Bryan Christy | National Geographic | 14 September 2012 Thousands of elephants die each year so that their tusks can be carved into religious objects. In the Philippines the link between ivory and the church is so strong that the word garing means both ivory and religious statue Comments Simon Schama | FT | 13 September 2012 "Orwell's four motives for writing still seem to me the most honest account of why long-form non-fiction writers do what they do, with 'sheer egoism' at the top." For Schama, it's also a "resistance to the attrition of memory" Comments Richard Sakwa | OD Russia | 14 September 2012 Useful account of Russian political model as Putin's new presidential term gets underway. He weakened the modernisers by slapping down Medvedev's hopes of a second term. Now he needs to rally them a bit, to restore the balance Comments Stephen Walt | Foreign Policy | 11 September 2012 US is locked into a foreign policy formula that "might have made some degree of sense during the Cold War, [but] is increasingly counterproductive today". It would be better to be more flexible, and to introduce more conditionality Comments Ed Yong | Not Exactly Rocket Science | 11 September 2012 We tend to divide medicines into natural (derived from plants) and "man-made". But that's bunk. Many more drugs than you may think come from plants. How then do we go about the business of "bioprospecting"? Here are some answers Comments Brian Alexander | Outside | 13 September 2012 "Should Armstrong come forward and talk? Such a prospect may delight people who believe he’s gotten away with too much for too long. But that strategy doesn’t make sense for the man himself" Comments | 
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