“When physicists translated a 13th-century Latin text into modern equations, they discovered that the English theologian who wrote it had unwittingly predicted the idea of the multiverse in 1225. While the work probably won’t advance current models, it does show that some of the philosophical conundrums posed by cosmology are surprisingly pervasive.”
Should Actors Say Goodbye To California?
“If you’re having trouble getting in rooms in L.A. and you’re open to moving, or you have some sort of connection to the Southeast, then you’re better off moving to a hub like New Orleans or Atlanta and taking advantage of this market.”
Bookaholic? You And Your Bestie Are Now In The (Print!) OED
“The dictionary covers everything, not just words average people use in daily conversation. Among the new entries, for example, are drool-inducing adjectives like ethnopharmacologic and now-extinct creatures like the scimitar-horned oryx. (We’ll pour one out for you, Ory.)”
Lyricist Tim Rice On The Key To Success: Failure
“I always worry today when I see everybody has to pass – there’s very little failure these days. I think failure is the best thing for some people.”
Turn It Down! (We’ve Made The World Too Loud And We’re Being Hurt By It)
“Hearing-damaged infants become hearing-damaged teenagers who listen to loud music that further damages their hearing, who then become hearing-damaged adults who go to events that further damage their hearing, who then have children whose hearing is damaged because their parents cannot hear.”
Professional Writers Unions Admit Self-Published Authors (So What’s The Point?)
“If anyone who declares herself to be a writer is one, then what is the point of a professional organization? Will the group be taken at all seriously?”
Saudi Book Fair Yanks Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Blasphemous’ Poetry
“The publications administration at the [Riyadh International] book fair, one of the biggest of its kind in the Arab world, ordered the removal of all books containing [the Palestinian poet’s] work after youths from the religious police complained about the content of the books. … Darwish, who died in 2008, is considered a modern Arab literary giant.”
Paul Taylor Dance Co. to Relaunch With Other Choreographers’ Works
“‘I prefer to think I’m going to live forever,’ said Mr. Taylor, 83 years old. ‘At some point, they’re going to not let me make dances anymore, so I have to think ahead.'”
How Did the Stakes for TV Series Finales Get So High?
“When I heard pleas from several friends in the week leading up to the last episode that True Detective would ‘stick the landing,’ it wasn’t just out of a hope that the narrative would tie up in a satisfying catharsis. The statement was filled with more anxiety than that – the need for a tangible return on obsessive investment.”
It’s Awkward to Be Writing a Novel Set in Present-Day Crimea
David Bezmozgis: “As I was writing the book, I kept changing when the action was set, constantly pushing the date ahead by another year … I closely followed the news to see if real events had yet outpaced my inventions. I expected this to happen at any moment in Israel, … [not in] Ukraine and Crimea, places I’d believed to be locked in a dismal kleptocratic stasis.”
Being a Paparazzo
As part of its series “You Hate My Job”, Marketplace sends a correspondent to work with guerrilla celebrity photographer and photo agency head Giles Harrison. (includes video and audio)
Every Choreographer Should Have Camille A. Brown’s Problems
She’ll have to miss seeing her choreography in Friday night’s opening of the new musical The Fortress of Solitude – because she’ll be dancing with her own company in their Boston debut. (She doesn’t mind so much.)
I Made the Muslim Hipster Video
The original #mipster, Layla Shaikley, describes the exciting responses – and the dismaying backlashes – to the two-and-a-half-minute video clip that went viral last year.
Could Phobias and Addictions Be Treated With a Pill?
“Drugs that work to boost learning may help someone with a phobia to ‘detrain their brain’, losing the fearful associations that fuel their panic. This approach is also showing promise for a host of other problems – from chemical and gambling addictions to obsessive nail-biting.”
Behind the Arthur Chu Backlash: Why Are Americans So Protective of ‘Jeopardy!’?
“To understand why [the nine-time winner’s] controversial but effective strategy upset so many viewers, it’s worth looking back at why the show first became a TV staple in the Cold War era.”
But How Do Psychiatrists Treat Werewolves?
Yes, this is a thing. “In the psychiatric literature, the werewolf hallucinations and delusions the patient was experiencing are broadly classified as clinical lycanthropy, or lycomania.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.13.14
Picasso Museum: Reopening With What?
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-03-14
How Did We Ever Get By Without Justice?
AJBlog: PostClassic | Published 2014-03-14
Will Gentrification Kill Music Scenes?
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-03-13
Respecting the craft
AJBlog: The Artful Manager | Published 2014-03-13
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Man Saved By Pianos In NYC Building Collapse
“The pianos flew in the air — pianos were all around me,” he said. “They were literally on their side. I was stuck in some miraculous cocoon” of pianos, he said of the massive wood and steel instruments that fell benignly around his body — shielding him from the weight of five stories worth of debris.
Association Of Art Museum Directors Condemns College Art Museum Sale
“The prohibition against the sale of works of art from museum collections for such purposes is a violation of one of the most fundamental professional principles of the art museum field,” the museum directors’ association said in a statement.
Is Your DNA As An Actor Set In The Womb?
“While raw talent and rigorous training are clearly vital, recent research suggests the importance of an even more fundamental factor: The level of testosterone the budding thespian was exposed to in his or her mother’s womb.”
Conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi On The Responsibilities And Rewards Of Being An Artist
“I don’t like the idea that artists should keep out of politics. The more you know and understand art, the more you have to defend values. You should speak up—and early enough to matter.”
10,000 Hours Of Practice Can Let You Master Anything? Science Weighs In On The Idea
Different levels of deliberate practice can only explain one third of the variation in performance levels in chess players and musicians, the authors found, “leaving the majority of the reliable variance unexplained and potentially explainable by other factors.”
What They Almost Called The Internet 25 Years Ago
Tim Berners-Lee: Mine of Information, The Information Mine, The Mesh. None had quite the right ring.
Getty Endowment Recovers
“An audited financial statement posted on the Getty’s website reflects investment gains totaling $766.74 million from mid-2012 to mid-2013, enough to cover expenses while socking away about $534 million for the endowment. Officials said the endowment gained an additional $300 million during the second half of 2013, reaching $6.2 billion by year’s end.”