“A baby giraffe can stand within an hour of birth, and can even potentially flee predators on its first day of life. A monkey can grasp its mother and hang on for protection and nourishment. A human infant can’t even hold up its own head. … Humans are born quite helpless, far more so than any other primate, but, fairly early on, we start becoming quite smart, again far more so than any other primate. What if this weren’t a contradiction so much as a causal pathway?”
‘I Think We Should Approach The Operas With More Humility Than That’ – David McVicar On Regieoper
“The debate about production style – a lot of time audiences are unhappy about production style – and I am too when I see some work, particularly in Germany, because what I’m detecting is a director saying, ‘I have to make my mark with this piece. I have to do something that will never be forgotten.’ And I think that’s such a dull way of proceeding because I think we should approach the operas with more humility than that. All of us.”
How Do You Explain Color To Someone Who’s Always Been Blind?
“It’s a challenge that renders all the normal visual frames of reference completely useless – you can’t say that green is the color of grass, or blue is the color of water, because they haven’t seen those things. But they have felt them.”
Is Writing Just A Technology, Or Is It A Different Language From Speech?
“Arrival, the forthcoming sci-fi drama, is that rare bird: a Hollywood film featuring a linguist as the main character.” With that as a (quite relevant, as it turns out) jumping-off point, linguist Chi Luu argues that writing is far more separate from speech than most of us realize – and that the linguistic problem at the heart of this new movie (yes, there are spoilers) is just a logical extension of that difference.
Turkish Government Shuts Down Archaeological Work At Ephesus
“Turkey’s crackdown on dissent has spread to the field of archaeology, with a dig at the ancient site of Ephesus in western Turkey suspended because of a political dispute with Austria. The project, run by the Austrian Archaeological Institute, was forced by the Turkish government to stop work at the end of August, despite two more months of planned conservation at the site.”
What We’ve Learned From Studying Generations Of Gifted Kids
“As the longest-running current longitudinal survey of intellectually talented children, SMPY has for 45 years tracked the careers and accomplishments of some 5,000 individuals, many of whom have gone on to become high-achieving scientists. The study’s ever-growing data set has generated more than 400 papers and several books, and provided key insights into how to spot and develop talent in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and beyond.”
FTC Cracks Down On Brain-Training Site Lumosity
“The privately held company, based in San Francisco, has drawn in 70 million people over the past decade to play games that challenge users to remember sequences of brightly colored animations, or to ignore visual distractions and click only on certain objects. The FTC charged that Lumosity oversold the benefits of the games.”
Oldest Surviving Manuscript From Americas, Long Questioned, Is Declared Genuine
“The Grolier Codex, an ancient document that is among the rarest books in the world, has been regarded with skepticism since it was reportedly unearthed by looters from a cave in Chiapas, Mexico, in the 1960s. But a new study yields a startling conclusion: The codex is both genuine and likely the most ancient of all surviving manuscripts from ancient America.”
What The Smithsonian’s African-American Museum Means For African-American Washington, D.C.
“‘All cultures need places where their things can land and be celebrated,’ [Theaster] Gates says. ‘For D.C., locals now have the bragging rights of having a home for reflection on black lives and black trauma. They get to share this amazing museum with the world.'”
Digital Archives From The Hammer Museum Are Another ‘Game Changer’
“The project goes beyond just creating a bells-and-whistles exhibition website. The archive features important essays generated by the show, links to outside coverage, as well as documentation, photography and other research material.”
What’s Next For Theatre After The Times Stops Covering Its Own Region?
“We are concerned about our family of artists and the ecosystem of the field.”
Librarian Leaves University Of New Hampshire $4 Million (Which He Saved, Working As A Librarian)
Morin’s financial adviser, Edward Mullen, said the library worker was able to accumulate so much wealth because he never spent any money. Mullen started working with Morin in the early 1970s, and said by the 2000s he had saved quite a bit of cash in his checking and savings accounts. There was almost $1 million in his retirement account alone.
Why You Don’t Want A Hot Nice Cup Of Coffee: The Rules Of Adjective Order That English-Speakers Don’t Know They Know
Adjective-order restrictions, as they’re called, happen in plenty of languages. But the ones in English – with the mnemonic acronym OSASCOMP – drive English-language learners nuts, even as native speakers follow the rules unconsciously.
