“The distinction between a corporation and an algorithm is fading. Does that make an algorithm a person? Here we have this interesting confluence between two totally different worlds. We have the world of money and politics and the so-called conservative Supreme Court, with this other world of what we can call artificial intelligence, which is a movement within the technical culture to find an equivalence between computers and people.”
Month: November 2014
Controversial Director Axed From Bayreuth Production
“A storm in a Wagnerian tea-cup (or more properly, a Sturm in a Gral)? Maybe it really is the case that Jonathan Meese – an installationist and performance artist who became notorious in Germany last year for his prosecution and subsequent acquittal for an act of public provocation by making the Nazi salute on stage – was just too ambitious in his set design, and that the costs would have taxed even Bayreuth’s largesse.”
Billboard Music Charts Will Now Count Streams
“Billboard and Nielsen SoundScan, the agency that supplies its data, will start adding streams and downloads of tracks to the formula behind the Billboard 200, which, since 1956 has functioned as the music world’s weekly scorecard. It is the biggest change since 1991, when the magazine began using hard sales data from SoundScan, a revolutionary change in a music industry that had long based its charts on highly fudgeable surveys of record stores.”
Baghdad Ballet School Carries On While All Around It Changes
“The Iraqi capital’s past as a Middle East center of culture is a distant memory, but the school has carved out a tiny island of creativity amid the violence that is an inescapable part of daily life and the religious conservatism that now defines public life.”
The New Republic Celebrates Its 100th Birthday
The magazine has substantially reinvented itself in recent years. “These days, The New Republic’s goal of parting its hair down the middle, starting with its decision to stop running editorials, strikes some as a diminishment.”
Why Is Reason Frightening?
The ideal of “clear and intelligent thought,” stripped of its condescension and its indifference to the non-rational dimensions of human life, deserves to be defended. We need not be a nation of intellectuals, but we must not be a nation of idiots.
Phil Klay, Evan Osnos, Louise Gluck Win National Book Awards
“Former Marine Phil Klay took home the [award] for fiction, winning the prize for his debut short story collection Redeployment. … Journalist Evan Osnos won the National [award] in nonfiction for his impressively subtitled book, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China.” Louise Gluck’s Faithful and Virtuous Night took the prize for poetry.
Miami’s Getting Another Arts Center, Complete With Starchitect Design
“A new Miami Beach arts center designed by Rem Koolhaas is to open in December 2015 … Called Faena Forum, the 50,000-square-foot institution … will serve as a public forum for the exploration of topics in the arts, sciences, technology, politics and urbanism. It will also encourage dialogue about Latin American cultural practices.”
How Dance Came To Be Used To Treat Parkinson’s Disease
“Westheimer knew how valuable the dancers’ expertise in balance, rhythm, control and sequencing might be to sufferers of Parkinson’s. … Two members of the Mark Morris Dance Group, with a composer and pianist, began giving free monthly classes for the [Brooklyn Parkinson Group]. The sessions have since developed into an extensive programme.”
China Delays Release Of Latest “Hunger Games” Film – To Protect Domestic Industry
“The China release date for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 has been pushed back until January 2015, sources in Beijing said, as film authorities try to balance domestic and foreign box office totals before the year end.”