Why Writing About Science Seems Like Little More Than PR
“Think about it. For every article singing the praises of new science, how often do you see one that is critical? Not often. Unless you’re talking about eugenics or fission bombs, a new scientific result or technology is almost always treated as an unequivocally good thing.”
What Machine Learning Is Teaching Us About How We Learn
“By bringing the tools of computation and machine intuition to the table, AI researchers are giving us a more complete picture of how we learn. They are also broadening the study of education to include quantitative, numerical models of the learning process itself. “The thing that AI brings to the table is that it forces us to get into the details of how everything works,” says John Laird, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan. If there was any doubt that good teachers are important, machine learning is helping put it to rest.”
The Currency Of Feelings – What’s It Worth To You?
“The primacy of feelings in our economy has given rise to a new field of scholarly inquiry. ‘Affect studies’ refers to humanistic and social-scientific investigations of the ways that feelings are generated, experienced, and interpreted. An affect is a particular kind of feeling, one distinct from an emotion. For academics in the field, affects are feelings that reside not in individual people but in social groups, institutions, or physical spaces.”
This Is About To Become The Largest Private Museum In America
“With the new addition, dubbed the Pavilions, Glenstone’s exhibition space will increase fivefold. Eight of the nine discrete but linked buildings will be dedicated to the work of a single artist, including Brice Marden, Charles Ray, Michael Heizer and Cy Twombly. (The ninth pavilion will house special exhibitions.)”
People Who Can Switch Between Street Languages Use Same Cognitive Muscles As Bilinguals
“In the United States, a bidialectal person might be someone who speaks both Standard American English and African-American Vernacular English (called AAVE but also known as ‘Ebonics’), which differ a lot in pronunciation, syntax and vocabulary – so much so that AAVE has controversially been called a distinct language. So do bidialectals enjoy the same cognitive benefits as bilinguals?”
They’re Training Watson To Recognize Emotion, Personality
And then what? As the artificial intelligence computer gets better at understanding humans it starts to interact with them in more complex ways. For now though, Watson is coming up with movie trailers…
The LA Dance Company That Uses Toys And Architecture To Careen Off
Diavolo’s taste for heights, soaring numbers and gigantic playthings hasn’t changed much since its early days, but the method behind the madness has evolved from freewheeling experimentation to fine-tuned research and development, especially after the company was commissioned to develop a trilogy of dance works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2005.
The Payoff For Theatre That Stays Small And Local
“It seems the smaller the community, the more space there is to expand and embellish local narratives. Mixing one part fiction, one part myth, and one part truth, these narratives flourish in the festivals, parades, and plaques that have become the cultural landmarks of a city five miles north of Boston.”
The Next Big Intellectual Revolution Is Coming
All of the past “justice revolutions” have stemmed from improved communications. Oppression thrives on distance, on not actually meeting or seeing the oppressed. The next revolution will not abolish the consequences of place of birth, but the privileges of nationhood will be tempered. While the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment around the world today seems to point in the opposite direction, the sense of injustice will be amplified as communications continue to grow. Ultimately, recognition of wrong will wreak big changes.
Jacques d’Amboise – Still Dancing At 82
“I danced for a long time before I asked myself the question,” he says. The question being, “What is dance?” He now thinks it’s “an invention by human beings to express space and time…to express wonder and emotion by losing control in how we move in time.” Needless to say, that’s something everyone should have in life, in some form, at some time or another. It’s so obvious to D’Amboise he never even says that.
Dear Class Of 2020: You’ve Been Cheated. Time To Build A Bridge To The 16th Century
“The most momentous event in your intellectual formation was the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which ushered in our disastrous fixation on testing. Your generation is the first to have gone through primary and secondary school knowing no alternative to a national regimen of assessment. And your professors are only now beginning to realize how this unrelenting assessment has stunted your imaginations.”
Where Are The Women Artists? Not Here (And Maybe They Shouldn’t Be?)
The first major survey of abstract expressionism since 1959, which has just opened at the Royal Academy, has been accused of displaying too much testosterone. Commentary developed on social media from early visitors asking: “Where were the women?” But what exactly were they expecting? The telling word from the critic is “few”. There were not many women in the movement to be included in the first place.
The Country’s Only Scientific Glassblowing Degree Program
“As they blow into glass tubes, they hover over bright orange flames that reach as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot enough for those stiff tubes to bend like rubbery taffy and twist into candy-cane shapes or snake coils that look machine-made.”
