“Is it really true that the American idiom ‘say uncle’ emerged from the bullying of a poor parrot – and murder most fowl? Has there been a more beknighted or benighted cut of beef than the ‘sirloin’ – at least when it comes to the word’s origin? … When it comes to the strange history of certain linguistic oddities, Jesus H. Christ (and where did the ‘H’ come from, exactly?), linguists, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!”
Why Are Classical Audiences Fascinated By Child Prodigies?
“Is it a sense of magic, or the feeling that perhaps a higher power does exist and bestows talent upon the chosen? Is … Is it the victory of nurture over nature, like a tamed tiger at Siegfried and Roy’s? To be able to juggle, all you need is excellent physical coordination. The spectacle of a child playing a Scarlatti sonata is more than that – it can be seen as a kind of acculturation to a specific, Western tradition. A kid playing adult music is performing adult emotions. She is concentrated and well-dressed, not wild and silly.”
Think You’re A “Visual” Learner? Turns Out Learning Styles Aren’t Really A Thing
“In this study, researchers asked people their preferred way of taking in new information: Would they rather read? Or do images seem to do a better job of helping new facts take root within their brains? The researchers then showed them 30 pairs of words and 30 pairs of images; later, the experimenters tested how well the volunteers remembered those words and images. Their professed favorite learning style made no difference in how well they remembered either the words or the pictures.”
Police Break Up Ring Of Antiquities Smugglers In Greece
“Greek police have busted what they say is a criminal organisation that has been looting antiquities from ancient sites in the country for the past 10 years and smuggling them out to auction houses and private buyers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the UK.”
Number Of Visitors Literally Overwhelms DC’s New African-American Museum
“More people want to get in than can be accommodated, even though timed passes are being used to manage the crowds. In the museum’s first 10 days, some 103,000 people visited the history, culture and community exhibitions, officials said. It’s unclear how many more were unable to get passes.”
Staring At The Soul Of Painter Alice Neel
“The critics repeatedly return to the intense humanity of Neel’s paintings—not in the sense of a gentle or genteel compassion, but almost its opposite: Neel’s portraits unflinchingly depict the gamut of human vulnerabilities, emotions and attitudes.”
We’re Fundamentally Rethinking The Nature Of Knowledge, But All We Get For It Is Complaints About Common Core Math
“It’s not surprising that ambitious changes like these would be hard to implement. After all, teaching kids to adopt a scientific mindset is a subtler and more complex task than having them memorize the parts of a cell. For one thing, it requires teachers who inhabit that mindset themselves, and they’re harder to find.”
Theatre And Politics In A Time Of Political Theatre
Can theatre serve the political moment? Some recent works on stage in New York all attempt it.
Museum Staffer Assaulted In St. Louis Over Controversial Exhibit
“Amid an ongoing controversy surrounding the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis’s Kelley Walker show, which includes works that some have alleged are racist and offensive, a staff member was verbally, and nearly physically, attacked Monday morning.”
How Donald Trump Is Like Jay Gatsby
Political scientist Amanda Friesen: “[He] is always flying around in his private jet. That must seem like a dream come true for some folks! By jetting off to Vegas, he’s doing things people are familiar with – things they might do if they had the money. In some respects, Donald Trump is Jay Gatsby, throwing the party and drawing people in with his excess and opulence. He’s Gatsby without the earnestness.”
In Praise Of Shorter Performances – And Even Abridging The Text
“Terence Rattigan, England’s master of the well-made play, predicted back in the ’50s that younger playgoers conditioned by movies and TV would eventually start to chafe at the three-hour-two-intermission running time that was then the theatrical norm.” Terry Teachout praises the trend toward shorter, no-intermission plays, and suggests that we should feel free to make cuts in longer works by the likes of Eugene O’Neill and Richard Wagner.
‘The Sidekick In His Own Movie’: Anger Over ‘Whitewashing’ In New Bruce Lee Biopic
“Audiences of Bruce Lee biopic Birth of the Dragon have criticised the film’s portrayal of the martial arts star, as well as the extent to which it relegates his story below that of a white co-star. … IMDb users who have seen the film protest that it actually focuses on a fictional white friend, Steve McKee, who learns kung fu and romances a Chinese woman.”
In 2016, Why Is Hollywood Still ‘Whiting Up’ Asian Characters And Stories?
“There are huge differences between whitewashing and the ‘white saviour’ trope, but both exist due to a sense in Hollywood that audiences won’t turn out to see a movie unless there are Caucasian faces involved somewhere. This is especially strange given research shows that people of colour, Hispanics in particular, make up a sizable portion of the US cinemagoing public.”
