October 1 2022 U.S.

“I’ve come to inquire if you have work for me. That is, if
my performance pleased you before.” A deliberate prompt. I
didn’t want to be hired because of my need or his kindness. I
wanted my talent to be the reason he wanted me back.

⁵ “Indeed” was all he offered.
What now to fill the suspended moment? His new
projects. I asked. His eyebrows leapt up in symmetrical
curves.

“A Byzantine chapel for the World’s Columbian
¹⁰ Exposition in Chicago next year. Four times bigger than the Paris Exposition Universelle. It will be the greatest assembly
of artists since the fifteenth century.” He counted on his fingers and then drummed them on the desk. “Only fifteen months away. In 1893 the name of Louis Comfort Tiffany
¹⁵ will be on the lips of millions!” He stood up and swung open his arms wide enough to embrace the whole world.
I sensed his open palm somewhere in the air behind the
small of my back, ushering me to his massive, carved
mahogany exhibit table to see his sketches and watercolors.
²⁰“Two round windows, The Infancy of Christ and Botticelli’s Madonna and Child, will be set off by a dozen scenic side
windows.”

A huge undertaking. How richly fortunate. Surely there
would be opportunity for me to shine.
²⁵ Practically hopping from side to side, he made a show of
slinging down one large watercolor after another onto the
Persian carpet, each one a precise, fine-edged rendering of
what he wanted the window to be.

“Gracious! You’ve been on fire. Go slower! Give me a
³⁰ chance to admire each one.”

He unrolled the largest watercolor. “An eight-foot
mosaic behind the altar depicting a pair of peacocks
surrounded by grapevines.”

My breath whistled between my open lips. Above the
³⁵ peacocks facing each other, he had transformed the
standard Christian icon of a crown of thorns into a
shimmering regal headdress for God the King, the thorns
replaced by large glass jewels in true Tiffany style.

Astonishing how he could get mere watercolors so deep
⁴⁰ and saturated, so like lacquer that they vibrated together as
surely as chords of a great church pipe organ. Even the
names of the hues bore an exotic richness. The peacocks’
necks in emerald green and sapphire blue. The tail feathers
in vermilion, Spanish ocher, Florida gold. The jewels in the
⁴⁵ crown mandarin yellow and peridot. The background in
turquoise and cobalt. Oh, to get my hands on those
gorgeous hues. To feel the coolness of the blue glass, like
solid pieces of the sea. To chip the gigantic jewels for the
crown so they would sparkle and send out shafts of light.
⁵⁰ To forget everything but the glass before me and make of it something resplendent.

When I could trust my voice not to show too much
eagerness, I said, “I see your originality is in good health.
Only you would put peacocks in a chapel.”

⁵⁵ “Don’t you know?” he said in a spoof of incredulity.
“They symbolized eternal life in Byzantine art. Their flesh
was thought to be incorruptible.”

“What a lucky find for you, that convenient tidbit of
information.”
⁶⁰ He chuckled, so I was on safe ground.
He tossed down more drawings. “A marble-and-mosaic
altar surrounded by mosaic columns, and a baptismal font
of opaque leaded glass and mosaic.”

“This dome is the lid of the basin? In opaque leaded
⁶⁵ glass?”

He looked at it with nothing short of love, and showed
me its size with outstretched arms as though he were
hugging the thing.

I was struck by a tantalizing idea. “Imagine it reduced in
⁷⁰ size and made of translucent glass instead. Once you figure
how to secure the pieces in a dome, that could be the
method and the shape of a lampshade. A wraparound
window of, say”—I looked around the room—“peacock
feathers.”
⁷⁵ He jerked his head up with a startled expression, the
idea dawning on him as if it were his own.
“Lampshades in leaded glass,” he said in wonder, his
blue eyes sparking.
“Just think where that could go,” I whispered.

