Linguistic family trees; languages maps of China, India, and Ukraine; how well various EU nationals can converse in English; the most common second language in each U.S. state; a graphic timeline of the history of the English language; a graph charting the rise and fall of the semicolon … a treasure trove for language and graphics geeks.
Month: November 2014
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.19.14
Community Engagement: A Habit of Mind
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2014-11-19
Flight from Bentonville: Ex-Crystal Bridges Curator Kevin Murphy on Why He Left
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2014-11-19
What Happened in Detroit Stays in Detroit? My Wall Street Journal Takeaway on Detroit Institute’s Ordeal
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2014-11-19
Feminists have trouble keeping up with the Joneses
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2014-11-19
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Here’s The Gender Balance Of America’s Top Orchestras
No big surprises. Only one major orchestra has more women musicians than men. And there is a cluster of orchestras at the bottom of the gender diversity list…
Are Readers Really Open To Changing Their Taste?
“A new kind of book might offer pleasures we haven’t yet learned to enjoy and deny us pleasures we were expecting. Rather than fitting in with something we are long familiar with, it is asking us to change. And how many people are genuinely open to changing their taste?”
Here’s Why Chopin’s Heart Has Just Been Exhumed
“Chopin’s heart inspires a deep fascination in Poland normally reserved for the relics of saints. For Poles, Chopin’s nostalgic compositions capture the national spirit — and the heart’s fate is seen as intertwined with Poland’s greatest agonies and triumphs over nearly two centuries of foreign occupation, warfare and liberation.”
To Maintain Your Brain, Exercise It, Right? (But Here’s What The Studies Say…)
“In healthy older adults, computer-based brain exercises have limited benefits, and then only when supervised by a trainer once to three times a week. And despite what Lumosity and BrainHQ will tell you, doing the training at home had no effect at all, at least in the short term.”
Here’s What’s Wrong With How We Teach Students Today (It’s A Values Issue)
“The primary responsibility of teachers is no longer to encourage good behavior in future citizens, as Horace Mann insisted. Instead, it’s to ensure that they get the right answers on a high-stakes test.”
What Science Can Tell Us About Great Works Of Art
“In Baltimore last week, scientist-conservators told how analyzing great works with devices only physicists and chemists could love — synchrotron radiation sources, ultraviolet-induced fluorescence, high resolution, and XRF multispectrography — lifts the mysteries off some paintings and can produce stories worthy of novels.”
How Light Restored The Color In Rothko Paintings
“A team from Harvard and the MIT Media Lab realised that light could be used to restore the appearance of the lost colours without touching the canvas. The idea was to illuminate each mural with a pattern of light that would project the missing aspects of the lost colours onto the original canvases, returning them to their original hues without disturbing the paintings’ textures.”
US Congress Asked To Create A Protector Of Cultural Property
The Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act asks Congress to appoint a cultural property protection czar and establish emergency import restrictions to protect endangered cultural patrimony. The bill aims to “deny terrorists and criminals the ability to profit from instability by looting the world of its greatest treasures.”