“The seemingly simple word has a nuanced series of functions that children somehow master early on. In fact, no is among the top 10 or so words that English-speaking babies say when first beginning to talk … By the way, yes doesn’t even crack the top 20.”
What We Still Don’t Know: Why Sleep Matters
“Sleep deprivation is nearly as misunderstood as sleep itself, but it can physically and mentally harm people in myriad ways.”
Is Valery Gergiev Being Scapegoated for the Kremlin’s Anti-Gay Policies?
As head of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater and a famously tireless globe-trotter, Gergiev is Russia’s leading conductor and arguably its most prominent living musician. He is also the cultural figure most closely identified with Vladimir Putin. Consequently, it is Gergiev who is constantly targeted with protests in the West over Russia’s treatment of its gay citizens. Mark Swed considers whether this is fair.
Peter Gelb On The Met’s HD Cinemacasts
“The business plan I had for it is that it would make a modest profit so from a financial point of view it has exceeded those expectations significantly. But, at the same time, we were very fortunate that it did because if it hadn’t we would be in trouble right now.”
The Problem With TED
“But have you ever wondered why so little of the future promised in TED talks actually happens? So much potential and enthusiasm, and so little actual change. Are the ideas wrong? Or is the idea about what ideas can do all by themselves wrong?”
Why Oscar Categories Need To Be Gender-Segregated
“Clearly, gender-based award categories are essential to maintaining even a tenuous presence for talented women in Hollywood.”
This Opera Has 180,000 Miles On Her. Is It Time To Go?
“As it aged — past 30, then 35, then 40 — the production came to seem less charming than vaguely pernicious: a symbol of the deep-seated resistance to change, the allergy to experimentation and newness, that remains at the core of opera’s American mainstream.”
Torturing The Slippers At New York City Ballet
Tiler Peck, for instance, bangs hers against a cinder-block wall. (It keeps them quiet.)
Why We Make Resolutions (And Why They Fail)
As Oscar Wilde wrote, “Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil.” Research psychologists have found that he had a point.
Top AJBlog posts for 12/30/13
J. Carter Brown Gets His Due
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2013-12-31
Trinity Wall Street re-defines downtown
Source: Condemned to Music | Published on 2013-12-31
“Rembrandt”? Probably Not: Worcester Art Museum’s Own Version of “American Hustle…
Source: Culturegrrl | Published on 2013-12-31
Just in: Rare honour for Simon Rattle
Source: Slipped Disc | Published on 2013-12-30
Mapping How Emotions Manifest in the Body
From anger to surprise to happiness to depression to disgust, “across cultures, people feel increased activity in different parts of the body as their mental state changes.”
A Dozen Maps That Changed The World
From Ptolemy to Korea ca. 1400 to Mercator to Google Earth.
Reviving Books From The Dead (It’s Called “Continuation” Literature
“These days, continuation literature – as it has been hailed – falls into two camps: works that are licensed by writers’ estates and those that, like Austen, are in the public domain.”