A short piece in the New York Times magazine exposes a common fear: that knowing how something works removes the mystery, or destroys the magic. In this case, the author is talking about recent advances in neuroscience in understanding the human brain: The human brain is mysterious — and, in a way, that is a […]
The statistically improbable phrase
I have a new favorite catchphrase this week, provided by a unique search function within Amazon.com. It turns out, now that the on-line retailer has access to the inside content of many of its books, it’s been adding more elaborate search functions to its service. One of the more interesting is the algorithm for ‘statistically […]
Well, there goes THAT argument
Technology, science, and trend author Steven Johnson has a new book that strikes to the heart of a traditional argument for nonprofit culture in American communities. Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter challenges the common assumption that popular culture makes us stupid, which, by extension, challenges […]
The essentials of science distilled
Spiked has a great piece featuring short responses from 250 renowned scientists (at least Spiked says they’re renowned, which will have to do). They asked each of these big-brained individuals ”what they would teach the world about science and why, if they could pick just one thing.” Supporting my previous post(s) on the subject, their […]
Deconstructing the symphony (at least a fake one)
Last month, I took part in a fabulous leadership roundtable discussion hosted by the Heinz Endowments in Pittsburgh (which inspired me to talk about hammers and sponges). Part of our assignment in advance of the meeting was to draft a short case description of an arts organization that reconsidered its business model in response to […]
Radical Restructure at the Fictitious Symphony
Can a symphony fulfill its mission more effectively if it deconstructs itself? That’s the premise of this fictional case study, prepared to spur conversation at a leadership roundtable at the Heinz Endowments in April 2005.
Take a friend to orchestra month
My weblog neighbor, Drew McManus, has dubbed May ‘take a friend to orchestra month,’ and is jamming the festivities with personal stories from around the country. Says Drew: Throughout the month of May, Adaptistration will feature several of the most entertaining, insightful, and clever culture and classical music bloggers as they write about how average […]
The dance of donors, cities, and arts projects
The ramp-up to a new cultural facility is an exceptionally complex dance, between project proponents, public officials, public opinion, and private donors. What will we build? Where will we build it? Who will pay for it? And when are those payments due? That dance just entered a very public phase in Richmond, Virginia, after the […]
Facing submersion, ship captain decides to take on more water
A headline in yesterday’s Boston Globe offers a strange and compelling problem/solution set: Facing debt, Wang to produce its own shows In other words, in response to excess risk and exposure to losses from touring performances, Boston’s Wang Center for the Performing Arts has decided to increase its risk and exposure to loss as a […]
How many users does it take to become odd?
Tom Foremski poses an interesting question on the Silicon Valley Watcher, a site that tracks and analyzes business and business culture in Silicon Valley: …how large of a population is needed before a community starts exhibiting spontaneous, unpredictable, aggregate behaviors. Is it 500 people, 15,000? The question springs from the strange and emergent behavior that […]
