“John Simpson began working at OED in 1976. The young index-card-shuffling assistant” became the man who led the transformation of the dictionary from a mammoth set of heavy printed volumes to “a vast, searchable database that tells the story of human history through a constantly expanding survey of the words we use.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Salman Rushdie’s Problem With His Career Choice
“I really wanted to be an actor. It was the other thing I wanted to be. What’s difficult for me to work out is that, given that I was very involved in theater, and given that I was very obsessed with movies, I ended up doing this thing that you do by sitting alone in a room.”
Crowdsourcing Canine Cognition Studies
Animal psychologist Brian Hare’ research “has been constrained by the number of dogs he can study. … He is the chief scientific officer of a new company called Dognition, which produces a Web site where people can test their dog’s cognition, learn about their pets and, Dr. Hare hopes, supply him and his colleagues with scientific data on tens of thousands of dogs.”
Creating The Languages In Game Of Thrones
David J. Peterson, a formerly unemployed linguist, developed from scratch the harsh, guttural tongue of the Dothraki (who have no word for “thank you”) and the sweeter sounds of High Valyrian (which he describes as “just so stupid pretty”). One of his favorite parts was “doing the Low Valyrian is that I could really take a bat to pretty, proper High Valyrian.”
Miami City Ballet’s Sister Act
Patricia and Jeanette Delgado “trained together … with the same teachers, joined the same company and are now two of Miami City Ballet’s most celebrated and critically lauded principal dancers. They are also best friends who figured out early on how to navigate the considerable pitfalls of sibling rivalry with aplomb.”
Street Art Booms In São Paulo
There are painted murals, crochet coverings for tree trunks, conceptual art “microscripts” pasted around construction sites – there’s even a service that connects graffiti artists with the owners of buildings with empty walls.
Jane Austen Was A Game Theorist
“In 230 diagram-heavy pages, [political scientist Michael] Chwe argues that Austen isn’t merely fodder for game-theoretical analysis, but an unacknowledged founder of the discipline itself: a kind of Empire-waisted version of the mathematician and cold war thinker John von Neumann, ruthlessly breaking down the stratagems of 18th-century social warfare.”
Japanese Company Brings Television Right To The Driver’s Seat (Is This Really A Good Idea?)
“When selling car navigation systems, Japanese retailer Autobacs touts a special add-on: kits that convert the mapping gadgets into televisions, so drivers can watch their favorite shows.”
Shakespeare’s Globe Announces Its First Indoor Season
“The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse will open its season with a production of The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster and a co-production with the Royal Opera House of Cavalli’s opera L’Ormindo.”
Richie Havens, 72, Folk Musician And Icon Of Woodstock
“From the beginning, when he played Village folk clubs in the mid-Sixties, Havens stood out due to more than just his imposing height (he was six-and-a-half feet tall) and his ethnicity (African-American in a largely white folk scene). He played his acoustic guitar with an open tuning and in a fervent, rhythmic style, and he sang in a sonorous, gravel-road voice that connected folk, blues and gospel.”