“They’re using design and technology to tackle everything from climate change to social justice, and they are doing so not as lone geniuses toiling away in the dark, but in collaboration with clients, neighborhoods, and cities. The starchitecture era is dead.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Metaphysics Versus Science: It’s Not A Decided Question
“Who wants to argue with the superior position of those armed with ever more precise fMRIs, EEGs and the other material artefacts of the materialist position? There is, however, a significant weakness hiding in the imposing-looking materialist redoubt. It is as simple as it is undeniable: after more than a century of profound explorations into the subatomic world, our best theory for how matter behaves still tells us very little about what matter is. Materialists appeal to physics to explain the mind, but in modern physics the particles that make up a brain remain, in many ways, as mysterious as consciousness itself.”
Cut Arts Funding And You’ll Cut Educational Achievement
“The arts have a far greater impact than on academic achievement alone. AEP cites work preparedness as one key aspect of arts education. Through art programs, students strengthen problem-solving and communication skills, increase their capacity for leadership and creative thinking, build community, support civic engagement, and experience social tolerance that helps prepare them for life in an increasingly diverse world.”
Does Bilingualism Make You Smarter? Turns Out It’s Complicated
“Despite all the fuss that has been made about the ‘bilingual advantage’, most researchers have moved on from the simplistic ‘is there an advantage or not’ debate. Rather than asking whether bilingualism per se confers a cognitive advantage, researchers are now taking a more nuanced approach by exploring the various aspects of bilingualism to better understand their individual effects.”
Pictures Of The Destruction Of Mosul Museum After IS
“Once Iraqi forces had secured areas of west Mosul and reporters could enter the museum on Saturday, it emerged that the museum—which had been used as a base during the fighting—had also been completely cleared out and decimated.”
Just How Do You Define Culture?
“In 1952, the anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn wrote a famous article, “Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions,” in which they specified no fewer than 164 definitions of culture. Culture can, of course, refer to whole civilizations, such as Western culture or Asian culture; it can refer to national, ethnic, or social-class cultures, such as Israeli culture or Irish-Catholic culture, or working-class culture. In all these senses it refers to the overarching aspirations and assumptions that underlay the ways that different peoples and groups have of understanding and dealing with the world.”
Some People Have No Reaction To Music. Nada. Zip. Let’s Try To Understand This…
“Previous research shows that the vast majority of people who enjoy music show an increase in heart rate or skin conductance—where a person’s skin temporarily becomes a conductor of electricity in response to something they find stimulating. Musical anhedonics, however, show no such physiological change to music. A recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, took those findings a step further by studying neural responses to music.”
Cool – Robotic Socks That Teach You How To Dance
“We equipped the socks with pressure sensors and vibration motors to monitor and guide the feet movement of the pair dancers. These are controlled by a master application running on an Android phone. The steps are indicated by vibration signals at specific positions of the foot, at the heel for a forward step, etc. When a user makes a mistake or gets out of sync, negative feedback is provided. It is possible to dance in the socks for several minutes without making a mistake.”
How Joe Haj Is Reinvigorating Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre
“Building on a foundation laid by his predecessor Joe Dowling — a visionary leader who built the Guthrie’s new home but became somewhat isolated from his staff and the community by the end of his 20-year tenure — Haj is bringing new voices and more resonant programming into the mix. He and his leadership team also are pressing the flesh in the community in ways that have been a pleasant surprise to Twin Cities arts leaders.”
Jeff Koons And Pompidou Convicted Of “Counterfeiting” In French Court
The court ruled that Koons had copied the work of a photographer…