E-books May Be Slipping, But Publishers Hear Audio Is The Next Big Thing
“E-book sales have fallen precipitously for months, in part because many publishers have raised their prices after negotiating with Amazon and gaining the ability to set their own prices.”
The Person Dancers Depend On To Make Those Tutus Flare
“If fashion is chimerical fantasy, Mr. Happel brings a dose of earthbound reality to the work: Will all that detailed embroidery read from far away? Will dancers actually be able to raise their arms in that bodice?”
In The Shadows Of Hollywood, Does Abuse Of Young Actors Thrive?
“If the event resembles a harmless and burlesque version of the better-known award shows, there also has been a darker side to it at times. A handful of people who were actively involved with the show or attended it have been found by authorities to have troubling backgrounds with minors, including two men who were convicted of committing sex crimes against children.”
When A Theatre Venue Shuts Down Suddenly In Virginia, Arts Groups Have To Scramble
“Other venues are stepping in to fill the artistic void, but many people are still expressing disappointment and doubt about the future of the downtown theater.”
The Superhuman Demands Of Singing Tristan
“Young singers usually build their careers by taking on gradually longer and more demanding roles. But the metallic colors and lower vocal center of gravity of prospective Tristans often make them an awkward fit for traditional young tenor repertory.”
A Sneaky Idea To Ship Bikes Safely By Disguising Them As Televisions
Apparently, delivery companies value flat-screen TVs more than bikes.
The Ballerina Triplet Who Escaped The Nazis But Is Still Dancing [AUDIO]
“When things got painful, we’d hug each other and speak either French or German with each other and dance together.”
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Yes, Let’s Keep On Talking About Who ‘Gets’ To Write What, And Why
“A writer has the right to inhabit any character she pleases — she’s always had it and will continue to have it. The complaint seems to be less that some people ask writers to think about cultural appropriation, and more that a writer wishes her work not to be critiqued for doing so, that instead she get a gold star for trying.”
Fine, Let’s Talk About Sombreros And Lionel Shriver
Francine Prose: “Like much of Shriver’s talk, this paragraph contains a kernel of truth encased by a husk of cultural and historical blindness. It seems clear that one part of the fiction writer’s job is ‘to step into other people’s shoes.’ But to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a hat is more than just a hat. Sometimes it is a symbol—and a racist one, at that.”
The Writing Life, And All Of The Self-Sabotage It Includes
“I am locked in a battle between self-doubt and self-discipline, and the former usually wins. I have the concentration of… oh, I like your shoes. It is so much easier to plummet down the sinkhole of Twitter.”
Monty Python’s Terry Jones Diagnosed With Dementia
“Jones, who is from Colwyn Bay in north Wales, was a member of the legendary comedy troupe with Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and the late Graham Chapman. He directed Monty Python’s Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life and co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Gilliam.”
The Intimate Details Of Theatre Poster Design
“I wanted something that you would look at, and without having it hit you heavily, you would understand it came from the ’20s and ’30s. We wanted to show a certain modernity that had style.”
Rolling Stone Sells Almost Half Of Itself To An Investor From Singapore
“BandLab’s investment provides Rolling Stone with the opportunity to expand into the live event, hospitality and merchandising businesses in Asia—areas where BandLab has experience. Its flagship product is a digital platform for creating and sharing music.”
The 32-Year-Old ‘Fixer’ Of Pop Songs
“His is a story of why endurance and persistence are essential in the music business – even if your career seems only to consist of blind alleys at the start.”
This Week in Understanding Audience: Baby Boomers Reinvent The Movie Experience
This week: Baby boomers are breathing new life into movie theatres… Dance clubs are languishing as millennials stay away… Netflix reveals at what point we get hooked on TV series… How the audience changes when admission is free… The Ticket bots strike again on Broadway.
Five Stories/Trends From This Week’s ArtsJournal: How The Arts Speak To Real Life
This Week: Why is it so hard to tell if American theatre is thriving or not?… Have art and technology had a falling out?… Perhaps TV is the solution to our political polarization… The music industry seems to be finally getting it together… A cautionary tale about getting swallowed up by the online world.
Should The Minnesota Orchestra Start Looking For A Successor To Osmo Vanska?
“Much remains uncertain about the future, with orchestras everywhere battling to stop declining attendance figures. In these rapidly evolving circumstances, the relatively short three-year extension to music director Osmo Vänskä’s contract, announced in May 2015, was probably the sensible option for management and conductor. It does, though, snap sharply into focus the real possibility that Vänskä could be gone by August 2019.”