‘Confabulation’ comes from the Latin fabula (‘story’) which can be either a historical account or a fairytale. When we confabulate, we tell a story that is fictional, while believing that it is a true story. As we are not aware that our story is fictional, this is very different from a lie: we have no intention to deceive. So in confabulation there is a mismatch between what we aim to do (tell a true story) and what we end up doing (tell a fictional story).
Blog
In Philadelphia, A Superbowl Win Gets Sports And Arts Talking
“Arts and sports suddenly had something to say to each other. Arts groups surely capitalized on the moment, holding Eagles-themed promotions to sell tickets to their performances and using the chance to shed their sometimes-elitist aura. But the arts in a way were just expressing the larger civic sentiment as they often do, whether with an orchestra concert at the Mann after 9/11 to calm a shaken city or a choir and ensemble assembling in a Rittenhouse Square church to memorialize victims killed in 2016 at the Pulse nightclub.”
What Makes Humans Special? Our Ability To Automate Things
“As a species, we have built cities and crafted stories, developed cultures and formulated laws, probed the recesses of science, and are attempting to explore the stars. This is not because our brain itself is uniquely superior – its evolutionary and functional similarity to other intelligent species is striking – but because our unique trait is to supplement our bodies and brains with layer upon layer of external assistance. This provides us with a depth, breadth and permanence of mental and physical capability that no other animal approaches. Humans are unique because we are complex, and we are complex because we are the beast that automates.”
SoundCloud’s Fake Music Problem
Though 49 of the site’s top 50 tracks are songs from official artist accounts, the site is plagued with secondary accounts posting primary content, all of it loaded with track info designed to game the system’s search algorithms in their favor. If other platforms have problems with “fake news,” SoundCloud has problems with fake music, and in both cases the issue is more feature than bug.
Trump Budget Proposes To Begin Shutting Down The National Endowment For The Arts
According to the new budget proposal, the NEA’s budget would be cut down to $29 million, and the NEH’s budget would be reduced to $42 million. Both organizations are currently budgeted at around $150 million; they account for well under 1 percent of the government’s budget. “The Budget proposes to begin shutting down NEA in 2019, given the notable funding support provided by private and other public sources and because the Administration does not consider NEA activities to be core Federal responsibilities,” the budget proposal reads.
Why Aren’t We Using What We Know About How Kids’ Brains Work To Teach Them To Read?
The way kids are taught to read in school is disconnected from the latest research, namely how language and speech actually develop in a child’s brain.
WWJW? (What Would Jesus Wear? Not What You Probably Thought)
Indeed, what did Jesus wear? He almost certainly didn’t dress as he is traditionally depicted, just as he almost certainly didn’t have long, light brown hair and blue eyes. He probably didn’t have a full beard, either. Scholar Joan Taylor gathers together the few clues we have from the New Testament, Roman commentary, and convention of the time and place to make an educated guess about Jesus’s sartorial style. (In a word, shabby.)
Broadway’s Annual Attendance Swoon (New York In February?)
With “Springsteen on Broadway” — and the approximately $2.4 million it brings in every week — on hiatus, overall sales dipped by $2.8 million to $22 million for 24 shows. Attendance slipped by about 20,000 to 191,186, or 83% of the street’s overall capacity. Those numbers were better than the same week last year (when there were 23 shows playing), with attendance up about 15,000 compared to 2017.
The Now-Forgotten Book That Terrified The Antebellum South
“As its title suggested, the book was an ‘Appeal’ to ‘The Colored Citizens of the World, but in Particular and Very Expressly to those of the United States of America.’ Yet appeal was a tame word for the prophecy smoldering between its covers, clearly directed towards the nation’s enslaved laborers. The police may have flipped to page 28: ‘It is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty.’ Page 35 argued that owners denied slaves education because it would reveal their right to ‘cut his devilish throat from ear to ear, and well do slave-holders know it.'”
Is Charles Venable Saving The Indianapolis Museum Of Art (Or Killing It?)
Is Venable’s vision for his museum misguided, or a clarion call for a struggling industry to cast aside its pieties in pursuit of a purely rational bottom line? As of last October, the Indianapolis Museum of Art has rebranded itself as Newfields: A Place for Nature and the Arts. Admission is no longer free, and your $18 ticket brings you into a wonderland of flowering gardens, foreign delicacies, theatrical performances, cat-video festivals, mini-golf, beer gardens, and, should you be into such things, an art museum, too.