For most of the two and a half centuries since the Reverend Thomas Bayes first made his pioneering contributions to probability theory, his ideas were side-lined. The high priests of statistical thinking condemned them as dangerously subjective and Bayesian theorists were regarded as little better than cranks. It is only over the past couple of decades that the tide has turned.
Our Notions Of Privacy Boundaries Are Changing, A Historical View
This gap between the imagined and actual boundaries around our private lives has been the leitmotif of modern privacy debates. Indeed, the most consistent thread in that history has been the concept’s fundamental instability in the face of social and technological change.
A Centuries-Old Japanese Storytelling Tradition Is Spreading Over The Globe
“Meet kamishibai – from kami, meaning paper and shibai, meaning play or theatre – the ancient Japanese storytelling tool that many librarians, nursing-homes and schools use in several countries around the world.”
The Elusive, Enigmatic, Entirely Indispensable Véra Nabokov
As the great illustrator Saul Steinber once put it, “It would be difficult to write about Véra without mentioning Vladimir. But it would impossible to write about Vladimir without mentioning Véra.” Miranda Popkey looks at how and Véra remains so fascinating, despite her strenuous attempts to erase herself.
The First Feminist Comedy Club Is Now Open On Sunset Boulevard
“On Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard, a street bursting with comedy clubs and live acts, lies a small theater devoted to a new kind of entertainment: inclusive comedy. The Ruby is a self-described comedy theater and school ‘openly founded on the ideals of intersectional feminism.'” But is it funny? Rina Raphael pays a visit.
Arts Council England Hires Economist To Make Case For The Arts
“We are going to hire an economist for the first time at the Arts Council. Although we were started by an economist, John Maynard Keynes, we never employed one. We will have an economist so again we can start to make economic arguments that are very powerful and make them in an economist’s terms.”
World’s Oldest Conductor Dies At 101
Edward Simons apparently became the world’s oldest active conductor when he took up the baton at age 100 to conduct Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings on Sept. 10, during the “2017 Annual Concert for Remembrance, 9/11,” at Grace Episcopal Church in Nyack. Guinness World Records currently lists Spain’s Juan Garcés Queralt, who conducted a concert at age 99 and 311 days, as the oldest, but is reviewing an application to recognize Simons’ achievement.
Beyonce And Jay Z’s Video In The Louvre – Does It Change The Way We Look At Museums?
The music video is a true feast for the eyes as beautiful people take over a beautiful place in ways we’ve never seen — because people of color rarely have the opportunity to claim such spaces, a fact that adds to the extraordinariness of the couple’s feat. However, while the Carters’ accomplishment underscores the egregious lack of representation and audiences of people of color in art spaces, it also perpetuates the damaging notion that art is a luxury.
The Man Building Robots That Look (And Increasingly Act) Human
Last year, Hanson Robotics released its first consumer robot, Professor Einstein, a $199, 16-inch animatronic companion for kids that can answer questions, play brain games and discuss science and math. This year the company, which has about 50 employees, plans to release updates for Professor Einstein and to produce about 100 copies of Sophia and other human-sized robots. The androids function as programmable machines that can be used to train doctors, deliver therapies for depression, care for the elderly and interact with customers. Most importantly, Hanson is excited about all the functions people have yet to dream up. Imagine your iPhone without the apps.
Here’s A Real Surprise: Dancing Can Help People Feel Healthy And Confident
That’s obvious for anyone who has ever danced, but the two-year study dove deep on children and teens aged 10-20 from underserved populations in England. “Findings from the final report describe dance as a valuable way of empowering young people who live in deprived urban areas to be proactive in improving their health and well-being.”
No One (Older Than 25) Can Quite Figure Out Why Teens Love This Tweet About Gatsby
Seriously, Gen-Z: Why? Why do you love this tweet about a Gatsby-style party? (Come for the generation gap question; stay for the teens’ long takes on the tweet that somehow still don’t explain it, at all.)
What Does The Met Museum’s New ‘Social Practice’ Initiative Mean For The Artists It Supports?
One of the artists: “Part of me has always thought of the Met, as an institution that is very traditional, Eurocentric, very much one of the elite/elitist institutions in the city, and it holds up that history. It has for a very long time. I think that is dramatically shifting right now.”
What’s The Best Way To Try To Understand Ourselves?
As the philosopher Noam Chomsky has said, “we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology” – something the critic and author David Lodge has explored. In his 2004 book Consciousness and the Novel, Lodge argues that “literature is a record of human consciousness, the richest and most comprehensive we have… The novel is arguably man’s most successful effort to describe the experience of individual human beings moving through space and time.”
