Category: ideas

In his book The Art Instinct, Denis Dutton “argues that our desire for beauty is firmly grounded in evolution, a side effect of the struggle to survive and reproduce. In this sense, a cubist painting by Picasso is no more mysterious than the allure of a Playboy centerfold: Both are works of culture that attempt to sate a biological drive.”

Peter Ward “believes that the only help for the planet over the long run is management by human beings – whether that means actively adjusting the chemical composition of the atmosphere or using giant satellites to modify the amount of sunlight that reaches us. As Ward sees it, the planet doesn’t need our help destroying itself. It will do that automatically. It needs us to save it.”

“In the past, the main areas of contention have included nuclear weapons, eugenics and experiments on animals, but in recent years the list of ‘immoral’ research areas has grown exponentially.”

Danniel Tammet, who knows pi to more than 22,000 digits and learned Icelandic in a week, tells how he connects numbers the way most people connect words, why the number 37 is “lumpy, like porridge,” and more generally how his mind works and what the rest of us might learn from it.

“It’s a wonder the Greeks accomplished as much as they did, as many of their homes seem to have doubled as pubs and brothels. This finding, from new analyses of archaeological remains, could explain why previous hunts for evidence of ancient Greek taverns have been fruitless.”

“The live concert circuit is thriving… While the global economic crisis and the poor Aussie dollar may have some effect on that here in the coming months, it’s the stage performance that is helping to regenerate a recording industry that has been bitten on the bum by digital technology. The digital revolution has changed forever the means of distribution in relation to audio and video product, and the biggest impact of that has been on the music industry.”

“[G]enuine excuse artisans — and there are millions of them — don’t wait until after choking to practice their craft. They hobble themselves, in earnest, before pursuing a goal or delivering a performance. … The urge goes well beyond a mere lowering of expectations, and it has more to do with protecting self-image than with psychological conflicts rooted in early development, in the Freudian sense.”

“Scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes.”

“When no one – from politicians to pundits – says what he actually means, irony becomes a logical self-inoculation. Similarly, snark, irony’s brat, flourishes in an age of doublespeak and idiocy that’s too rarely called out elsewhere. Snark is not a honk of blasé detachment; it’s a clarion call of frustrated outrage.”

Carlin Romano visits an American Philosophical Association congress, where publishers hawk books like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy and where a graduate student, told “Sorry, I can’t help you” by a staffer, thunders, “That is JUST NOT TRUE.”