The notion that intelligence is a measurable ‘something’ that is possessed by people in varying degrees is one of the ways in which we end up with an education system that fails the majority of those it is supposed to be helping. – 3 Quarks Daily
Author: Douglas McLennan
Are Bots Defining Your Aesthetic? (Of Course They Are)
“The intelligent software agents that you interact with online are ‘intelligent agents’ in the sense that they try to predict your behaviour taking into account what you did in your online past (e.g. what kind of movies you usually watch), and then they structure your options for online behaviour. For example, they offer you a selection of movies to watch next. However, they do not care much for your reasons for action.” – 3 Quarks Daily
How “Ulysses” Became A Scandal And Changed The Definition Of Obscenity In America
“The conspirators were Bennett Cerf, publisher and cofounder of Random House, and Morris Ernst, a cofounder of the ACLU and its chief legal counsel. The target was United States anti-obscenity law. The bait was a single copy of an English-language novel, printed in Dijon by Frenchmen who could not understand a word of it, bound in bright blue boards, and sold mail-order by the celebrated Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company.” – New York Review of Books
Why Birds Have Been Such Powerful Symbols Throughout History
“Birds enter popular culture from the earliest times, and they continue to pervade literature and art throughout the classical period. They are mentioned in the very first sentence of European literature – as scavengers, at the start of Homer’s Iliad. They feature repeatedly in subsequent epic, lyric, didactic, pastoral and personal poetry, in tragedy and comedy, in epigrams and invective, and in prose writings on geography, history, travel, medicine and early science.” – Aeon
BMI, The Performance Rights Administrator Announces Record Collections For Musicians
BMI announced record revenues this morning, with $1.283 billion, up 7% over the previous year. The performing-rights organization also distributed and administered $1.196 billion to its songwriters, composers and publishers, its highest distributions ever, and a 7% or $78 million increase over last year. – Variety
Performance Art Is Hot Right Now. But There’s A Problem…
While museums have been embracing performance art, the investment-minded commercial art world has been slower to get on board. There is one obvious reason. – The New York Times
Petrenko’s Conservative Debut With Berlin Philharmonic Is Troubling
Alex Ross: “Conservatives in the orchestra and in the audience may be reassured, but this retrenchment is a troubling signal from a historically great orchestra that ought to be assuming a leadership role in global classical music.” – The New Yorker
The Arts’ Funding Model Failure To Pay Living Wages Need To Change
“Our failure to figure out how to pay entry and midlevel people a real wage will ultimately seriously negatively impact our very ability to survive. It’s not a sustainable situation, and it’s not going away.” – Barry’s Blog
We’re Rich. So Why Do We Work Even Harder?
“That the wealthiest countries in the history of the world have sustained manic work regimes has puzzled thinkers for more than a century. Why could we not limit work to, say, three hours a day—the figure favored by writers as divergent as John Maynard Keynes and the revolutionary journalist Paul Lafargue?” – The Point
Is American Poetry Too Snooty?
“When I asked a friend, a terrific prose writer, why she seems to have a slight disdain for poetry, she replied, ‘It’s too elitist, like walking through a beautiful forest in which I know not where to look, much less know what I am searching for. If I don’t get it as a reader, then I feel like an idiot and somehow not worthy of the form’.” – The Paris Review