“‘An hour is just too long to watch comedy’, my companion said.’I just get bored after about 40 minutes. I can honestly say I’ve never sat through an Edinburgh set without looking at my watch. At least once.’ This companion, it should be pointed out, is a professional comedian.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Line Separating Addiction From Simple Pursuit Of Pleasure
“In normal circumstances, there is an internal relationship between what we do and the satisfactions that result. … You read the book, and the pleasure results from reading itself; it is not a state imposed on you by having read. With addiction, in contrast, the relationship between action and pleasure is … mere cause and effect; you press the button, the elevator goes up. There is no such thing as learning to press the button well.”
Cocaine At The Royal Danish Ballet: The Official Report
“After weeks of pressure from the media the Royal Danish Theatre released on Tuesday a controversial report alleging that cocaine abuse is rampant among members of its ballet company. … However, large sections of the now-publicised report have been censored out – including almost all the passages about [artistic director Nikolaj] Hübbe.”
Jane Avril: Looking At The Real Woman In Toulouse-Lautrec’s Art
The star of the Moulin Rouge was the abused daughter of a Paris courtesan; much of the public’s fascination with her dancing was because of the sudden spasms she experienced due to a neuromuscular disorder; her first experiences performing were as an inmate at a hospital.
Sleep, The Disk Defrag For The Brain
“A new paper from some Stanford neuroscientists argues that the function of sleep is to reorganize neural connections – a bit like a disk defrag for the brain – although it’s also a bit like compressing files to make more room, and a bit like a system reset.”
An Appalling Statistic From Google’s ‘Search Anthropologist’
“90 percent of people in their studies don’t know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page!”
Creating Vases From Sand (There’s Buddhist Design For You)
Designer Yukihiro Kaneuchi uses the principles of a traditional Japanese game called Bou-Toshi: Play “begins as a mound of sand with a pole jammed in the centre. Players take turns removing sand until the pole eventually loses stability and collapses.”
Frida Kahlo’s Corsets
“Frida Kahlo wore plaster corsets for most of her life because her spine was too weak to support itself. She painted them, naturally, covering them with pasted scraps of fabric and drawings of tigers, monkeys, plumed birds, a blood-red hammer and sickle, and streetcars like the one whose handrail rammed through her body when she was eighteen years old.”
The Latest Threat To Venice: Padlocks On Bridges
“Inspired by a bestselling romantic novel, young lovers are rushing to attach padlocks to the city’s historic Rialto bridge, risking damage to the stonework and requiring policemen with bolt cutters to remove them.”
What The World Looks Like To A Bee
“When a bee flies into your garden, it doesn’t see what you and I see. Flowers leap out from much darker-looking leafy backgrounds, and they have ultraviolet-reflecting landing strips that show the way to the nectar.”