A non-profit had been doing so, in part because the state’s library is under-resourced. But the state says it doesn’t have the ability to check all the books that come in. Now Books to Prisoners has mounted a campaign… – Seattle Times
Blog
Taylor Mac: How A Misfit Kid From Stockton Grew Into A Macarthur Genius Drag Diva
Sasha Weiss: “When I once made the mistake of calling his drag a ‘persona,’ or a character he plays, he promptly corrected me: ‘I’m just exposing what I look like on the inside.’ Wearing jeans and a T-shirt is his way of hiding; drag is the opposite — it’s revealing, with tremendous confidence and panache, who he really is, and making room for the audience to be as odd and authoritative and mischievous and exposed as he is.” – The New York Times Magazine
A History Of The Color Blue (Yes, There Is One)
Blue was once little-known in the Western palette. Homer’s sea was “wine dark”; blue would not be used as water’s color until the seventeenth century. It has evolved from its original association with warmth, heat, barbarism, and the creatures of the underworld, to its current association with calm, peace, and reverie. – Claremont Review of Books
The Battle Between What You Believe And What You See
Work on artificial intelligence suggests that our brains engage in constant battles between what we think we know versus what we actually experience. It’s a kind of constant skepticism that informs our consciousness. – Aeon
To Replace ‘Car Talk’ On Stations’ Weekend Schedules, NPR Develops A Lighthearted Hard News Show
It’s Been a Minute isn’t a comedy show like Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. Says co-founder and host Sam Sanders, “We kind of trick our listeners into thinking it’s like a little fun talk party but, like, no, we’re giving you a lot of news stories. It’s still journalism. We’re still storyboarding, we’re still researching, we’re still fact-checking.” – Current
50 Years Of Dance Theater Of Harlem
In 1969, Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook started the company in a converted garage. “Together, they wanted to prove to the world something that still needed proving back then: that blacks could indeed dance ballet — and marvelously.” They did, and the company developed a worldwide reputation, one that survived even an eight-year hiatus due to financial troubles. “In honor of the anniversary, current and former members talked about their time with the company and, of course, Mitchell and his legacy. Here are edited excerpts from those interviews.” – The New York Times
Will Non-Physicists Ever Be Able To Intuitively Understand The Connection Between Space And Time?
Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli thinks that “counterintuitive phenomena — for example, of time moving slower for faster travelers — will, slowly, become intuitive. ‘It has happened with the fact that the Earth is a sphere (clarified two millennia ago) and the fact that it spins (clarified a few centuries ago). At first these were extremely counterintuitive ideas; nowadays we accept them as comprehensible. But it takes time.'” – Nautilus
Why The Slowpoke In Front Of You On The Sidewalk Or In The Checkout Line Drives You Nuts
Blame evolution. “Impatience made sure we didn’t die from spending too long on a single unrewarding activity. It gave us the impulse to act. But that good thing is gone. The fast pace of society has thrown our internal timer out of balance. It creates expectations that can’t be rewarded fast enough — or rewarded at all.” – Nautilus
Think Western Music Theory Was Invented In Ancient Greece? Nope
In fact, a set of scholars now believe, the Greeks based their music on scales and instruments like the lyre that had been developed more than 1,000 years earlier in Babylonia, from which come the oldest evidence of a heptatonic scale and the oldest pieces of music we have. Olivia Giovetti does a deep dive (with particular reference to opera). – Van
Terri Gross Talks To Yannick Nézet-Séguin On ‘Fresh Air’
On conducting with his whole body: “My model in this is really Leonard Bernstein because he also [conveyed] how every bone of the body should express music while on the podium. Why just limit it to the arms, which is what usually people see? It’s the eyes, the eyebrows, the shoulders, the feet.” (audio) – NPR