“Ideas change, and the times we live in change. Perhaps the biggest change today is the rate of change. What established scientific idea is ready to be moved aside so that science can advance?”
Have Scientists Lost Their Humanist Authority?
“Today science and the “philosophy of mind”—its thoughtful assistant, which is sometimes smarter than the boss—are threatening Western culture with the exact opposite of humanism. Call it roboticism. Man is the measure of all things, Protagoras said. Today we add, and computers are the measure of all men.”
Winton Dean, World’s Top Handel Scholar, Dead at 97
He was known as an astute critic and a historian of Beethoven and Bizet, it was “his series of books on Handel … completed when he was 90 – that indelibly lingered and really mattered.”
The Hidden Workshop of Expert Piano Craftswomen
A visit to an out-of-the-way atelier in Florence where an all-female team restores historic fortepianos.
The Turing Test And Spike Jonze’s “Her”
“To those who would argue that a computer’s demonstration of humanlike behavior is hardly enough to make it legitimately ‘conscious’, Turing responds that the same can be said of human behavior … Belief in the minds of others is just as much of a leap as love is. Following Turing’s logic, Twombly is not a solipsist for getting emotionally involved with his O.S.; he’d be a solipsist not to.”
So Where Are We On A New Business Model For The Music Business?
“There is a disconnect between an external perception which is still [us as] a cartoonish baddy, versus what we have done over the last 10 years. We have really matured, grown as a business, we have added skill sets from outside. All this soul searching, all this disruption has had a positive upside.”
Chinese Movie Box Office Zoomed In 2013
China’s movie box office topped $3.6 billion in 2013, up about 27% over 2012, with home-grown fare drawing particularly large crowds and driving down Hollywood’s share of the market.
In 1964 Isaac Asimov Predicted What Life In 2014 Would Be Like. Here’s What He Said
”[T]he most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!” in our ”a society of enforced leisure.”
Can-Do Culture Versus Can’t-Do Culture
“The trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time. That’s why they are innovative — until now, nobody ever figured out that they were good ideas.”
Korean Investors Become Players on Broadway
With East Asia becoming a major market for Broadway musicals, producers from Seoul are investing millions in New York shows in the hope of getting dibs on production rights.
Mark Twain, the Coen Brothers, and Translating Salvadoran Short Stories
“When Nelson Lopéz was preparing the first bilingual translation of Tales of Clay, a landmark short-story collection by the legendary Salvadoran writer known as Salarrué, he turned for inspiration to some unlikely sources: Mark Twain and the Coen brothers.”
Top AJBlog Posts For 01.01.14
Hoping For A Better 2014 For The Cleveland Museum
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2014-01-01
‘In Praise of Folly’: Advice for 2014 or Any Year
Source: Straight|Up | Published on 2014-01-01
End Of The Year Thoughts On Museums And Money
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2013-12-31
‘JFK Customs destroyed 11 of my instruments’
Source: Slipped Disc | Published on 2013-12-31