60-Foot Kenny Scharf Mural Stolen For Second Time (But Now There’s Video)
“A 60-foot-long mural by street artist Kenny Scharf [titled NEVERENDINGOGO] has been stolen from the East River Esplanade in Harlem for the second time – but at least this time the heist was captured on camera.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Last Unpublished Stories Will See Print Next Year
“The collection, due to be published in April 2017 by Simon & Schuster imprint Scribner, is mainly drawn from stories written in the mid and late 1930s. It ranges from work that Fitzgerald was unable to sell because its ‘subject matter or style departed from what editors expected of [the author] in the 1930s’, Scribner said, to writing that he submitted to magazines, and which was accepted for publication but never printed.”
‘An Open Invitation To Commit Suicide’ – The Winner Of The 2016 Carbuncle Cup
“The Lincoln Plaza housing tower in east London by BUJ Architects has been awarded the Carbuncle Cup 2016 [for Britain’s worst new building of the year] by architecture website BD. … Architect and critic Ike Ijeh, who was one of the competition judges, has called the building a ‘putrid pugilistic horror show that should never have been built’.”
Performing Arts Orgs Say UK’s Tax Relief Program Has Made A Huge Difference
“Producers have hailed the government’s theatre tax relief as ‘game changing’ and ‘essential’ two years after it was introduced. Both commercial and subsidised producers have praised the scheme, with claims it had allowed companies to stage and commission more shows, and create ‘more ambitious’ work.”
Okay, Okay, Critics, You Can Have Your +1 Tickets, Says Britain’s National Theatre
“In a letter to critics, the venue said that a policy it had been planning to introduce from August this year, giving reviewers just a single seat to its shows on press night and the option to buy another for £20, has been dropped.” (The critics were no happy to read this.)
Humans Versus The Algorithms
“Yes, everything on the Internet is a mix of the human and inhuman. Automated algorithms play a very big role in some services, like, say, the Google Search Engine. But humans play a role in these services too. Humans whitelist and blacklist sites on the Google Search Engine. They make what you might think of as manual decisions, in part because today’s algorithms are so flawed. What’s more—and this is just stating what should be obvious—humans write the algorithms. That’s not insignificant.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda And Coping With Sudden Mega-Fame
“Toward the end of my run in the Broadway company, you know, it got a little scary outside the theater. I was negotiating secret exits the last month of the run. It was unsafe for me to do the stage door. It wasn’t that good fans turned bad or anything like that. It’s just that when people feel like time is finite to see someone, the urgency is what makes it scary. You know, ‘We have to get that selfie now.’ ‘We have to get this autograph right now,’ as opposed to life being long.”
Data – The American Creative Divide: It’s Between North And South
“Those data reveal a somewhat surprising pattern: America’s Great Creative Divide isn’t between the coasts and the center, but rather between North and South. Take a look.”
What Explains The Long-Term Decline In Reading Literature?
“Since the share of American adults with a bachelor’s degree or more has nearly doubled since 1982, you might expect to see a concomitant rise in literary reading. But that hasn’t happened. Indeed, previous research by the NEA has found that drops in the literary reading rate have happened across the board, among all ages, races and educational levels.”
Is FringeNYC’s Contract For Subsidiary Rights Fair?
Most fringe festivals, because they don’t actually produce the plays they present, don’t demand a cut of revenue from subsequent productions. But the New York International Fringe Festival requires a 2% cut of subsidiary rights revenue from any production anywhere on Earth for the next seven years. Howard Sherman gets both FringeNYC and the Dramatists Guild to explain their opposing positions on the issue, and then gives a verdict.
Nacho Duato Out, Sasha Waltz In At Staatsballett Berlin
“Nacho Duato is on the move again. After two years as artistic director of Staatsballett Berlin, Duato has announced that he will be handing his post over to a co-directing team of choreographer Sasha Waltz and Johannes Öhman, who is currently artistic director at Royal Swedish Ballet.”
Tate Modern’s New Extension Has A Peeping-Tom Problem
“Residents of London’s Neo Bankside luxury apartment complex, next to the Tate Modern, have lately been dismayed to find photographs of their living rooms and bedrooms popping up on strangers’ Instagram feeds.”