The Spectator: Pope is planning to retire, say allies – but only once he’s appointed enough liberal cardinals

Allies of Pope Francis are saying that he’s planning to follow the example of Benedict XVI and retire. But he’ll only do so once he’s appointed enough liberal cardinals to make sure that the next conclave doesn’t elected a conservative who will interpret Catholic doctrine more strictly than he does.

This, at least, is what allies of the Pope have been telling colleagues – claiming that they’ve heard it from the pontiff himself. (Francis himself is a notorious chatterbox and so are some of the cardinals close to him.)

The Pope, now 80, apparently wants to hold three more consistories at which he will bestow the red hat on bishops who share his vision of reform (whatever that may be: the details are still sketchy, four years in).

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Vox: Syria's war: Who is fighting and why (Apr 7, 2017)

BBC: How Western civilisation could collapse

The political economist Benjamin Friedman once compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society – democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more – would begin to teeter. Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse. [...]

Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to findings that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. The ecological category is the more widely understood and recognised path to potential doom, especially in terms of depletion of natural resources such as groundwater, soil, fisheries and forests – all of which could be worsened by climate change.

That economic stratification may lead to collapse on its own, on the other hand, came as more of a surprise to Motesharrei and his colleagues. Under this scenario, elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources, and leaving little or none for commoners who vastly outnumber them yet support them with labour. Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour. The inequalities we see today both within and between countries already point to such disparities. For example, the top 10% of global income earners are responsible for almost as much total greenhouse gas emissions as the bottom 90% combined. Similarly, about half the world’s population lives on less than $3 per day.  

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Vintage Everyday: The Glory Days of Train Travel: Inside the Pullman Train Cars, the Epitome of Luxury Palace Cars and Superliners from the Late 19th Century

The Pullman Palace Car Company, founded by George Pullman, manufactured railroad cars in the mid-to-late 19th century through the early decades of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States. Its workers initially lived in a planned worker community (or “company town”) named Pullman.

George Mortimer Pullman was always an inventive, innovative entrepreneur. Legendarily, an extremely uncomfortable overnight train ride from Buffalo toWestfield, New York, caused him to realize that there was a vast market potential for comfortable, clean, efficient passenger service. He had a great deal of experience with compact and efficient sleeping accommodations thanks to his experiences with canal boats on the Erie Canal. He formed a partnership with former New York state senator Benjamin C. Field in 1857, one of his close friends and neighbors from Albion, to build and operate several sleeping cars. Pullman and Field secured a contract from the Chicago, Alton and St. Louis Railroad to develop a more comfortable sleeping car. Pullman and Field converted two moderately successful cars. Field, more interested in politics than rail cars, assigned his interest to Pullman in exchange for future loans.

In many ways, George Pullman intended his Palace Car Company to counter the discomfort, disorder, and discontinuity endemic to rail travel and modern urban life. As early as 1860, before his company had even existed, Pullman had been experimenting with railcar construction by outfitting his cars with sleeping berths that could be folded into chairs during the day. The innovation made Pullman’s cars wider than standard railcars, which initially prevented most railroads from carrying them on their narrower rails. After George Pullman secured the right for one of his cars to serve as Abraham Lincoln’s funeral car in 1865, interest in Pullman’s sleeping cars greatly expanded. In 1867, Pullman incorporated Pullman’s Palace Car Company with several investors and devoted himself to manufacturing sleeping cars.

But Pullman did more than simply manufacture sleeping cars. He also focused on transforming the entire experience of rail travel. As the photographs and documents below convey, Pullman emphasized the palatial aspects of his railcars. Outfitted with plush seating and ostentatious decorations, Pullman cars were intended to bring order and comfort to modern rail travel.

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Quartz: New research suggests your ability to forgive—or not—is actually biological

Forgive and forget is advice easier for some people to follow than others. But a newly published neuroscience study has given those who hold onto grudges a good excuse: It seems the ability to forgive is linked to the size of a specific area in the brain.

The research, published in Scientific Reports earlier this month, is based on brain-imaging scans of a limited sample size of 42, so the results are not definitive. But the study does suggest a connection between how we assign blame and the size of the anterior superior temporal sulcus (aSTS) in our brains. [...]

Indrajeet Patil, the study’s first author, says the research suggests some people are biologically predisposed to forgiveness. Though the relationship between brain area and function is still unclear, it’s generally believed that more gray matter is linked to greater performance of that region. For example, one study found that London taxi drivers have more gray matter in certain areas of the hippocampus linked with navigation skills. “Individuals who have more gray matter [in the left aSTS], so the argument goes, rely more on reasoning about innocent intentions while judging accidents, and so forgive actors involved in such situations,” Patil writes in an email.

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