Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
A Vast Mayan Kingdom Discovered In Guatemala
Their findings reveal a “level of infrastructure that is just mind-boggling,” said Dr. Timothy Beach, a professor of geography at the University of Texas at...
Penguin Random House CEO Steps Down
Madeline McIntosh, a popular figure in publishing circles who steered Penguin Random House U.S. through the recent Covid-19 pandemic and championed a more inclusive...
The Baby Boomers Changed Everything. What Happens When They’re Gone?
They were a cohort of historically unprecedented size, whose basic need to be clothed, fed, housed and educated was a decades-long jobs creator and...
Last Week A Plan To Close The Vancouver Folk Music Festival. This Week A...
An open letter from the board says several parties have offered possible solutions for funding and support since it announced the plan to end...
Why We’re Missing Memories From The Pandemic
We might assume that our pandemic memories are missing because information entered our brains, then slipped from it—like a toy tumbling out of a clumsy...
A Nun From 900 Years Ago Had A Profound Influence On Music (And Does...
Hildegard’s fame has crossed over into zones of New Age spirituality, environmental discourse, and feminist thought. In the gift shop at the Hildegard Abbey,...
A Successful Life? Freedom From Anxiety
The more general such claims are, the easier it is to agree. But when we delve into what makes the various philosophers different, what...
Artists Believe Copyright Benefits Them. But Corporations Are The Biggest Beneficiaries
The extension of copyright has been described as essentially stealing cultural works from the public. - The Conversation
Saudi Arabia Plays With Building A Dystopian City
It is a city that might have been conceived by WeWork’s founder Adam Neumann in consultation with FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried, with the benefit...
The Rise (Again) Of Barnes & Noble
The chain, long in contraction, is expanding for the first time in a decade. It plans to open 30 new stores this year. It is increasingly...
Creativity In The Age Of “Synthetic Media”
Synthetic Media is produced by human creators who use computers and purpose-built software (including AI) to realize their production goals. Generative Synthetic Media is...
How Technology Makes Us More Human
What defines humanity is not just our unusual level of intelligence, but also how we capitalize on that intelligence... If we merely lived up...
A Copy Editor Disavows Copyediting
It’s clear that copyediting as it’s typically practiced is a white supremacist project, that is, not only for the particular linguistic forms it favors...
Black Dancers In Pacific Northwest Ballet Reflect On Their Careers
When you see more people who look like you onstage, it makes you want to go and it makes you want to bring people...
Naps Are A Creative Canvas
The relationship between sleep, dreaming, and creativity has been the subject of conjecture for hundreds of years. Reports of creative inspiration and discoveries made...
Tales From The Road: The Book-signings/readings No One Comes To
In-person author appearances are back in local bookstores, after a long pandemic absence. And for every standing-room-only reading featuring a massively well-known name, there...
No, We Don’t Have Different Learning Styles
Despite its appeal, there is simply no credible evidence to support the idea that attending to learning styles actually supports learning, regardless of how...
It Isn’t Just Humanities: Science Education Is Seriously Broken
Leaders see science as essential to national prosperity, well-being and, of course, competitiveness. So, is research fit for the challenge of advancing, refining or...
The Dancers Who Escaped Russia
If the war has made refugees out of some Ukrainian dancers, it's made soldiers out of others. - 60 Minutes
Intriguing Questions About How AI Trains On Large Language Models
Do they merely memorize training data and reread it out loud, or are they picking up the rules of English grammar and the syntax...
As Deepfakes Proliferate, Countries Struggle With What’s Real
The worst abusers of the technology tend to be the hardest to catch, operating anonymously, adapting quickly and sharing their synthetic creations through borderless...
Archaeologists Find 9000-Year-Old Stonehenge-Like Structure On The Bottom Of Lake Michigan
They uncovered a rock with a prehistoric carving of a mastodon, as well as a collection of stones arranged in a Stonehenge-like manner. -...
Kids Want Books. Increasingly Librarians Aren’t Allowed To Provide Them
States and districts nationwide have begun to constrain what librarians can order. At least 10 states have passed laws giving parents more power over...
What If Diversity Training Exercises Are Making Things Worse?
There’s little evidence that many of these initiatives work. And the specific type of diversity training that is currently in vogue — mandatory trainings...
Can ChatGPT Replace Human Writers? No, But It Can Make Them Better
I decided to try a combination of tools to see if the AI-assisted work product would outperform my purely original work. Unsurprisingly, the work...