A pair of recent studies suggests that although
industrialized nations may have benefitted from larger
cities, the same is not true for the rapidly urbanizing areas of
the developing world. In these parts of the globe, there really
⁵ might be such a thing as too much urbanization, too
quickly.
The studies, by Susanne A. Frick and Andrés Rodríguez-
Pose of the London School of Economics, take a close look
at the actual connection between city size and nationwide
¹⁰ economic performance. Their initial study, from last year, examines the relationship between economic development,
as measured by GDP per capita, and average metropolitan-
area size in 114 countries across the world between 1960
and 2010. To ensure robustness, it controls for variables
¹⁵ including national population size, physical land area,
education levels, economic openness, and other factors.
The size of cities or metro areas across the world has
exploded over the past half-century, with cities in the
developing world growing much faster and much larger
²⁰ than those in more developed nations. Between 1960 and
2010, the median city in high-income countries grew
modestly from 500,000 to 650,000 people; but the median
city in the developing world nearly quadrupled, expanding
from 220,000 to 845,000 people. In 1960, 12 of the top 20
²⁵ countries with the largest average city size were high-
income countries; by 2010, 14 of the top 20 were in the
developing world.

Urbanization has historically been thought of as a
necessary feature of economic development and growth, but
³⁰ this study finds the connection is not so simple. While
advanced nations benefit from having larger cities,
developing nations do not. Advanced nations experience a
0.7 percent increase in economic growth for every
additional 100,000 in average population among its large
³⁵ cities over a five-year period. But for developing nations, the addition of 100,000 people in large cities is associated with a
2.3 percent decrease in economic growth over a five-year
period.
In their latest study, the researchers found that
⁴⁰ developing nations tend to get a bigger bang for their buck
from smaller and medium-size cities. These countries see
the most economic benefit from having a larger proportion
of their urban population living in cities of 500,000 people
or less. Bigger cities tend to have a more positive economic
⁴⁵ impact in larger countries. Having a metro with more than
10 million inhabitants produces a nationwide economic
benefit only if the total urban population is 28.5 million
or more, according to the study. This makes sense:
Bigger, more developed countries are more likely to play
⁵⁰ host to knowledge-based industries that require urban agglomeration economies.
There are several reasons why megacities¹ often fail to
spur significant growth in the rapidly urbanizing world.
For one, the lion’s share of places that are urbanizing
⁵⁵ most rapidly today are in the poorest and least-
developed parts of the world, whereas the places that
urbanized a century or so ago were in the richest and
most developed. This history has created a false
expectation that urbanization is always associated with
⁶⁰ prosperity.
Additionally, globalization has severed the historical
connection between cities, local agriculture, and local
industry that powered the more balanced urban
economic development of the past. In today’s globally
⁶⁵ interconnected economy, the raw materials that flowed
from the surrounding countryside to the city can all be
inexpensively imported from other parts of the world.
The result is that the connection between large cities and
growth has now become much more tenuous, producing
⁷⁰ a troubling new pattern of “urbanization without
growth.”

