a quintessential Kafka sentence, on the building of the Great Wall of China, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir:

In fact it is said that there are gaps which have never been filled in at all—according to some they are far larger than the completed sections—though this assertion is merely one of the many legends to which the building of the wall gave rise, and which cannot be verified, at least by any single man with his own eyes and judgment, on account of the extent of the structure.

And here is the same sentence translated by Stanley Corngold:

Indeed, it said that there are gaps that have not been filled in at all; according to some people these are much larger than the completed sections, although this assertion may be only one of the many legends that have grown up around the Wall and which, given the length of the Wall, is not something one person can verify, at least with his own eyes, and by his own standards.

The Muirs’ version strains for such torque that it risks becoming not merely unfaithful, but incomplete, while Corngold’s version is so intent on attempting both accuracy and explanation that it risks achieving neither. I’m not saying that I could do any better—I couldn’t. I’m just saying that neither version captures the anxiety of the German:

Ja, es soll Lücken geben, die überhaupt nicht verbaut worden sind, eine Behauptung allerdings, die möglicherweise nur zu den vielen Legenden gehört, die um den Bau entstanden sind, und die, für den einzelnen Menschen wenigstens, mit eigenen Augen und eigenem Maßstab infolge der Ausdehnung des Baues unnachprüfbar sind.

If I have to make a fool of myself, I’ll do so not by translating, but by making a rough English approximation of the German syntax, preserving a mix of the Muirs’ and Corngold’s word choices:

Indeed, it is said that gaps there are, that filled in have never been at all, an assertion, however, that probably only to the many legends belongs, that around the Wall have arisen, and that, at least by any single person with their own eyes and standards, on account of the extent of the Wall, cannot be verified.

When verbs come at the close of a clause, the clause’s sense is adjourned until that closure arrives, and so the arrival is read as a verdict.

Try it this way:

Indeed, it is said that gaps there are,

that filled in have never been at all,

an assertion, however, that probably only to the many legends belongs,

that around the Wall have arisen,

and that, at least by any single person with their own eyes and standards, on account of the extent of the Wall, cannot be verified.

The manipulation of this nested “inversion” for purposes of variation, rhythmic drive, cliché lampooning, and subversive humor is a significant feature not merely of Kafka’s style, but of Kafka’s mind, and is at least as important for English-language readers to countenance as the author’s religiosity, eschatology, libido, and insomnia.

*

The sentence—the Satz—is what writers are judged by. “Sentence” is more than a bad pun on Kafka’s vocation. His prose—especially the fiction that he wrote at night and during his sick leaves and sanatorium vacations—imitates the aspiration of the law: both are attempts to engineer through sections, subsections, and subordinate clauses a stately structure of utterly coherent logic within an utterly incoherent illogical world. It’s that coherent logic that is the principal fiction, of course: because the world cannot be made to unfold as orderly as prose, with the same balanced elegance of form. Kafka’s fiction only diagnosed, and refused to ameliorate, the crises experienced by his characters, as if to mimic the limits of the law, which can only compensate for damages, but remains powerless to prevent them. 

Where Kafka’s writing and legal writing share the greatest similarity, however, is in their ambiguity—in their precise relationship to ambiguity. Both are made out of the author’s efforts to perpetually measure and define exactly what leeway is being left for interpretation and application. In his fiction, Kafka leaves certain elements undescribed (characters’ faces), and underdescribed (settings), in order to allow the reader to impose descriptions of their own that personalize the universality. 

He furthers this permissiveness by rarely writing surface metaphors, preferring instead to inculcate structural metaphors (or allegories, or parables) by defining his subjects negatively: “Our little town does not lie on the frontier, nowhere near; it is so far from the frontier, in fact, that perhaps no one from our town has ever been there” (“The Refusal”). In general, Kafka prefers not to associate things or people inside his fiction with things or people outside it. 

Self-reference is his primary mode: His fiction is full of formulations like “as I used to do,” and “as I had often thought,” which, by comparison and contrast, establish precedent. Kafka’s most profound ambiguity, though, inheres in his use of the subjunctive—his moments of “as if” and “as though” (in German, als): “If I merely walk in the direction of the entrance, even though I may be separated from it by several passages and rooms, I find myself sensing an atmosphere of great danger, actually as if my hair were growing thin and in a moment might fly off and leave me bare and shivering, exposed to the howls of my enemies” (“The Burrow”). 

Here, and elsewhere, Kafka harnesses the humblest grammar to metamorphic power, until the predominant effect ceases to be the presence of an unreliable narrator, but the absence of the universe’s only reliable narrator, who is God.

The ambiguity of the law is more infamous, and more materially consequential. In brief, the most heinous law is written by those most hoping to evade it. Legislators are systemically incentivized to omit or obscure all provisions of the law that check their power. To be clear, the law I am referring to here does not include that overtly oppressive legislation that makes no attempt to obfuscate its discriminatory intent (such as the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws, which ensnared Kafka’s three sisters, or my own country’s slavery legislation, Black Codes, and Jim Crow). 

