“About 125,000 of New Zealand’s 4.7 million people speak the Maori language … There are concerns that numbers are declining, putting it at risk of dying out. But with one in three Maori people in New Zealand younger than 15, experts said the chance for youth to see a wildly popular movie in their own words” – Disney planned from the beginning to translate Moana, based on traditional Polynesian stories, into Maori – “could turn the language’s fortunes around after more official efforts faltered”
Author: Matthew Westphal
There Are Thousands Of Different Colors – Why Do Most Of Us Have So Few Words For Them (And Some Languages Fewer Than Others)?
“In an industrialized culture, most people get by with 11 color words: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple and gray. That’s what we have in American English. Maybe if you’re an artist or an interior designer, you know specific meanings for as many as 50 or 100 different words for colors – like turquoise, amber, indigo or taupe. But this is still a tiny fraction of the colors that we can distinguish. … [And] nonindustrialized cultures typically have far fewer words for colors than industrialized cultures.” (One language has words only for white, black, and red.) Two cognitive scientists look into why this is.
How ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Became The Term For So Many Of France’s Bêtes Noires
Le monde anglo-saxon. Le modèle anglo-saxon. Le capitalisme anglo-saxon. L’hégémonie anglo-saxonne. You hear and read the term more and more in France these days, almost always for something opposed to the way the French do things and usually for something undesirable or worse. Yet before the mid-19th century, “anglo-saxon” was used in France only to refer to pre-Norman Conquest England. Emile Chabal lays out how the word went from historical designation to disparaging epithet. (It’s not really about English-speakers at all.)
MoviePass Is Putting Butts In Seats – So Why Is AMC Furious About It And Hollywood Blasé?
“At stake is no less than the future of the movie-exhibition business, an industry that has seen ticket prices rise almost 100 percent over the last 20 years while offering scanty new innovation over that time – e-ticketing and, to a lesser extent, reclining seats comprising its premium product.” So why is there not more excitement in the industry? Chris Lee explains.
Music Derived From Heartbeats Could Help Diagnose Arrhythmia
“The driving, spikey rhythm of Mars from Gustav Holst’s The Planets is probably not the most comforting sound to hear through a stethoscope. A UK scientist, Elaine Chew is analysing the heartbeat patterns of people with arrhythmia – an irregular heartbeat – and turning them into classical music, in what she hopes may become an important diagnostic tool for doctors.”
Didgeridoo Medicine And Feline Physics: The 2017 Ig Nobel Prizes
The prize for medicine went to neuroscientists who explored the reasons some people are disgusted by cheese, while medical researchers who found that learning to play the didgeridoo strengthens the muscles that control breathing and can reduce snoring received the peace prize. And since one definition of a liquid is matter that takes the shape of its container, the physics prize was given to a scientist who suggests that cats (see photo) are arguably liquid as well as solid.
Now That He’s In A Big Movie, Is Sergei Polunin Going To Give Up Ballet For Acting? Naah
“A few months ago, I was sure that I was going to stop dancing to become a good actor. But then when I was by myself for a week, I asked myself, What are you doing? You have that talent. Use it to the fullest. And if I can use that talent as well as acting, that’s magical to do both. Would I be happy just to be an actor? I don’t think I would.”
Half A Dozen Black Women Who Paved The Way For Postmodern Dance Today
“We’re highlighting some of the influential black women who came before, and have been changing the game in the downtown dance scene for almost four decades. They continue to thrive and survive, although in [one case], posthumously. As young dancemakers, we have to know the shoulders on which we stand.”
How We Can Get The Arts To Connect With Conservative Audiences
“The first challenge is to convince prospective audiences that there should be no fear of embarrassment associated with coming to a performance. Decades of research have shown that the best demographic predictor of attendance to all performing arts disciplines is level of educational attainment. … For many people, attending a performance is equated with shelling out big bucks to feel stupid in a sea of strangers, to be thrown out of one’s cultural comfort zone. How do we fix that?” Duncan Webb has a few ideas.
U.S. Holocaust Museum Finds Itself Caught In Argument Over Syrian Civil War
The museum commissioned and published a study on whether any alternative approaches might have prevented more bloodshed than the one taken by the Obama administration. (The answer: probably not.) Then the museum withdrew the study after accusations that it was nothing but a whitewash of what critics called Obama’s inaction in Syria.