Some are dubious of the so-called Vine Art Movement. “Equating wine with art flatters the people who buy wine into thinking they’re participating in something larger than they are,” said James Conaway, the author of “Napa at Last Light.” And there have been some spectacular busts: Copia, an ambitious museum dedicated to wine, food and the arts, opened to much fanfare in 2001 then closed in 2008. – The New York Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
How Rich People Like Jeffrey Epstein Are Corrupting Science
“Money corrupts—which, duh—but the Epstein episode tells an even bigger story. The entire system for metabolizing philanthropic gifts, particularly private ones, into academic research is a poorly illuminated pile of broken guardrails. Even if most institutions and foundations are cautious internally, even if the unfolding scandal with Epstein and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is an outlier, the system is essentially a pool of dark money.” – Wired
The Internet Is Changing How We Write (For Bad And Good)
The Internet is speeding up the evolution of English by increasing our ability to stay loosely in touch with, and mutually influence, one another. – Washington Post
Why People Believe Fake Videos (Even The Bad Ones)
“Seeking to understand what was going on, I took very unscientific straw polls of family and friends. I learned anecdotally what sociologists and social psychologists have shown in more scholarly explorations: If the image or manipulation supports what someone already believes, they often accept it unquestioningly.” – Fast Company
Music Deserts: What We Need Is Nutritional Music
“Musical malnourishment, with increasing mono-diets and over-consumption of processed, chemically treated/created culture, entails an over-reliance upon intake from manufactured commodities such as loudspeakers, machines, and computers. Thus greater passivity is generated whereby people no longer look to themselves to make music, but simply purchase it via a concert ticket or through a new electronic home entertainment toy.” – NewMusicBox
How Crossword Puzzles Free The Mind
Ultimately, crosswords can get you to see preconceptions that you might not have realized you held. Once words signify, the puzzle gets political. Crosswords quietly have an ideological agenda: to shake up your assumptions and put ideas from everywhere next to each other. – The New Yorker
How Country Music Became The Heart Of Nashville
Nashville attracted—first downtown, because that’s where the Opry was located, and then on Music Row—a creative community, and that creative community feeds off of itself. I teach at Belmont College, and my students are always saying, “Where I come from, I’m the only person that writes songs; I’m the only person that plays the guitar. I get here and everybody writes songs and everybody plays the guitar.” It either inspires you to get better or causes you to go home, and that’s been a key right there. – CityLab
Meet The UK’s New Minister For Arts
The MP for Faversham and Mid Kent replaces Rebecca Pow, who held the role for only four months. Pow is moving to a position in the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Helen Whatley will work under the recently appointed Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan, who remains at the head of DCMS. – Arts Professional
Marian Godfrey On The State Of The Arts
“It’s my personal opinion that at this particular moment, the greatest challenge arts philanthropy faces is to decide what our responsibility is to the institutional nonprofit arts infrastructure that our investments have helped to build over the last 70 to 80 years.” – Barry’s Blog
Why It’s Important For Us To Understand The Language Of Numbers
The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. We speak for them. We imbue them with meaning.’ Not only has someone used extensive judgment in choosing what to measure, how to define crucial ideas, and to analyse them, but the manner in which they are communicated can utterly change their emotional impact. – Aeon