Passage 1

The brains of humans are conspicuously larger than the
brains of other apes, but the human-specific genetic
factors responsible for the uniquely large human
neocortex remain obscure. Since humans split from
⁵ chimps, which have brains roughly a third of human size,
the human genome has undergone roughly 15 million
changes. Which of these genetic tweaks could have led to
big brains?
About six years ago, scientists in David Haussler’s lab at
¹⁰ Howard Hughes Medical Institute discovered a gene called
NOTCH2NL. It’s a relative of NOTCH2, a gene that
scientists knew was central to early brain development.
NOTCH2 controls vital decisions regarding when and how many neurons to make.
¹⁵ When the Haussler team looked in the official version
of the human genome at that time1—version 37—
NOTCH2NL appeared to be located in chromosome 1
near a region linked to abnormal brain size. Delete a hunk
of the region, and brains tend to shrink. Duplicate part of
²⁰ it, and brains tend to overgrow.
“We thought, ‘Oh, this is incredible,’” Haussler said.
NOTCH2NL seemed to check all the boxes for a key role
in human brain development. But when the team mapped NOTCH2NL’s precise location in the genome, they
²⁵ discovered the gene wasn’t actually in the relevant
chromosomal region after all; the once-promising
candidate seemed to be a dud.
“We were downhearted,” Haussler recalled. That all
changed with the next official version of the human
³⁰ genome—version 38. In this iteration, NOTCH2NL was
located in the crucial region. “And there were three
versions of it,” Haussler exclaimed. Over the last three
million years, his team calculated, NOTCH2NL was
repeatedly copy-pasted into the genome, what he calls “a
³⁵ series of genetic accidents.”
Genetic analysis of several primate species revealed that
the three genes exist only in humans and their recent
relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, not in
chimpanzees, gorillas, or orangutans. What’s more, the
⁴⁰ timing of these genes’ emergence matches up with the
period in the fossil record when our ancestors’ craniums
began to enlarge, Haussler points out. Together, the results
suggest that NOTCH2NL genes played a role in beefing
up human brain size.
Passage 2
⁴⁵ Modern humans have brains that are more than three
times larger than our closest living relatives,
chimpanzees and bonobos. Scientists don’t agree on
when and how this dramatic increase took place, but
new analysis of 94 hominin fossils shows that average
⁵⁰ brain size increased gradually and consistently over the
past three million years.
The research, published in The Proceedings of the
Royal Society B, shows that the trend was caused
primarily by evolution of larger brains within
⁵⁵ populations of individual species, but the introduction of
new, larger-brained species and extinction of smaller-
brained ones also played a part.
“Brain size is one of the most obvious traits that
makes us human. It’s related to cultural complexity,
⁶⁰ language, tool making and all these other things that
make us unique,” said Andrew Du, PhD, a postdoctoral
scholar at the University of Chicago and first author of
the study. “The earliest hominins had brain sizes like
chimpanzees, and they have increased dramatically since
⁶⁵ then. So, it’s important to understand how we got here.”
Du and his colleagues compared published research
data on the skull volumes of 94 fossil specimens from 13
different species, beginning with the earliest
unambiguous human ancestors, Australopithecus, from
⁷⁰ 3.2 million years ago to pre-modern species, including
Homo erectus, from 500,000 years ago when brain size
began to overlap with that of modern-day humans.
The researchers saw that when the species were
counted at the clade level, or groups descending from a
⁷⁵ common ancestor, the average brain size increased
gradually over three million years. Looking more closely,
the increase was driven by three different factors,
primarily evolution of larger brain sizes within
individual species populations, but also by the addition
⁸⁰ of new, larger-brained species and extinction of smaller-
brained ones.
The study quantifies for the first time when and by
how much each of these factors contributes to the clade-
level pattern. Du said he likens it to how a football coach
⁸⁵ might build a roster of bigger, strong players. One way
would be to make all the players hit the weight room to
bulk up. But the coach could also recruit new, larger
players and cut the smallest ones.
¹The reference version of the human genome goes through updates to more completely map out each chromosomal sequence.

For too long now, we have heard it argued that a focus
on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights
takes away from a focus on addressing Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples’ disadvantage.
⁵ This approach is, in my view, seriously flawed for a
number of reasons. It represents a false dichotomy—as if
poorer standards of health, lack of access to housing,
lower attainment in education and higher unemployment
are not human rights issues or somehow they don’t relate
¹⁰ to the cultural circumstances of Indigenous peoples.
And it also makes it too easy to disguise any causal
relationship between the actions of government and any
outcomes, and therefore limits the accountability and responsibilities of government.
¹⁵ In contrast, human rights give Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples a means for expressing their
legitimate claims to equal goods, services, and most
importantly, the protections of the law—and a standard
that government is required to measure up to.
²⁰ The focus on ‘practical measures’ was exemplified by
the emphasis the previous federal government placed on
the ‘record levels of expenditure’ annually on Indigenous
issues.
As I have previously asked, since when did the size of
²⁵ the input become more important than the intended
outcomes? The . . . government never explained what the
point of the record expenditure argument was—or what achievements were made. . . .
And the fact is that there has been no simple way of
³⁰ being able to decide whether the progress made through
‘record expenditure’ has been ‘good enough’. So the
‘practical’ approach to these issues has lacked any
accountability whatsoever. . . .
If we look back over the past five years in particular . . .
³⁵ we can also see that a ‘practical’ approach to issues has
allowed governments to devise a whole series of policies
and programs without engaging with Indigenous peoples
in any serious manner. I have previously described this as
the ‘fundamental flaw’ of the federal government’s efforts
⁴⁰ over the past five years. That is, government policy that is
applied to Indigenous peoples as passive recipients.
Our challenge now is to redefine and understand these
issues as human rights issues.
We face a major challenge in ‘skilling up’ government
⁴⁵ and the bureaucracy so that they are capable of utilising
human rights as a tool for best practice policy
development and as an accountability mechanism.
. . . In March this year, the Prime Minister, the Leader
of the Opposition, Ministers for Health and Indigenous
⁵⁰ Affairs, every major Indigenous and non-Indigenous
peak health body and others signed a Statement of Intent
to close the gap in health inequality which set out how
this commitment would be met. It commits all of these
organisations and government, among other things, to:

