What are we reading? August 19, 2021 – Business in Vancouver

Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.

Kirk LaPointe, publisher and editor-in-chief:

Why do sew and new not rhyme? Why do kernel and colonel? English spelling is full of tricks and a linguist tries to sort it for us. Aeon

https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-the-english-spelling-system-so-weird-and-inconsistent

An insightful, if anecdotal look at why so many knowledge industry workers are part of Americas Great Resignation in the pandemic. The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/office-space/why-are-so-many-knowledge-workers-quitting

Choosing a successor to Alex Trebek as Jeopardy! host was never going to be easy, partly because of the shoes to fill, partly because so many lusted after the job. But when the successor proved to be the shows executive producer, some felt there was never a real competition. This feature illuminates some of the questions about the process on a show that demands questions of its contestants. The Ringer

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/8/18/22631299/mike-richards-jeopardy-host-search-process-past-comments

Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor

Left-leaning voters in Canada are more likely to want to vote by mail this election. So this countrys complicated vote-by-mail process could spell trouble for the Liberals, NDP and Greens. Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mail-in-voting-set-soar-canada-election-could-undermine-trudeau-new-democratic-2021-08-17/

This summers deadly heat wave shows that air-conditioning may very well be a life-saving necessity in this province in the years ahead. Yet there are a lot of rules against window AC units in B.C., often on esthetic grounds. Those rules need to go, says Vancouver broadcaster Jody Vance. The Orca

https://theorca.ca/resident-pod/jody-vance-time-to-go-all-in-on-ac/

Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:

Enlightening insights about the unsung Canadian hero who helped spearhead the technology that gets mRNA COVID vaccines into human cells. Forbes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2021/08/17/covids-forgotten-hero-the-untold-story-of-the-scientist-whose-breakthrough-made-the-vaccines-possible/

If you make it to 100 you would be in select human longevity company but a relative youngster compared with other animals on Earth. A Greenland shark, for example, would still have nearly another two centuries ahead of it; an ocean quahog clam would barely be out of diapers and looking at another 400 years of pondering existence. A deep ocean glass sponge, meanwhile, can look forward to more than 10,000 years of glass spongery. Think of the pension plan complications there and the tedium of being stuck on that rung of the reincarnation ladder. An inventory of Earth's longest living beings is listed in this Live Science article.

https://www.livescience.com/longest-living-animals.html

If you are wearying of the daily diet of pandemic, wildfire, social media bilge water and Taliban misery that has come to occupy pretty much every newscast in 2021, here are seven reasons to be cheerful, courtesy of the Smithsonian Magazine.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/seven-reasons-be-optimistic-about-worlds-oceans-180978398/

Jeremy Hainsworth, reporter:

Wilfull Blindness: How A Network Of Narcos, Tycoons And CCP Agents Infiltrated The West by Sam Cooper.

This is a riveting, page-turning tale of how B.C. government casinos became a tool for global criminals to import narcotics into Canada and launder billions of drug cash through Vancouver real estate. The cast of accomplices includes revenue-hungry governments; corrupt immigration practices; casino and real estate companies tied to shady offshore wealth; lawyers and bankers; and an aimless, at-times uninterested RCMP that gave organized crime room to grow.

A good read in tandem with Jonathan Manthorpes Claws of the Panda: Beijings Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada and Kerry Browns CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping.

Nelson Bennett, reporter:

Once again, pundits were shocked by the recent election outcome in Nova Scotia, where the Progressive Conservatives swept the Liberals from power in a snap election. John Ivison wonders aloud whether this has any implications for the September 20 federal election. He writes: The result highlights the perils of calling a snap election for no good reason, other than that the polls suggest you might be able to convert a minority into a majority. The National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-n-s-election-result-shows-the-perils-of-calling-a-snap-election-for-no-good-reason

Are Stanley Parks coyotes stoned out of their minds? That theory is actually being floated, after a string of attacks by coyotes in Stanley Park: Theyre high as kites after ingesting opioids. UNILAD

https://www.unilad.co.uk/animals/expert-fears-coyotes-have-ingested-drugs-after-three-attacks-in-four-days

Glen Korstrom, reporter:

The Talibans surge to take over Afghanistan last week had me dust off and start re-reading Khaled Hosseinis novel The Kite Runner. Its an excellent book largely told from the point of view of a boy, about relationships, growing older and the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s. Khaled Hosseini

https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-kite-runner/id361931306

After I first read Kite Runner, I moved on to read Khaled Hosseinis second novel, 2007s A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is also set in Afghanistan but is told from a female perspective, in part from behind the veil. It also shows the rise of the Taliban, and how that changes life for Afghanis. Khaled Hosseini

https://books.apple.com/us/book/a-thousand-splendid-suns/id357923249

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What are we reading? August 19, 2021 - Business in Vancouver