Barry Hessenius: “If we really want to maximize our effectiveness and increase our chances of saving the NEA, we need to use social media and any other tool we have to enlist the support of neighbors, friends, co-workers, local media and businesses to join the effort in communicating with Congress. Every single person in the arts ought to enlist the support of one person outside the arts to make that phone call or write that letter or email.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Why We Love That Truck Driver Lawsuit Story That Hinged On A Comma
“The case of the dairy-truck drivers’ comma has got several things going for it. It’s got David and Goliath in the story of the little guy sticking it to a corporate boss. It’s got men driving around in trucks with copies of Strunk & White in the glove compartment. And you know what else it’s got? Of course you do. It’s got milk. For all the backlash against the dairy industry—the ascendance of soy milk, almond milk, hemp milk (note the asyndeton), none of which, by the way, are really milk, because you can’t milk a hazelnut—there is something imperishably wholesome about cows and milk.”
Lawsuit For Millions Of Dollars In Truck Drivers’ Suit In Maine Rides On Use Of A Comma
If there were a comma after “shipment,” it might have been clear that the law exempted the distribution of perishable foods. But the appeals court on Monday sided with the drivers, saying the absence of a comma produced enough uncertainty to rule in their favor. It reversed a lower court decision. In other words: Oxford comma defenders won this round.
Conductor Berates Audience In Dance Club For Not Listening Attentively To Classical Music
Having gone to all the trouble of putting an orchestra (largely made up of New York-based music students and freelancers) in a club, and assembling a trendy-looking audience (largely, it seemed, people with some connection or other to the various presenting organizations), he didn’t actually want a rave atmosphere. The conductor kept berating the audience for talking, took them to task for their cellphones (“we’re here to dance, not to take pictures”) and, at one point, actually stopped the music to try to force people to be quiet.
Choreographer Trisha Brown, 80
“Few dance inventors have so combined the cerebral and sensuous sides of dance as Ms. Brown did, and few have been as influential. Her choreography, showcased primarily in New York, helped shape generations of modern dance creators into the 21st century.”
A Political Whitney Biennial? Sure, But Not In A Partisan Way…
Reviewers have criticized past biennials for being too politicized and ideological. Director Adam Weinberg says that the biennial isn’t meant to lean left or right. The goal is to find “voices that really get very close to the bone of American culture…from an aesthetic point of view,” he says, “and also from a larger, cultural point of view.” He adds, “The exhibition is not a finger wagging, and it’s in no way trying to be hectoring or lecturing.”
Can We Teach The Brain To Like Art?
Today, the nascent scientific field of neuroaesthetics explores how artistic and aesthetic experiences register in the brain. And there have been other collaborations between museums and neuroscientists, like the 2014 exhibition at London’s National Gallery “Making Colour,” which included an experiment on color perception with guidance from Anya Hurlbert, a visual neuroscientist.
Publishers Are Newly Buoyant As London Book Fair Opens
“While it was too early to tell at this year’s book fair, more than one publisher was whistling a happy tune as they entered the Olympia exhibition centre on Tuesday. With print books having a higher average price point than ebooks, and with a weaker pound benefitting exporters – German publishers in particular bought big this year – the mood among the hundreds of publishers was optimistic.”
So Much Of What We Know About How We Learn Seems To Be Wrong
“We think of our minds as like computers: Information comes up and then gets filed into various folders. Instead, we need to really engage with material, and discover what connections there are with what we already know. Self-quizzing can help with that, because you’re explaining things to yourself — making that information meaningful.”
State Of California Proposes Debt-Free College. Can It Succeed?
“Lawmakers unveiled plans on Tuesday aiming to eliminate college debt for more than 390,000 students in the University of California and California State University systems. Their plan also calls to reduce costs for the roughly 80,000 students receiving aid to attend the state’s community colleges. The plan has been reported as the most “generous” and “ambitious” from any state; perhaps it will act as a catalyst for what’s become a nationwide problem: As of 2015, seven in 10 college seniors graduating from public and nonprofit colleges in the United States had student loan debt, with an average of $30,100 per borrower, according to the Institute for College Access and Success.”