“Google plans to send its 20-strong camera convoy to museums around the world … which means that Google is increasingly receiving and compiling a ton of data for free (it doesn’t pay the museums) – so we were curious: what are the benefits museums receive by showcasing their collections on another platform?”
Author: Matthew Westphal
What A Dog Sees In The Mirror – And What That Does And Doesn’t Say About Its Sense Of Self
“It’s possible, then, that an animal’s failure to pass the mirror test says more about a human lack of imagination than the animal’s lack of a self-concept, as de Waal argues … Because, think about it: Why should a mirror mean anything to most animals?”
What Happens When A Mathematician Sets Out To Create The ‘Ugliest Piece Of Music Ever Written’?
Well, this particular mathematician, Scott Rickard, started with the premise (which he attributed to “most musicologists”) that “repetition is a key aspect of beauty.” Then, as he explains in this 2011 TED talk, he employed the math behind sonar pings to create a work employing all 88 notes on the piano keyboard and avoiding any sort of repetition. (video)
‘What Was Needed Was Not More Communism But More Public-Spirited Pigs’ – When Editor T.S. Eliot Rejected ‘Animal Farm’
“We agree that it is a distinguished piece of writing; that the fable is very skilfully handled, and that the narrative keeps one’s interest on its own plane – and that is something very few authors have achieved since Gulliver. … On the other hand, we have no conviction … that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the present time.”
British Library Opens Its 20th-Century Lit Website With 300 Never-Before-Seen Documents
Among the goodies now on view: “Virginia Woolf’s manuscript draft of Mrs Dalloway and an early travel notebook in which she begins to explore her ‘stream of consciousness’ technique; George Orwell’s notebook in which he lists ideas for what would become Nineteen Eighty-Four, including ‘newspeak’, ‘doublethink’ and ‘two minutes of hate’; [and] a letter from TS Eliot declining to publish George Orwell’s Animal Farm.”
The Pin-Up Girls Of Restoration England
“The Windsor Beauties were chosen to be immortalized because they were the most alluring and powerful women at the court of Charles II, who became king of England, Ireland, and Scotland in 1660. Being selected for a Windsor Beauty portrait meant becoming a celebrity pin-up; copies of the portraits and engraved prints of the women circulated among admirers.”
How Van Dyck Created Modern Portraiture
“Van Dyck focused on the subject’s attitude toward being in the picture, a joint venture of artist and sitter that continues to this day as a model, or a foil, for artists like Kehinde Wiley, Elizabeth Peyton, and Cindy Sherman. We might include earlier practitioners as well, like Lucien Freud and Alice Neel, or, to cast a wider net, photographers Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon.”
Seiji Ozawa Cancels His Tanglewood Concerts, Citing Poor Health
“The former Boston Symphony Orchestra music director” – now 80 and a survivor of esophageal cancer – “had been scheduled to conduct the ensemble for the first time since 2008, but doctors have now recommended otherwise.”
‘What A Waste’ – How One Barely Provocative Email Got Two Yale Professors Hounded Out Of Their Residential Positions
Conor Friedersdorf revisits what befell Nicholas and Erika Christakis last fall when she suggested that students could advocate for themselves when they found someone’s Halloween costume offensive rather than demanding that the college police how students dress up.
Researchers Are Teaching Robots To ‘Feel Pain’ With An Artificial Nervous System
The researchers … are developing a system that would allow a robot to ‘be able to detect and classify unforeseen physical states and disturbances, rate the potential damage they may cause to it and initiate appropriate countermeasures, ie reflexes’, they explained. Just as human neurons transmit pain, the artificial ones will pass on information that can be classified by the robot as either light, moderate or severe pain.”