“Ignoring the idea of willpower will sound absurd to most patients and therapists, but, as a practicing addiction psychiatrist and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, I’ve become increasingly skeptical about the very concept of willpower, and concerned by the self-help obsession that surrounds it. Countless books and blogs offer ways to “boost self-control,” or even to “meditate your way to more willpower,” but what’s not widely recognized is that new research has shown some of the ideas underlying these messages to be inaccurate.”
Our Human Evolution Has To Be Due To More Than Biology
Daniel Dennett and others argue, genetic evolution is not enough to explain the skills, power and versatility of the human mind. Over the past 10,000 years, human behaviour and our ability to manipulate the planet have changed too quickly for biological evolution to have been the driving force. In Dennett’s view, our brains turned into fully fledged modern minds thanks to cultural memes: ‘ways of behaving’ — pronouncing a word this way, dancing like so — that can be copied, remembered and passed on.
Willpower – A Bad Idea That It’s Time To Get Rid Of
Cark Erik Fisher: “As a practicing addiction psychiatrist and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, I’ve become increasingly skeptical about the very concept … More fundamentally, the common, monolithic definition of willpower distracts us from finer-grained dimensions of self-control and runs the danger of magnifying harmful myths.”
Time Is Contagious
The experience of time, that is. “As we converse with and consider one another, we step in and out of one other’s experience, including the other’s perceptions (or what we imagine to be another’s perception, based on our own experience) of time. Not only does duration bend, we are continuously sharing these small flexions among us like a currency or social glue.” Alan Burdick explains how this works.
Small Liberal Arts College Gets $100 Million Worth Of Art For Its Museum
Colby College’s Museum of Art is already the largest in the state of Maine, thanks in large part to previous gifts by Peter and Paula Lunder of a major collection of American art (itself worth $100 million) and of 100 Picasso etchings. Now the Lunders have made another gift of 1,500 works ranging from Rembrandt to van Gogh to Whistler to Ai Weiwei.
English Is The International Language Of Science. There’s A Problem With That
“Monolingual ghettos are bad for science. In 2004, work on the transfer of H5N1 flu from birds to pigs languished unread in Chinese while critical time was lost. In the study’s sample, only half of Spanish-language papers and a third of those in Japanese even had abstracts in English. Those that did, unsurprisingly, were more likely to be published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals. But the bird-flu case shows that that hardly includes all the science that matters. Some good scientists still can’t write in English. The solution is not to replace English, but to encourage multilingualism wherever practical, and require it when needed.”
Why Do Haruki Murakami’s Books Spend So Much Time On Cooking And Eating?
In a Murakami novel, cooking – and eating – means everything. “Cooking meals is more than a signal of independence though, it’s an introspective behavior that provides order to the chaos of the outside world.”
Is Great Britain Too Depressed For Museums Now?
Financial constraints, educational culture budgets slashed, and people staying away from the money-suck that is London – “the same economic pressures that have uprooted politics around the world are destroying the aspirations we express when we go to galleries. There is nothing more aspirational than visiting a museum or art gallery. It is an expression of hope.”
Next Steps For Middle Eastern Theatre In The U.S.
Though its practitioners say this isn’t a new discussion, the contours of Middle Eastern theatre have taken on sharper focus after the election of Donald Trump. But it’s also very like other theatre for practitioners from communities of color: “The next round is equal parts main stage productions … and expanding to directors and designers of Middle Eastern descent. That would be radical.”
No, British People, European Plays Aren’t ‘Infecting’ Your Precious Theatre
Let’s face it: “In dark times we need each to do what we can from the centre of our individual strength, skill, understanding and experience. Theatre-makers – playwrights, actors, directors and the rest – need to tell the hard, dark, contradictory truths as we see them, as generously and in as grown-up a manner as we can manage.
Some Interesting Theories ABout What Sleep Does For Us
“In recent years, there’s been evidence that sleep is important not just for remembering relevant stuff, but also for forgetting irrelevant things. Perhaps the mass-downscaling of synapses is part of that ‘smart forgetting.’
Talk Of Canceling This Year’s Oscars
“The suggestion that the Oscars be canceled this year stems in part from principle. The idea of artists being barred from attending the ceremony because of their country of origin is markedly against the global principles of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Though it’s often derided for its stodgy choices, the Best Foreign Language Film category does bring wider attention to international filmmaking.”
Kids Ask A Lot Of Questions. Here Is The Way To Answer Them
“Giving a good answer to a ‘Why?’ question is not just a philosophical abstraction. An explanation has cognitive, real-world functions. It promotes learning and discovery, and good explanatory theories are vital to smoothly navigating the environment. In this sense, an explanation is what is known as a speech act, which is an utterance that serves a certain function in communication.”
