ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

IDEAS

Study: Gut Bacteria In Boys Linked To Heightened Brain Cognition

Boys at one year of age with a gut bacterial composition that was high in the bacteria Bacteroidetes were found to have more advanced cognition and language skills one year later. - MedicalXpress

The Therapy Game – How Games Are Therapy

Therapy can and even sometimes should feel like a game. For when we play, we are present. But more importantly, we are malleable, dropping preconceived notions of what should or shouldn’t happen. - Los Angeles Times

Study: We Could Prevent 20 Percent Of Deaths By Redesigning Cities

Research has shown, for instance, that 20% of all deaths could be prevented if cities were designed to meet the recommendations for physical activity, air pollution, noise, heat, and green space. - Fast Company

Prospect’s List Of The World’s Top Fifty Thinkers

When we turn to the world of ideas, this is a year for people who are individualists by temperament, if not intellect. - Prospect

How Mathematical Models Gave Us An Advantage With COVID

Enormously useful mathematical tools that have been put to work during the pandemic—from classical differential equations to more recent techniques such as Monte Carlo methods and Markov chains—were in many cases invented by mathematicians who had no particular goal in mind. - Nautilus

They Said COVID Would Kill Cities. Clearly It Hasn’t

What is so alluring about the perpetually imminent End of Cities? Why won’t that idea itself die? - The New York Times

Why Debate Over Critical Race Theory Has Nothing To Do With It

Recall the central claims of CRT. Racism is a big, systemic problem in America. If you don’t recognize that, if we can’t at least start from there, it may be that rational, empirical debate no longer has any place – if it ever did. - 3 Quarks Daily

What To Do With The Artists Who Were Bad People?

So little of what well known thinkers and artists did or said is actually reflected in public consciousness,  assuming it makes a showing at all. This can lead people to reject the idea of engaging with them. - 3 Quarks Daily

Are We In The Metaverse Now?

Have you played Animal Crossing during the pandemic? Zoomed into work? You're in it. (We're all in it.) - The New York Times

Despite The Headlines, There Is No Debate Over Actual Critical Race Theory

CRT critics "aren’t arguing against anti-racist thinkers. They aren’t arguing against critical race theorists. These critics are arguing against themselves." - The Atlantic

We Will Soon Be Able To Fix Our Own Phones

Drop your phone? At long last, we'll all be legally allowed to repair it. - The Verge

When Artists Decided To Make Pop Culture The Raw Materials For Their Work

In the 1950s and 60s artists increasingly looked at the products of pop culture as ideas and materials they could use for their own work. Louis Menand explains. - New York Review of Books

Just How Do You Determine What’s Cultural Appropriation?

Scholarly consensus regarding cultural appropriation has long accepted that the lines between cultural appreciation and appropriation may be difficult to clearly determine in real time, and especially within the contemporary social media-driven zeitgeist. - The Conversation

Don’t Be So Quick To Call It A Cult

If we accept that cult members have some degree of volition, the job of distinguishing cults from other belief-based organizations becomes a good deal more difficult. - The New Yorker

How To Think About The “Big Data” Economy

Policy makers, economists, techies, lawyers, business leaders, and consumers should borrow an idea from cultural anthropology and consider the concept of “barter.” - Harvard Business Review

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