The UK’s international trade secretary, Liz Truss, announced on Thursday that she hopes to launch “the world’s most advanced freeport model” as soon as possible, promising it will create “thousands of jobs.” The move was immediately criticized by the opposition Labour Party. Peter Dowd, the shadow chief secretary to the treasury, said that creating tax havens, where the super-rich can store their “art, wine, and gold,” is “payback for Tory funders and their mates.” – Artnet
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The Professional Aesthetic Response
“Everyone has these experiences. We all see pattern. We see what we like, or feel spurred on by. Some of us see the lineaments of social life like a bright line connecting the texts of an archive; some see the hand of God, or serendipity, or conspiracy, or energy, or 11:11 on the clock more often than seems consistent with chance. For some people, such experiences become, for probably unfathomable reasons, the center of life.” – 3 Quarks Daily
Scientists: Bach Had An Anatomical Advantage For Music
In a study published in a German scientific journal, anatomist and musician Andreas Otte deduced that Bach—a gifted organist and harpsichordist—had an exceptional reach at the keyboard. – National Geographic
Ruth Reichl On The Power Of Food Journalism
“I honestly think there’s almost no story you can’t tell through food. If you want to read about women’s lives throughout history, you can do it through cookbooks. If you want to teach math, you want to teach history, there’s nothing you can’t get to through food. It is one of the major forces in the world. When I went to Gourmet, I knew it couldn’t just be about fancy restaurants and taking trips to have a good time.” – Columbia Journalism Review
Is It Worth It To Pay $7,500 To Publish Your Book?
Is it ego, recognition from others, the catharsis of a journey of self-discovery or the conviction the information contained in the book is something the world desperately needs? That’s a complicated question. I can attest there’s something very gratifying about seeing your name in print. It just depends on what it’s worth to you. – San Francisco Chronicle
Medieval Vagina Monologues: A 700-Year-Old Poem About A Talking Vulva
Der Rosendorn (The Rose Thorn), about a young woman’s argument with her own vagina about which of them men care more about, had been thought to date from the early 16th century. But a strip of parchment found in the library of an Austrian monastery indicates that the bawdy verse story was written ca. 1300 (if not earlier). – The Guardian
Anthologizing Abraham
When I watch a dance that I’ve also seen a few years earlier, I perceive it differently. Has it changed? Maybe. Have I changed? Of course. I’ve viewed and written about all but one of the Kyle Abraham works works performed this past week at Jacob’s Pillow, and things catch my attention that evaded it before. (And here’s another question: do I only remember what I wrote about and forget what I didn’t mention earlier?) – Deborah Jowitt
Images Of War: It’s Us, Where We Live, Work, Shop
Phil Kennicott: “Now the war has come to Walmart. And Hooters. And Sam’s Club and McDonald’s, and an unnamed but homey looking restaurant that has a $7.99 Lunch Special. If this doesn’t look like war, that’s only because we so reflexively resist the idea of a war on American soil that we refuse to see the obvious.” – Washington Post
Turns Out The First Sonnet Cycle Ever Published In English Was By A Woman
Most textbooks have said that the first English sonnet sequence was Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella (1591). Yet three decades earlier, Anne Vaughan Lock’s A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, a 26-stanza paraphrase of Psalm 51, was published as an appendix in a 1560 volume of Lock’s own translations of a set of Jean Calvin’s sermons. – The New Yorker
Rethinking Gentrification: Maybe It’s Not So Bad?
The researchers come up with some startling findings. In a paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Quentin Brummet and Davin Reed say that urbanites move all the time, for countless reasons, and that gentrification has scant impact on that constant flow. Those who stay put as a neighborhood grows more affluent often see their quality of life rise and their children enjoy more opportunities. Those who leave rarely do worse. – New York Magazine