“Instruction is the least important part of education. Most information is accessible from books and the media. Basic literacy and numeracy are important, but many if not most skills used by adults in daily life are picked up on the job. The main objective of education in every enduring society is to transmit authoritative cultural, political, and ethical traditions from one generation to the next.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Is This The Most Beautiful Bookstore In The World?
“The bookstore covers a sprawling 21,000 square feet, draws in more than a million tourists, and sells about 700,000 books every year. And while most of the titles are printed in Spanish, just marveling at the theater-turned-bookshop is worth a trip.”
How Gustavo Dudamel Made His Unscheduled Impromptu Debut Conducting At The White House
The LA Philharmonic conductor was at lunch at the White House last week and the Marine band played. He was impressed. One thing led to another and…
Skyscrapers In LA’s Hot New Arts District? We’re Dubious
“Even the anti-development activists who see every tall building in Los Angeles as a giveaway to moneyed interests or a threat to the existing character of the city may find something to admire here. We’d be wise to hold on to some skepticism, though.”
A 12-Step Program To Erasing Black Artists
This is what can happen if you’re really bad at organizing an event and then not paying attention when things hurtle out of control…
Researchers Restore The First-Ever Computer-Generated Music
“A computer scientist and a composer have restored an ancient recording of the first ever computer-generated music. Jack Copeland and Jason Long remastered a recording of three melodies, including “God Save the Queen,” made by the BBC in the labs of computer pioneer Alan Turing in 1951.”
The African American Museum Is Finally Open. Now What?
“The new museum opens with all the usual tensions already in place. Among its major donors are banks that played a brutal role in predatory loan scandals that targeted African American communities as well as companies that manufacture the cigarettes, food and soft drinks that play such a big part in the plague of diabetes and other health issues that afflict the black population. This doesn’t mean that the museum can’t be independent, or that the scholars and curators who created the exhibitions were in any way compromised by pressure. But it does mean that it could take substantial fortitude to, say, mount an exhibition about racism and professional sports when one of museum’s major funders is the NFL. In the age of the modern, mass-market museum, freedom and independence are never a given; they must be reasserted and defended with every new exhibition.”
Thug Sentenced To Nine Years For Destroying Timbuktu Mausoleums
“Ahmad Al Mahdi could have faced up to 30 years in prison, but mitigating circumstances—including his guilty plea, his initial reluctance to destroy the sites and his co-operation with the prosecution—meant this term was reduced.”
Why Writing About Science Seems Like Little More Than PR
“Think about it. For every article singing the praises of new science, how often do you see one that is critical? Not often. Unless you’re talking about eugenics or fission bombs, a new scientific result or technology is almost always treated as an unequivocally good thing.”
What Machine Learning Is Teaching Us About How We Learn
“By bringing the tools of computation and machine intuition to the table, AI researchers are giving us a more complete picture of how we learn. They are also broadening the study of education to include quantitative, numerical models of the learning process itself. “The thing that AI brings to the table is that it forces us to get into the details of how everything works,” says John Laird, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan. If there was any doubt that good teachers are important, machine learning is helping put it to rest.”