Daydreaming is taken very seriously within scientific circles, where it is more accurately referred to as mind wandering. The level of interest in this area runs more or less parallel to that of the default network, and that is no coincidence either. The neural activity that can be observed when a person is daydreaming is very similar to that found in the default network. The control situation when taking neural measurements is also one in which the brain is not performing any tasks, and so we start daydreaming. We let our thoughts run free and start associating different memories with each other. – LitHub
Author: Douglas McLennan
Dame Fanny Waterman, Founder Of The Leeds Competition, Turns 100 And Dishes About Music
Dame Fanny says: “I had courage when people said, ‘It won’t work in Leeds’. Even my darling husband said that and I said ‘I’ll show you’. I rang up Marion and she said ‘Let’s try’. That was the ambition I learned from my parents. My father was concerned about style and ability and never produced anything that was shabby, and I used to try to emulate that. You can either do nothing with your world, or you can say to yourself ‘I’m going to strive in everything for betterment’.” – Yorkshire Post
Report: San Francisco Arts Orgs Could Lose $73 Million By This Summer
Every performing arts group in the Bay Area contacted by The Chronicle has canceled its spring season, even as most had barely begun. Now a study reports that arts organizations stand to lose more than $73 million in revenue and donations if the shutdown continues through summer. – San Francisco Chronicle
Woody Allen’s Memoir Gets A New Publisher
With little advance notice, the 84-year-old film-maker’s book arrives at a time when much of the world is preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic. Arcade is an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing and a Skyhorse spokeswoman said no decisions had been made on whether Allen would give interviews. – The Guardian
What Will The Arts Look Like When This Is All Over?
Even in that best-case scenario — say, a May return — it may take years to return to the vibrant, cultural universe that defines our country. – Washington Post
Strand Bookstore Lays Off 188 Workers
“This is the first time in our history that we have had to have a layoff,” owner Nancy Bass Wyden Bass Wyden wrote in a statement. Employees will receive a week of pay in addition to payment for any vacation time they have accrued. “We are also working with our union and our providers to extend health insurance as long as possible.” – Publishers Weekly
Why Aren’t Robots Saving Us In The Virus Crisis?
This economic catastrophe is blowing up the myth of the worker robot and AI takeover. We’ve been led to believe that a new wave of automation is here, made possible by smarter AI and more sophisticated robots. Yet our economy still craters without human workers, because the machines are far, far away from matching our intelligence and dexterity. You’re more likely to have a machine automate part of your job, not destroy your job entirely. – Wired
What Houdini Understood About Our Fascination With Magic
Magic challenges our sense of what’s real; Houdini wanted to challenge the ultimate reality of death, by risking it over and over. That risk, he later wrote, is what “attracts us to the man who paints the flagstaff on the tall building, or to the ‘human fly,’ who scales the walls of the same building. If we knew that there was no possibility of either one of them falling or, if they did fall, that they wouldn’t injure themselves in any way, we wouldn’t pay any more attention to them than we do a nursemaid wheeling a baby carriage. – The New Yorker
The Aggressive Critic (And Why One Needs To Be)
“I continue to believe that any critic who wants to write something lasting—who believes that criticism can be a species of literature—must write partly out of aggression. Or perhaps a better word is animus, in the sense of a fixed intention, a partiality. Literary journalism describes and explains literature and ideas as they are.” – New Criterion
Why Do People Read/Watch Apocalyptic Fiction In Crises?
No one seems to fully agree on why reading books or watching movies about apocalyptic pandemics feels appealing during a real crisis with an actual contagious disease. Some readers claim that contagion fiction provides comfort, but others argue the opposite. – The Conversation