Alexander Chancellor, 77, Editor Who Transformed The Spectator (And Had A Disastrous Year At The New Yorker)
While he had successful stints at most of London’s broadsheet newspapers, Chancellor was best known for turning The Spectator from a tired old Tory weekly into a lively magazine he once described as “more of a cocktail party than a political party.”
Calatrava’s New £1 Billion Project For London Will Change The Skyline
“Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava has designed a 24 metre-high (79ft) glass arcade with “winter garden” atrium for the complex, which will be topped by three towers, each rising more than 30 storeys above North Greenwich station, which is to be renamed Greenwich Peninsula.”
Six Critics Name Six Ways ‘Girls’ Changed Television (Or Didn’t)
For instance, sex: “According to Hollywood, women can have completely satisfying sexual experiences without ever taking off their bras, and manage to reach euphoric orgasms within minutes. Girls never bothered with any of these tropes. From the show’s first episode, the sex was sweaty, it was weird, it was jiggly, it was unflattering. Which is to say: It was realistic.”
A BIG Ten-Year Drop In Visitors To UK Public Libraries
“Despite ministerial pledges to halt the decimation of library services, the report from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport found that the number of adults who had visited a public library in the 12 months to the end of September 2016 fell to 33.8%, from 48.2% 10 years earlier.”
Amadeus – First It Was A Play, Then A Movie, Now A Play/Movie…
“Britain’s National Theatre has a sold-out hit with a revival of Peter Shaffer’s play about bad-boy genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his jealous rival Antonio Salieri, composer to the 18th-century Viennese court. The production, which mixes actors, opera singers and a 20-piece onstage orchestra, is being broadcast in movie theaters around the world Thursday as part of the NT Live series. There are repeat screenings over the coming weeks.”
Want To Reach New Audiences For Your Contemporary Dance? Stop Using Arty, Abstruse Titles
Lyndsey Winship, citing such examples as Siobhan Davies’s’ material/rearranged/to/be and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Babel(words) and m¡longa: “It’s the choreographer’s prerogative, of course, but in an art form that already feels distant and unreadable to some audiences, being wilfully abstruse in your labelling doesn’t exactly help. … It can feel as though artists are attempting to prove their cleverness and exclusivity when jargon actually functions as a barrier rather than an invitation.”
Bolshoi Prima Ballerina On How It Feels To Dance The Dual Lead In ‘Swan Lake’
Svetlana Zakharova: “This ballet is so difficult, not just technically, but also on an emotional level. It’s so complex. You need to be 100 percent sure that you have the full technique, that you will be interesting to the audience, that during the White Adagio, people won’t be able to tear their eyes away from you.” (includes video)
One Of Broadway’s Oldest Surviving Theaters Is Now Its Youngest
“When the Hudson Theater reopens on Saturday, Feb. 11 – with Jake Gyllenhaal adding star power to the revival of Sunday in the Park With George – it becomes Broadway’s 41st and newest playhouse, 114 years after it became one of Broadway’s first. (It opened with a production of Cousin Kate starring Ethel Barrymore.)” Erik Piepenburg offers a history of the house, with photos.
Revolving Auditorium To Be Part Of New Creative District In Liverpool
The theatre and music venue would be the first in Britain (and only the third in the world) with a rotating seating area in the center of the hall and stages/performing spaces against the walls. The hall is part of the proposed Ten Streets creative district, plans for which have just been revealed.
Fired Director Of Shakespeare’s Globe Talks About Her Sacking – And Why She’s Still There
The board of the replica 16th-century theatre in London decided to replace Emma Rice last November, just a year into her initial two-year contract. Yet she’s still on the job, and she’s just announced the details of this summer’s season, her last there – and she’s explained why she didn’t just walk away.
Uffizi Gallery In Florence Begins Long-Term Project To Show More Female Artists From History
The initiative, which begins next month with an exhibition devoted to Suor Plautilla Nelli (1523-87), the first known female painter in Florence, grew out of a conversation between Uffizi director Eike Schmidt and the Guerrilla Girls.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.02.17
Resilience: The Spirit of 9/12
We remember the fear and uncertainty of 9/11. … But what do we remember of 9/12? What do we remember of the long and arduous process that commenced the next day – the effort to restore calm, order and clarity? How long did it take to achieve strategic thinking?… read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2017-02-02
Classical music — the definition
My students – in my Juilliard course on classical music’s future – came up with a definition that I think works. … It’s in two parts. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2017-02-02
More On That Revolutionary Art: Unscrolled
As I mentioned yesterday, the soon-to-open Museum of the American Revolution will hang a copy of Louis Charles-Auguste Couder’s Siege of Yorktown (1781). It hangs in the Hall of the Battles at Versailles. The copy, I’ve now learned, … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-02-01
The Conflation Index
When faced with stress or dramatic change in our environment, we humans have a tendency to conflate things in our thinking — to bundle two or more separate ideas or issues or observations into one. … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2017-02-01