There Is No Such Thing As Unconscious Thought

In particular, when you walk away from a difficult problem, then come back later and suddenly see the solution, your mind was not working on the problem unconsciously. Your brain doesn’t work that way, and if it tried, the electrical signals traveling along your neurons would get hopelessly crossed. Behavioral scientist Nick Chater explains what’s really going on in such cases.

NYT Theatre Critic Makes Flippant Gender Reference In Review And Gets Pummeled Online

In a review of Head Over Heels, the hybrid Go-Go’s jukebox musical and Elizabethan farcethat opened on Broadway last night, the New York Times’s chief theater critic Ben Brantley misgenders the character of an oracle played by former Drag Racecontestant Peppermint, who happens to be making her debut as the first openly trans woman actor to create a principal role on Broadway.

How A Venerable Oregon Chamber Music Festival Revitalized Itself

The first five weeks bristled with listener-friendly new music, fresh young performers, diverse older ones, jazz, tango and even contemporary music by Chinese-American composers. And Chamber Music Northwest has pulled this off while holding on to most of its aging core audience, its renowned longtime performers, and a healthy dose of core, classic repertoire. Audience numbers have stabilized—a triumph in the beleaguered classical-music world—and the demographic is gradually growing more diverse.

Licking Our Plate

I see plate-licking almost every day, which delights me because I do the cooking. (I will not consider the possibility that anything in front of this one would be equally licked.) For “plate,” you may substitute “platter,” “bowl,” even “charger.”

Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize Wins Say Much About The Current State Of Global Literature

Ondaatje’s Booker wins are complicated. More than anything, Ondaatje’s Golden Booker win showcases the contradictions of literary value in the current context of the global commodifications of creative goods. His 1992 success can be examined within the broader context of the prize, its relation to postcolonial fiction and the globalization of Can Lit.