Author: Douglas McLennan

DC’s Arena Stage Doubles Down On Political Plays And Lands A Major Gift

“The $2.5 million is the initial splash in what will plainly need to be a very deep bucket. The Power Plays, first announced in November, are new works focused on politics and power – one for each decade of America’s existence. The 10-year, 25-work series will be composed of five related cycles: Presidential Voices, African-American Voices, Insider Voices, Musical Theater Voices and Women’s Voices.”

You Are What You Think? The Mythologies Of Consciousness

“What if I were to say that the very idea of consciousness was invented to explain how you could experience an apple when there is no apple in your head. So we have to have this consciousness apple. However, if experience and apple are one and the same, there is no longer any need to talk of a consciousness separate from it. The apple is more than enough.”

Report: Defining Canadian Culture And Wondering How To Promote It

For decades Canada has promoted Canadian culture with “Canadian content rules” meant to foster creation of Canadian art working in the shadow of the great American industrial entertainment complex. But what constitutes promoting Canadian culture in the era of content everywhere? This IPSOS study went across the country to find out. The issues aren’t surprising.

Why Paste Magazine Decided To Return To Print

The magazine had abandoned print in 2010 but stayed online. But print now seems a viable strategy again. “This isn’t a return to Paste Magazine. We’re not reliant on getting 200,000 people to be part of our rate base so we can go sell ads to Ford, BMW and Jack Daniels. Though we do have some advertising in the quarterly, it’s a small portion of our model. We’re reliant on our subscribers to foot the bill for what we do.”

The Digital World Has Changed The Very Idea Of What Dictionaries Are

“The online OED now allows the reader to click on citations from Shakespeare and Milton to get the extended passage they’re drawn from, and readers can easily go online to do the same with citations from other writers. Online dictionaries like Wordnik already use algorithms to construct citation lists on the fly; at the limit, you could think of an online dictionary as simply a lexicographical web interface… The advent of online historical corpora has also altered the lexicographer’s method. Word sleuthery has become a game that anyone with access to a search engine can play.”

The Idea Of “Willpower” Is A Dangerous And Outdated Thing

“Ignoring the idea of willpower will sound absurd to most patients and therapists, but, as a practicing addiction psychiatrist and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, I’ve become increasingly skeptical about the very concept of willpower, and concerned by the self-help obsession that surrounds it. Countless books and blogs offer ways to “boost self-control,” or even to “meditate your way to more willpower,” but what’s not widely recognized is that new research has shown some of the ideas underlying these messages to be inaccurate.”

Thirty Years After He Died, Andy Warhol Still Has The Measure Of American Culture

“How much responsibility does Warhol bear for our culture’s shift from substance to flash, human interest to spectacle? How much responsibility does a mirror bear for whatever beauty or ugliness it beholds? Warhol loved both the heights and depths of American culture, and reflected it back at us through his work, which remains resonant to this day.”