“La Vie d’artiste, originally published in a small Algerian journal in February, 1953, was recently collected in the fourth and final volume of the Pléiade edition of Albert Camus’s complete works. The play … stands out as the only of Camus’s works in which the written words were not intended to be seen or heard by an audience.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Can Faith In Science Deliver The Same Benefits Religion Does?
“Carl Sagan famously offered science as a ‘candle in the dark’ to help illuminate a ‘demon-haunted world.’ … Can science, with its systematic approach to understanding nature, offer a satisfying portrait of the natural world and our place within it? Can science provide the same existential benefits typically thought to be the sole province of religion? Some recent psychological findings suggest that it can.”
The Danger Of Scientism
“Can you be a strident defender of science and still be suspicious of the way it is appropriated within culture? Can you be passionate about the practice and promise of science, yet still remain troubled by the way other beliefs and assumptions are heralded in its name?”
Vasiliev And Osipova On Living And Dancing Together
“It’s easy on stage, because if something happens, we both understand immediately and we can deal with it. But in rehearsing we can have, like, scandal because we are family and you can say something and its difficult. But it’s fun because in your family you want to push more; with a different partner you can’t say, ‘Give me more’.”
Stop Kvetching About ‘Canned Laughter’ On Sitcoms – It Doesn’t Exist (Does It?)
“I wonder if the ‘canned laughter’ canard is used, knowingly, as bitchy shorthand – surely no one really believes it is artificial? It’s been half a century since actual machinery was regularly used.” And by the way: “Studio audiences aren’t forced to laugh with cattle prods. They give it up willingly.”
In Senegal, They’re Rapping The TV News
“The nightly news is beginning to rhyme in Senegal, a hip-hop-crazy country where half of the population isn’t yet 18. [Makhtar] Fall and his co-anchor Cheikh Sene, both aging rap stars, have found second careers dropping the week’s developments into verse.”
Wayne Koestenbaum Majestically Overthinks Debbie Harry
“By singing the words ‘I’m not the kind of girl,’ Harry – or her persona – admits that there exist many varieties of girl, as many as there are shades of lipstick, or verses in the Bible, or varieties of rock on the path to Lourdes. There are many kinds of girl, and Debbie has the right to pick exactly which kind she is. But she is also fated to be a specific kind – and maybe this kind of girl falls prey to dejection and wants a listener’s sympathy.”
The Nature Of Consciousness: A Question Without An Answer?
“We don’t know how the brain creates consciousness, the subjective you. So, can machines do it, too? Commentator Marcelo Gleiser confronts ‘the hard problem of consciousness’ and finds a world in which what we can know may have its limits.”
Fire Damages Roof Of France’s Historic National Library
About 100 square meters of the roof of the Bibliothèque Nationale’s old Richelieu building in central Paris were burned in the blaze last week, which authorities believe started by accident. No injuries have been reported.
Singer Eydie Gorme, 84
“[The] bouncy, bantering, big-voiced pop singer and entertainer … as a solo act and with her husband, Steve Lawrence, performed on the air, in clubs, onstage and on records for more than 50 years.”