“We tend to think of videogames as frivolous activities – something we do to kill time, not to improve productivity. But a new generation of designers is taking a different tack: Like [Stanford professor Byron] Reeves, they’re using the principles of videogame design to transform everyday activities … Give people a competition, and it can transform a dull-but-important task into something exciting.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
The World’s First Horse Race Run To Live Music
This July in southern England, “[a] conductor will lead 12 members of the [Royal Philharmonic] orchestra and the [William Tell] overture will be played through loudspeakers all the way around the track for the benefit of the horses.”
An Evening Without Monty Python
That’s the title of a show to play L.A. and NYC this fall. It “will consist of short musical numbers and skits from past Python productions that were originally created by [Eric] Idle, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.” No Python vets are in the cast, though Idle will direct.
The World’s Ten Greatest Ceilings
“The Sistine Chapel may be the granddaddy of the ceiling world, but it’s far from the only one worth straining your neck to see. As proof, the editors and members of VirtualTourist.com have compiled a list of the World’s Top 10 Greatest Ceilings.” (But they forgot the Palau de la Música Catalana.)
The Bloomsbury Group And The Birth Of Modern Manners
“Its young mix of writers, thinkers, and artists stood at the vanguard of a shift in manners away from nineteenth-century formality and reticence and toward twentieth-century candor and playfulness. Male and female, mostly in their twenties, the Bloomsbury lot addressed each other by their first names, spoke openly about sexual matters, and, till the wee hours of the morning, reflected on how to spend their lives.”
Rousseau Was A Buddhist
From his third autobiography: “If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, … [with] no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, … as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy.” (Sounds like mindfulness to us …)
Milan Cathedral To Present Rooftop Concerts
“The Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, the organization responsible since 1387 for overseeing the Duomo, said the five concerts will feature a 60-piece orchestra and choir performing about 50 meters (165 feet) above the ground.”
Construction Begins On Louvre Abu Dhabi –
“Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the civic area will span 260,000 square feet and comprise pavilions, plazas, canals and alleyways. (About 65,000 square feet will be dedicated to exhibitions.) A dome 590 feet in diameter will hover over much of the complex. Completion is set for 2012 or 2013.”
– And The Public Gets A Preview Of The Art Inside
France’s President and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi “officially opened an exhibition at the Emirates Palace hotel that includes 19 works of art bought over the last 18 months for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, as well as loans from the French national museums. Acquired for what is being billed as the first universal museum in the Middle East, the works range from a Greek ceramic figure from around 520 B.C. to two 1862 canvases by Edouard Manet.”
Author On Trial: How Can Fiction Commit Blasphemy?
“A Turkish author on trial after being charged with inciting religious hatred in a novel based on the birth of Islam said that his book [Daughters Of Allah] was a work of fiction … and therefore could not be called blasphemous. An Istanbul court on Tuesday adjourned the trial of the author, Nedim Gürsel, until June 25. He faces up to a year in jail if convicted.”