“In a light-hearted attempt to measure the relative appeal of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy over the years, we have compared the number of times each is mentioned in books or journals published in Britain.”
Month: January 2013
Origami-Based Architecture
“Architects love origami because it achieves what buildings rarely do: frame space through extreme economy of means. … Building technologies like 3D modeling and rapid prototyping have made it possible for architecture to mimic the elegant and sometimes complex folds found in origami making with minimal structural interference.”
Tate Britain To Quietly Get Rid Of Room Numbers (They’re Unfriendly)
Tate staff will continue to have their own “secret” numbers for the galleries, but these will not be marked in the rooms or on maps.
Why We Need Language Police
“It is essential for the creative writer that there be, or be perceived to be, a usual way of saying things, if a new or unusual way is to stand out and to provoke some excitement.”
Ontario’s Shaw Festival – Smaller, But Now Stable
“The Shaw Festival’s audience may have shrunk in 2012, but the southern Ontario theatre company has ended up in the black after two years of large deficits thanks to a “right sizing” that reined in expenditures.”
Warning: Computers Are About To Invade Our Brains
“The whole brain-implant artificial-intelligence thing that philosophers and science-fiction writers have been warning us about for decades – centuries even… is finally manifest. Not only that, it’s going to be next Christmas’s iPad – the gizmo that every self-respecting gizmo-consumer must have.”
Time To Reform Rules Governing Art Auctions?
“Art sales in New York, at galleries or at auction, are estimated at $8 billion a year. Yet the last significant change in the city’s auction regulations took effect more than two decades ago, when the value of transactions was less than half of what it is today.”
France Outlaw The #Hashtag
“France has decreed that Twitter-using citizens should refrain from using the word “hashtag” in favor of the newly coined French term “mot-dièse.” The new term, which effectively means “hashtag-word,” was developed by a government committee on vocabulary.”
The Politics Of Repatriating Art In Museums
“Giving up objects has done little to halt the international trade in looted antiquities, while rewarding the hardball tactics of foreign governments and impoverishing Americans’ access to the ancient world.”
SAG Award Winners Often Closely Predict Oscars
The winners are familiar – though spread out over many films – in the award march toward late February.