Longreads

Wind generated power is facing serious threats. Photo: Agnieszka Guzowska/Shutterstock Summer is officially over (astronomically, at least), and its been a wild one. Record-breaking heat waves, the…

by Tanya Marie Luhrmann In the 1990s, scientists declared that schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses were pure brain disorders that would eventually yield to drugs. Now they are recognizing…

John Travolta, who plays Dennis the DEA agent, with Taylor Kitsch (Chon) and director Oliver Stone on the set of Savages. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex Features A man steps across the floor of what…

Does philosophy or science have all the big answers? Julian Baggini No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos…

Jeffrey Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter in the suburbs of Baltimore, came across the accident by chance: A car had smashed into a pickup truck loaded with metal pipes. Mitchell tried to help, but…

Worley scrolled through his in-box and opened an e-mail, addressed to “CEO/Owner.” The writer said that his name was Captain Joshua Mbote, and he offered an awkwardly phrased proposition: “With regards to your trustworthiness and reliability, I decided to seek your assistance in transferring some money out of South Africa into your country, for onward dispatch and investment.” Mbote explained that he had been chief of security for the Congolese President Laurent Kabila, who had secretly sent him to South Africa to buy weapons for a force of élite bodyguards. But Kabila had been assassinated before Mbote could complete the mission. “I quickly decided to stop all negotiations and divert the funds to my personal use, as it was a golden opportunity, and I could not return to my country due to my loyalty to the government of Laurent Kabila,” Mbote wrote. Now Mbote had fifty-five million American dollars, in cash, and he needed a discreet partner with an overseas bank account. That partner, of course, would be richly rewarded.

On the sleeve notes he writes: "Ghost On The Canvas is the last studio record of new songs that I plan to make. I've been saying it to friends and family, but now that it's in writing it really seems final." In June, Campbell revealed he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease six months earlier and that he was going to do a farewell tour before retiring. The announcement was shocking in its bluntness. Many of us still remember Glen Campbell as the eternally youthful hunk with huge shoulders or the naive boy-man who stars alongside John Wayne in True Grit. Glen Campbell wasn't made for growing old.

How can this work? Can someone simply shed his religious and political power like an old coat he no longer needs? Doesn't this make Tibet like a Vatican without a pope, a place robbed of its unique identity? These are not only religious questions. The struggle over the legacy of the Dalai Lama has to do with more than the reorientation of a government-in-exile. It involves questions of power and influence in one of the world's most important and contested regions. It has to do with military bases in Tibet, new transportation routes for consumer goods, the world's highest railway line, giant deposits of minerals, including zinc, copper and lithium, and the reservoir of water contained in the Himalayas.

The Chaos Computer Club's annual conference attracts an international audience of hackers, scientists, artists and utopians. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters Hackerspaces…