Economist, Sept 23, 2013 (II)

choi

(5) This issue has a section called Intelligent Life.

(i) HONOURS | Nobel Calling. They are the most coveted prizes in the world. But how are the winners told that they have won?  Tom Whipple finds out.
http://moreintelligentlife.com/c ... ymous/nobel-calling
("STAFFAN NORMARK HAS a strategy for getting his phone calls past secretaries [to call winners of science awards]. * * *

My comment:
(A) Read it, if you are academically inclined, about inner working of Nobel committees. For others, the article is funny--but not something one dies for.
(B) “In those joint letters to the editor so beloved of academia, where the ranks of the ivory tower come together in common cause, your name [name of a Nobel laureate] is suddenly at the top.”

beloved
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beloved
is usually followed by "of" or "by."

choi

(ii) FOOD | My Madeleine Hope in a Thin Shell. In Chairman Mao's China, it wasn't just supplies that were rationed. The novelist Yiyun Li 李翊雲 remembers the queues and what they taught her.
http://moreintelligentlife.com/c ... ous/hope-thin-shell
(Beijing in 1970s)

Note:
(A)
(i) madeleine (n; French, perhaps from Madeleine Paumier, 19th century French pastry cook; First Known Use 1845):
"1:  a small rich shell-shaped cake
2:  one that evokes a memory"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/madeleine
(ii) madeleine (cake)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_(cake)
(iii) Madeleine (given name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_(given_name)

(B) " I learned to enjoy the wonders in the shop. It had an overhead transit system with motorised lines zigzagging around. The shop assistants would attach the payments to metal clips, the money would travel to the cashier and later the change would travel back."

I can only guess that there is ONE centralized cashier, for the many "shop assistants" (note the plural form).
(C) "Another time, a crowd gathered to watch two women calling each other nasty names. One was foxier than the other, and stood accused of using her charms to get a better slice of pork."

foxy (adj): "physically attractive <a foxy lady>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/foxy
(D) "One day the line spilled outside the shop, and I watched a bus pull in. The conductor leaned out of the window, looking at an old man running to catch the bus. The moment the old man reached the door, panting, the conductor hit the button and banged the door shut, waving goodbye with a wide smile."

"[T]he line spilled outside the shop" and the writer was in the queue outside the shop that made her observation possible. That is what she implies.
(E) "Standing in the queue one Sunday, I noticed a basin of eggs on the counter. [We got the eggs.]  I trailed home a step behind my father, watching more than a dozen eggs, yolks and whites, floating in a clear plastic bag. It was a warm day and we didn’t have a refrigerator, so my father cooked them right away"
(i) I guess
(ii) basin (n): "chiefly British :  a bowl used especially in cooking"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/basin
(iii) Wiki has a page under "pudding basin"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pudding_basin
, which does not provide a photo. Go to images.google.com and you will see it is just a bowl.

choi

(iii) A Place That Inhabits You. Robert Macfarlane keeps going back to 'Treasure Island.'

the first two paragraphs:

"In the beginning was the map. Robert Louis Stevenson drew it in the summer of 1881 to entertain his 12-year-old stepson while on a rainy family holiday in Scotland. It depicts a rough-coasted island of woods, peaks, swamps and coves. A few place-names speak of adventure and disaster: Spyglass Hill, White Rock, The Graves. The penmanship is deft—at the island’s southern end is an intricate compass rose, and the sketch of a galleon at full sail. There are warnings to mariners: "Strong Tides", "Foul Ground". And in the heart of the island is a blood-red cross, by which is scrawled "Bulk of treasure here".

"Stevenson’s map was drawn to set a child dreaming, but it worked most powerfully upon its grown-up author, inspiring Stevenson to write his great pirate novel "Treasure Island" (1883). Poring over the map, he began to populate his landscape with characters (Long John Silver, Captain Flint), and to thicken it with plot. Up from that flat page sprang one of the most compellingly realised of all imaginary places

Note:
(A) There is no need to read the rest.
(B) Treasure Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Island
(by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson; First published as a book on 23 May 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881 and 1882; Stevenson deliberately leaves the exact date of the novel obscure)

The Wiki page does not mention how Mr Stevenson came up with the story: stepson etc.
(C) compass rose
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_rose