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Can Neuroscientists Figure Out Empathy?

The advances of modern imaging technology mean that we no longer have to guess what the brain is up to. Our innermost thoughts and character are on display, and via scans that lay bare who has lots of empathy and who has none, who lies and who is a truth-teller, whom we should trust and welcome as a friend, and whom we should shy away from. Thanks to modern neuroscience, we can begin to piece together, for example, how we might “improve our society by harnessing the extraordinary positive force of empathy”. Since “neuroscientists, psychologists and geneticists now know which parts of the brain are specifically linked to empathy and compassion”, we should be “considering how we can enhance these abilities . . . .The empathy instinct is an idea whose time has come”.

Future Of Movies: Battle Between Cannes And Netflix Is Bad – But It’s Hard To Root For Either

France’s protectionist laws, which require a 36-month window between a film’s theatrical opening and its streaming debut, seem like the last gasp of a rapidly dying era. And the manner in which Frémaux handed down the Cannes ban, at the same time as the festival announced it was putting the kibosh on red-carpet selfies, was high-handed and doctrinaire. (In other words, it was French.) It’s increasingly evident that Netflix doesn’t just want to “disrupt” the business of showing movies in theaters. They want to destroy it. But it’s also increasingly evident that Netflix doesn’t just want to “disrupt” the business of showing movies in theaters. They want to destroy it. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told reporters last year the company wanted to “unleash film,” but he also spoke of the current state of exhibition with glib contempt.

Vend-A-Story – Getting Your Literature From A Machine

Here’s how a dispenser works: It is shaped like a cylinder with three buttons on top indicating a “one minute,” “three minute” or “five minute” story. (That’s how long it takes to read.) When a button is pushed, a short story is printed, unfurled on a long strip of paper. The stories are free. They are retrieved from a computer catalog of more than 100,000 original submissions by writers whose work has been evaluated by Short Edition’s judges, and transmitted over a mobile network. Offerings can be tailored to specific interests: children’s fiction, romance, even holiday-themed tales.

How NYCBallet Planned Its Season Post-Martins

The new team chose two of the six premieres City Ballet will present in the 2018-19 season, reaching beyond the traditional ballet world to commission works by Kyle Abraham and Emma Portner. They learned the puzzle-like intricacy of planning a year’s worth of ballets, which must be chosen so subscribers won’t see too many repeats and scheduled so the whole company — dancers, orchestra, costume shop and more — can handle the workload. And they learned to use analytic tools — think Moneyball, but for ballet — which forecast how well each dance will sell.

Is The College Experience Converging With The Retail Shopping Experience?

As online learning extends its reach, though, it is starting to run into a major obstacle: There are undeniable advantages, as traditional colleges have long known, to learning in a shared physical space. Recognizing this, some online programs are gradually incorporating elements of the old-school, brick-and-mortar model—just as online retailers such as Bonobos and Warby Parker use relatively small physical outlets to spark sales on their websites and increase customer loyalty. Perhaps the future of higher education sits somewhere between the physical and the digital.

UK Arts Diversity Study: It’s Not!

Although differences emerge within the sector, the overall picture is of a homogenous workforce whose social networks are largely limited to other culture professionals and whose values are markedly different to those of any other occupation. Cultural workers are ‘the most liberal, most pro-welfare and most left wing of any industry.’ These same descriptions apply both to makers of culture and consumers: cultural workers attend four times as many cultural activities as people in working-class occupations. ‘Many in the sector really do have a distorted picture of just how unlikely it is for a working-class person to visit their institution,’ says Dr O’Brien. ‘Basically, you have a set of people who look very much like the audience that they are serving. We could consider the cultural sector a closed segment of society.’

Britain’s Abandoned Brass Instruments Are Changing Children’s Lives In Uganda

The not-for-profit Brass for Africa “has delivered 800 brass instruments to both Uganda and Liberia and reaches over 1000 children weekly. … The children involved include those living in extreme poverty (living either as street children or in a slum), as well as children living in orphanages and rehabilitation centres, living with physical or mental disability, or coping with HIV/AIDS. These children each have two training sessions a week, which include music theory, and … the bands each have at least three performances a year,.”

Study: Few Artists In UK Come From Working Class Backgrounds

The percentage of people working in publishing with working-class origins was given as 12.6%. In film, TV and radio it was 12.4%, and in music, performing and visual arts, 18.2%. “Aside from crafts, no creative occupation comes close to having a third of its workforce from working-class origins, which is the average for the population as a whole,” the report said.

America’s Poet Laureate Takes Poetry Down America’s Back Roads

“[Tracy K.] Smith, the fifth African-American to hold the title, has put an unexpected spin on it. She is taking poetry on the road around the nation, focusing primarily on rural areas where most writers are unlikely to visit.” She say, “This is a strange period where, nationally, we’re being reminded or convinced of the great divisions that separate coastal and urban communities from the central and rural communities. I’ve always distrusted that. I think there are lots of places where we have something very clear, compelling and welcome to say to one another.”