A common test that detects electrical activity in the brain reveals “there is an anti-epileptic effect of Mozart music,” reports a research team led by Eliza Grylls. Three pieces of contemporary popular music did not have the same positive impact.
Blog
Rediscovering The Value Of CDs?
Many things once thought worthless—vinyl records, Brutalism—have grown in value. The Internet, which leaves no take unturned, has been predicting a compact disc comeback for years. After seeing what my lost Felt CD was now selling for, I began checking the prices of the CDs I’d held onto. A solo album by Kevin Rowland, of Dexys Midnight Runners, turns out to be worth $100 to $200 on Amazon. A couple Alex Chilton discs fall within the same price range. I was pleased, but scandalized too; I’d been so negligent with this treasure.
Revolving Door: UK Gets Its Sixth Culture Secretary In Six Years
Jeremy Wright takes up the position of culture secretary following four years as attorney general, legal adviser to the government. He replaces Hancock, who had been in the position since January this year, and becomes the sixth person to hold the post since 2012, following on from other MPs including Maria Miller and Sajid Javid.
It’s 50 Years Since Theatre Censorship Was Abolished In Britain – But How Much Freer Are Theatre Artists, Really?
“For over two centuries, since 1737, the Lord Chamberlain had the authority to veto new plays that they deemed indecent or that posed a threat to public order. … In the UK, we may no longer have ‘big C’ Censorship, but there’s also that with a small c, which can take the form of regulation such as film certification, or artists and organisations self-censoring due worries about public protest, sponsorship and its potential loss, media storms.”
The End Of HBO’s Boutique Quality?
Netflix is a production company of peerless scale when it comes to TV. It’s projected to spend $12 to $13 billion on original programming in 2018; meanwhile, HBO spent $2.5 billion on its shows in 2017. Netflix’s strategy is to overwhelm, pumping out fresh content at its subscribers and relying less and less on licensed material it doesn’t own. HBO has always had more of a “prestige” bent, taking a very long time to develop its shows and launching them with extreme fanfare, with an eye toward awards. But Stankey seems to view that deliberate pace as a result of laziness, and his desire to upend the network’s careful approach to putting out new shows (it only makes a handful per season) could mean the end of HBO as we know it.
Can Climate Change In The Arctic Make For Good Theatre? This Playwright Is Finding Out
“Playwright Chantal Bilodeau first visited the Arctic in 2007. She had not thought much about climate change in the past, but seeing Alaska’s melting glaciers firsthand and hearing stories of forced migration propelled the crisis to the top of her mind. She decided to write a play about the high north, its people, and the challenges they’re facing.” Bilodeau is now expanding the project into an eight-play cycle.
Can There Be A Canon Of Western Literature In The Age Of The Internet?
“If the coherence and usefulness of the Western canon seem increasingly untenable today, for reasons that reach beyond ideology, the very concept of a canon — one critically authoritative corpus of thought — now feels harder and harder to countenance. Not only has the unfolding triumph of digital life supplied every claim and every authority with an effectively infinite number of criticisms, the digital revolution has called into profound question how any limited body of knowledge can claim canonical authority over a world where information is infinite.”
Now *This* Is A Game Show For Millennials: Winners Get Their Student Debt Paid Off
“Premiering Tuesday on TruTV, Paid Off With Michael Torpey is pretty traditional for the genre: There are three rounds of play in which contestants buzz in to answer trivia questions and earn points. What sets it apart from other entries in the genre is what happens in the final round. If the top contestant answers eight trivia questions correctly, she wins a cash prize equal to the balance she owes on her student loans, because the contestant pool for Paid Off is the more than 40 million Americans who hold student loan debt.”
What A Dreadful Way To Pick The Winner Of A Book Prize!
The Golden Man Booker. “As a system of selection, this is a curious conflation of the single expert and the wisdom of crowds — or, if you will, super elitism and mob rule. After all, each novel on the shortlist was chosen by just one person (not nearly enough), and yet the winner was chosen by thousands (far too many). Having the unwashed public pick the best novel sounds wonderfully egalitarian, but it ignores all kinds of unanswerable questions about the self-selection and legitimacy of the voters.”
How Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ Foreshadowed 21st-Century Culture
“When you watch Vertigo in the age of the internet, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, it resonates as loudly as a church bell.” Not to mention catfishing and #MeToo.