• ⁵⁵ develop a long-term plan of action, that is targeted
  to need, evidence-based and capable of addressing
  the existing inequities in health services, in order to
  achieve equality of health status and life expectancy
  between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
  ⁶⁰ peoples and non-Indigenous Australians by 2030.
• ensure the full participation of Aboriginal and
  Torres Strait Islander peoples and their
  representative bodies in all aspects of addressing
  their health needs.
• ⁶⁵ work collectively to systematically address the social
  determinants that impact on achieving health
  equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
  peoples.
• respect and promote the rights of Aboriginal and
  ⁷⁰ Torres Strait Islander peoples, and
• measure, monitor, and report on our joint efforts,
  in accordance with benchmarks and targets, to
  ensure that we are progressively realising our
  shared ambitions.

⁷⁵ These commitments were made in relation to
Indigenous health issues but they form a template for the
type of approach that is needed across all areas of
poverty, marginalisation and disadvantage experienced
by Indigenous peoples.
⁸⁰ They provide the basis for the cultural shift necessary
in how we conceptualise human rights in this country.
Issues of entrenched and ongoing poverty and
marginalisation of Indigenous peoples are human rights
challenges. And we need to lift our expectations of what
⁸⁵ needs to be done to address these issues and of what
constitutes sufficient progress to address these issues in
the shortest possible timeframe so that we can realise a
vision of an equal society.

Scientists believe that iron meteorites come from
the cores of asteroids that melted. But what happened
to the corresponding rocky material that formed the
mantles of these bodies? A few asteroids have spectra¹
5 that match those of mantle rocks, but they are very
rare. Some nonmetallic meteorites come from
asteroids that have partially or wholly melted, but
these do not match the minerals we would expect to
see in the missing mantles of the iron parent bodies.
10 These exotic meteorites must come from some other
kind of parent body instead.
The rarity of mantle rocks in our meteorite
collection and in the asteroid belt, known as the
“missing mantle problem,” is a long-standing puzzle.
15 There are several reasons why iron fragments might
survive better than rocky fragments when asteroids
break apart. Iron lies in the core of a differentiated
asteroid, while rocky material lies near the surface.
Thus, rocky material will be the first to be removed
20 when an asteroid is bombarded, while iron is the last
to be exposed. As a result, rocky fragments have to
survive in space for longer than iron ones. Most of the
rocky mantle may be peeled away in small fragments
—chips from the surface—while the iron core remains
25 as a single piece, making it harder to disrupt later. Last
and most important, iron is much stronger than rock:
a piece of iron is likely to survive in the asteroid belt at
least 10 times longer than a rocky fragment of the
same size.
If most differentiated bodies broke apart early in
the solar system, perhaps all the mantle material has
been ground down to dust and lost over the billions of
years since then. This would mean that intact
differentiated asteroids are very rare in the asteroid
belt today. Perhaps Vesta [a differentiated asteroid
with a diameter of more than 300 miles] and a handful
of others are all that remain.
However, collisional erosion cannot be the whole
story. Primitive asteroids, the parent bodies of
40 chondritic meteorites [the most common type of
meteorite found on Earth], are no stronger than the
mantle rocks from differentiated asteroids. How did
so many primitive asteroids survive when almost
none of the differentiated ones did? Part of the
45 explanation may simply be that differentiated bodies
were relatively rare to begin with and none have
survived. Still, if almost all differentiated bodies were
destroyed in violent collisions, how did Vesta survive
with only a single large crater on its surface?
Astronomer William Bottke and his colleagues
recently came up with a possible explanation: perhaps
the parent bodies of the iron meteorites formed closer
to the Sun, in the region that now contains the
terrestrial planets. Objects would have been more
55 tightly packed nearer the Sun, so collisions would
have been more frequent than in the asteroid belt.
Many, perhaps most, differentiated bodies were
disrupted by violent collisions. Gravitational
perturbations from larger bodies scattered some of
60 these fragments into the asteroid belt. Both iron and
rocky fragments arrived in the asteroid belt, but only
the stronger iron objects have survived for the age of
the solar system. Later on, the parent bodies of
primitive meteorites formed in the asteroid belt. Most
65 of these objects survived, leaving an asteroid belt
today that is a mixture of intact primitive bodies and
fragments of iron.
¹ Characteristic wavelengths of light that asteroids reflect.