Instead, I am referring to the law of willful inadequacy, which employs loopholes to enable policy circumventions, and cloaks corruption in beneficent rhetoric before burying it deep beneath superficial reforms. More ambiguous still, at least in terms of its authority, and certainly more pernicious, is a country’s body of classified or secret law, which contravenes the law as it is publicly known. One example, again from my own country, is the officially secret law that, in violation of the U.S. constitution, lets the U.S. government surveil all of its citizens’ communications, including what I am now writing on my computer.

As the law becomes ever more ambiguous, literature becomes ever less, and we humans become mainly legible as data—as points of habit, preference, and demographic information used to generate algorithms, which are the strictures, the sentences, that bind us. Algorithms are sentences that calculate outcomes based on inputs (I almost wrote incomes). They are constructed out of a series of binary choices—if this happens, then that should happen; if this doesn’t happen, then that shouldn’t happen—in a constant calibration of inclusion and exclusion. The earliest algorithms were written by humans, as a way of instructing computers to perform calculations that humans were incapable of performing on their own. Today, these algorithms are written by computers “themselves,” as a way of instructing other computers to perform increasingly convoluted, world-controlling tasks.

This automation is the ultimate sign of the decline of the law’s authority—an authority that once came from churches and monarchies that claimed the sanction of God, and then came from governments that claimed the sanction of election, and now comes from our machines, which generate for each of us an individual law based on our every click and keystroke, our every weak decision. These automated laws now define our lives. They are responsible for nearly everything that we see and hear. They tell us where to eat, when to exercise, and even whom to have sex with. They tell us what to read and so, they tell us who we are. There is no way to calculate what effect this automation is having on our souls, because our souls do not exist in the domain of calculation. Any attempt to enumerate that harm just strengthens the enumeration-harm of the technocracy.

*

Once, in Jerusalem, I was sitting at a café reading Kafka (in English). At some point the café had become a bar—meaning that the coffee and tea drinking had given way to alcohol—and when I took a break from the pages and looked around, I realized that a lot of people were drunk. One man came over to my table, turned an empty chair around, sat down straddling its back, grabbed the book out of my hands, and examined it. “What’s it about?” he asked. He was in his early twenties, twitchy, aggressive, entirely serious. “It’s about impossible situations,” I said in Hebrew, and the moment that the phrase was out of my mouth, I regretted the fact that, especially given my foreign accent, it sounded like I was quoting some journalistic euphemism for the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

The guy leaned in close and said, with boozy breath, “Impossible situations like what?” Realizing that I’d have to defuse this impossible situation, I told him that one of Kafka’s books was about a man who is accused of a crime, but no one will tell him what that crime is, and so he is unable to defend himself. I told him that another of the books was about a man who incompetently surveys land (I didn’t know the Hebrew for “land surveyor,” so I said something like “mapmaker”) who comes to a strange town in the course of his duties and must receive permission to practice his trade there, and even just to stay there, from the authorities who rule the town from its castle, but the castle authorities refuse to grant him a labor or even a residency permit and defer any decision about his legal status indefinitely. 

Meanwhile, the face of the man in front of me had turned siren red and the vessels in his neck swelled and throbbed. Not knowing what I had said to enrage him, or what else I could do that might calm him, I just continued with my explanation, by saying that this book—the one that he was still holding, and gripping so tightly that I thought he’d tear it in half— was called Amerika, and that it was about America, and, because it was the author’s first novel, it wasn’t quite typical of— 

The man jumped out of the chair and banged the book on the table, yelling (in my loose translation), “So the people in the books are fucking idiots? Is it supposed to be funny that they’re so stupid? When I had to get a new passport on short notice, because my old one expired and I had to go to London for business, at the passport office they told me no, it’s not possible. And I could have just left it at that and given up, but I didn’t. It was too much money to lose. So I just phoned my cousin, whose wife’s brother works for the Ministry of Interior, and I got my new passport within a week. That’s how you have to be. I mean, you have a job to do, you do it. Don’t let anything get in your way.” He flung the book to the floor, and now all the café-bar’s patrons were paying attention to what was happening, but also moving away, giving him some room to have his tantrum. 

“And if someone accused me of some crime that I didn’t do,” he continued, “I’d get this friend of mine from the army who’s a lawyer to sue them for all their money and take their apartment and car. And if they kept on accusing me after that, I’d beat the shit out of them. I’d find out where their offices were and wait outside until they came out and I’d jump them from behind and go like this and like that”—he was air-punching and air-kicking some imaginary nemesis, putting phantom opponents in headlocks and choking them out.

I ran away down the block and turned around only at the corner: the man was being restrained by waiters. Amerika was lost—it is the only book by Kafka that I have never finished. But to this day, the man’s words, and his air-fighting, remain with me, and I’m still not sure how to take them—as anything other than an indication of the differences between the Mitteleuropean will to ambiguity and the near-universal impatience of the present.

Kafka is buried in the New Jewish cemetery in the crumbling suburbs of Prague. The original gravestone was stolen (some say by a literary-minded Nazi, others say by the Czechoslovak Communist government). Then the replacement gravestone was stolen (some say by a Czechoslovak anti-Communist underground youth movement, others say by a private collector from the West). Today the stone under which the author reposes is a replacement’s replacement—an ugly hexagonal monolith. The last time I visited the cemetery, for the funeral of a man, a Holocaust survivor whose memoir I ghostwrote, workers were installing CCTV cameras.

(Source: The Paris Review)