Pittsburgh Symphony Management Makes, Then Disavows, Threat To Hire Replacements For Striking Musicians
“The management of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has told its musicians that it ‘has an obligation to keep Heinz Hall open’ and may ‘hire replacement workers, either on a temporary or permanent basis, as will be determined by the business necessity we face.’ But COO Christian Schörnich, who sent the letter to the orchestra players on strike, said that statement is simply a legal formality … and that the organization has ‘no intention’ of hiring replacement musicians to play orchestra concerts.”
The Cost Of Becoming A “Prestigious” University
“It seems to me that prestige only accrues to those at the very top—not top 20, more like top five—and when we’re talking prestige, we’re almost exclusively talking about private institutions. Unfortunately, the only way to survive in a culture that continues to turn away from education as a public good is to “compete,” and the only way we know how to compete is for “prestige.” But what is the cost on public institutions of chasing prestige?”
Can We Separate What We Know About The Celebrity From Their Work Onscreen?
“It’s only natural that we struggle to separate the performer or the artist from the art, because the way we consume entertainment is designed to conflate our concept of a person’s identity with the fictional one they project onscreen. We sometimes know too much about an actor, certainly our most elite A-listers, to fully forget who they are while we’re watching them work.”
Joyce Carol Oates, Twitter Troll
“Prolific across all mediums, it is not difficult to imagine Oates delighting in the act of tweeting, of tossing thoughts into the world, both for the enjoyment of the craft and to see what happens, like tiny crystalline bombs. … Joyce Carol Oates has poked 28,000 140-character holes in the notion that anyone can or should serve as a universally competent public intellectual.”
Electromagnetic Waves – Seriously? Another Thing About Technology To Be Worried About?
“With the ever-expanding prevalence of electromagnetic field-emitting technological devices, including mobile phones, video screens and Wi-Fi transmitters, a growing number of people claim to be experiencing electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), essentially an allergic reaction to electromagnetic waves.”
Want To Fight Racism? Teach The Humanities
“In particular, it is the humanities that teach us how not to be racists, by showing us how to open ourselves up to what is different. Whether a given humanist is a modernist, postmodernist, New Critic, Marxist, or an adherent of any of dozens of other approaches, what she does in the classroom is always the same: She takes some cultural product that seems at first strange and off-putting — a poem by some ancient Greek or Persian poet, a novel by some African or Chinese author, a statue from an indigenous culture whose true name we don’t even know — and, if she is a good teacher, makes it familiar enough to be interesting.”
The ‘Just World Hypothesis’ And The Psychology Behind Victim-Blaming
“It’s this idea that people deserve what happens to them. There’s just a really strong need to believe that we all deserve our outcomes and consequences. … As a general rule, Americans [in particular] have a hard time with the idea that bad things happen to good people.”
Philly Music Fans Riot, Trash Club After Star Singer Is No-Show
“Gerardo Ortiz, a singer-songwriter from California and winner of several Mexican Billboard Music Awards, was set to perform at the Explanada De Philadelphia … Ortiz never took the stage, and several fans reportedly reacted by throwing things at the stage, knocking over and tossing speakers to the ground, and damaging instruments.” (Tsk – just like Philly sports fans.) (includes video)
France’s Culture Minister Promises Largest Budget For Museums In Country’s History
“[Audrey] Azoulay announced a 5% increase in funding to museums, and, notably, an increase of 12% for acquisitions budgets for regional and national museums. She said that museums security would be partly supported by an intra-ministerial fund.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.05.16
Which is the Inimitable Don? Jones’s Giovanni
Søren Kierkegaard said in Either/Or: Because Don Giovanni desires in each and every woman the whole of womanhood, his behaviour has to be judged aesthetically, not ethically. Richard Jones has, I think, taken this seriously. … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2016-10-05
Snapshot: Joni Mitchell sings “California” on The Johnny Cash Show
Joni Mitchell sings “California” on The Johnny Cash Show. This episode was originally telecast by ABC in 1969. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-10-05
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So You Wanna Say ‘Email’ And ‘Bingewatch’ In Yiddish?
“Two of [the language’s] conservationists have produced the first full-fledged English-to-Yiddish dictionary in 50 years and it is designed to carry Yiddish into the 21st century and just maybe beyond. After all, Yiddish has always had a canny way of defying the pessimists.”
This Woman Should Be One Of History’s Most Famous Painters – Why Don’t More People Know About Her (And Her Horrendous Life Story)?
Jonathan Jones: “It is not simply that [Artemisia Gentileschi] became a highly successful artist in an age when guilds and academies closed their doors to women. She also did what none of the other – rare – Renaissance and baroque women who made it as artists could manage: she communicated a powerful personal vision. Her paintings are self-evidently autobiographical. Like Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois or Tracey Emin, she put her life into her art.”