Norman Lebrecht, Confessor Of The Music World
[The gossip] is the human comedy, that’s what I like. I came into music because nobody was writing about it in a way that interested me. Musicologists were writing arcane and abstruse things which had no relation to who the composer was, where he or she was at that particular time in her life. They weren’t answering the questions of, “Why is this piece meaningful to me, why is this phrase meaningful to me?” In the way that you’d ask in every other human transaction from the restaurant to the bedroom. And so I started asking those questions.
Art Gallery Of Ontario Puts Indigenous Art At The Center Of The Conversation
The centre has doubled the number of gallery spaces dedicated to Inuit art to four, and contemporary indigenous art fills a large new gallery of its own. Labels in the McLean Centre are now written in indigenous languages (either the local Anishinaabemowin language or Inuktitut), as well as English and French.
A New York Times Book Critic Runs A Secondhand Bookstore For A Day
“[Wigtown] is Scotland’s national book town, its Hay-on-Wye. With a dozen used bookstores tucked into its small downtown, it is a literary traveler’s Elysium. Best of all, Wigtown offers a literary experience unlike any other I’m aware of. In town there is a good used bookstore called the Open Book, with an apartment up above, that’s rentable by the week. Once you move in, the shop is yours to run as you see fit.” And, for one day, that’s what Dwight Garner did.
How Chelsea Became A New York Art Power Neighborhood
The vogue for new art from the present was revving up, such that Chelsea’s rise as a commercial gallery district in the mid-’90s coincided with the arrival of “contemporary art” as a dominant category in the art world.
Buying The Coliseum For English National Opera Was A Big Mistake, Says UK Culture Minister Who Arranged It
“David Mellor said that while he thought begging the prime minister to buy the Coliseum for the ENO had been ‘a major contribution to the cultural life of the country’, he now thought it was an ‘act of stupidity’. His intervention has been sparked in part by the decision of the ENO management to lease out the Coliseum in London for almost half the year [to producers of commercial musicals].”
Israeli Playwrights Are Bringing To The States The Scripts They Can’t Get Produced At Home
“Although representatives of first-rank Israeli companies, such as the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv, argue that their organizations do not shy away from controversial work, American artistic directors whose companies have become havens for marginalized Israeli playwrights say otherwise. Groups such as [Boston’s] Israeli Stage and, even more prominently, Mosaic Theater Company in Washington consider themselves outposts for Israeli dramatists who find it increasingly hard to get a hearing in Israel for their most political works.”
Harlan Ellison, Superman Of Science Fiction, Dead At 84
“During a career that spanned more than half a century, Ellison wrote some 50 books and more than 1,400 articles, essays, TV scripts and screenplays. Although best-known for his science fiction, which garnered nearly a dozen Nebula and Hugo awards, Ellison’s work covered virtually every type of writing from mysteries to comic books to newspaper columns. He was known as much for his attitude as his writing — he described himself once as ‘bellicose.'”
Orlando Ballet Has A(nother) New Executive Director (Will This One Stay?)
“Shane Jewell, announced today as the new executive director of Orlando Ballet, says he’ll be sticking around. But he’s keenly aware that after a revolving door of ballet executives in the past few years, there’s no reason for Central Floridians to believe him. … [There have been] years of financial crises and leadership changes at the ballet, which has had six executive directors since 2011. It nearly shut its doors for good in 2015.”
Glenda Jackson Will Return To Broadway In A New King Lear
The Oscar- and Tony-winning actor, now 82, returned to the stage two years ago, after a 23-year career in the UK Parliament, playing Lear in a modern-dress production at the Old Vic. Rather than bringing that staging to Broadway, she’ll be performing next spring with an entirely new creative team and cast assembled by lead producer Scott Rudin.
Glasgow School Of Art Will Have To Be Partly Demolished – And Fast
Contrary to reports last week that the landmark building by Charles Rennie Mackintosh remained “structurally solid” following the fire that raged through it earlier this month, “Glasgow City Council officials said that their surveys … have shown that there has been substantial movement in the building, meaning a sudden collapse of certain parts of it was ‘likely’.”
We Started A Theatre Company In An Old Bus Station (And No, We’re Not Entirely Bonkers)
Peter Tate and Anthony Biggs write about how they launched The Playground Theatre in a former depot near the recently-burned Grenfell Tower in London, how they decided to configure and equip the empty building, how they connected with audiences in what may be the most diverse area in the entire UK, and how they raised the money to pay for it all.
Founder Of Museum Of Russian Impressionism Flees Russia
“The real estate developer Boris Mints opened the Museum of Russian Impressionism in the former Bolshevik confectionery plant [in Moscow] in 2016. At the end of May, news emerged that Mints and his family had fled to London, reportedly to avoid possible criminal investigation in Russia over bank dealings.”