Category: ideas

Most scholars in recent decades had concluded that Homer’s epics were more or less fiction, with little, if any, basis in actual history. But a range of evidence – from ancient Hittite tables to modern studies of comparative anthropology – indicate that the works “contain a hidden key to ancient Greek history – though not necessarily the key that Homer’s readers once thought they were being given.”

The entire discipline of philosophy is being shaken up by a group of professors who “think that by studying human minds, using empirical techniques, and drawing on the insights of modern psychological science, they can get a better sense of where intuitions come from, and whether or when they should be granted credence.”

The vice-presidential candidate “represents the state-of-the-art version of a particular type of woman… that’s become a familiar and potent figure in the culture war in recent years.” Sexy Puritans attract attention “not simply by advocating conservative positions on hot-button social issues but by embodying nonthreatening mainstream standards of female beauty and behavior at the same time. The net result is a paradox… You get a little thrill along with your traditional values, a wink along with the wagging finger. Somehow, you don’t feel quite as much like a prig as you expected to.”

Playwright Tony Kushner was recently awarded $200,000 as one of the most influential figures in American theatre. Terry Teachout wonders what the benefit of handing out cash to talented but established artists is supposed to be. The answer seems to be all about star power, but “in a pop culture, no amount of money is large enough to make an egghead famous, much less the group that gives it to him.”

“At the birth of English Romanticism, chemistry and other sciences, notably astronomy and the physics of electricity, were exciting components of the new mood. For so long assumed to be polar opposites, Romanticism and Science are justly reunited in Richard Holmes’s new book [The Age of Wonder].”

“[Artist] Martin Creed’s latest piece, Work No. 955, […] though barely three minutes in duration, could well be Creed’s most ambitious piece to date: not only due to the fact that it requires an entire symphony orchestra to realise it, but because it raises fundamental questions about the relationship between music and art in general. We accept that music is a form of art – but is it equally the case that art can take the form of a piece of music?”

“For the third time in a week I am on urbandictionary.com, and haunted by the feeling that this is not quite what my time as poet-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust should be spent doing.”

As Google introduces its new mobile phone, the company is also developing “a system where instead of always connecting to one network, a phone, laptop or other wireless device invites all available networks to bid for your business.”

“One after the other, the models strutted across the stage to bouncy ’80s dance tunes, all showing off designs of the same article of clothing – adult diapers. Japan has one of the world’s most rapidly aging societies, and the fashion show Thursday proved the country’s diaper producers are intent on keeping the elderly clean and dry.”

“God was mostly off the table in recent weeks – except in His particle form – as the Large Hadron Collider revved up for a massive series of experiments in subatomic physics. But among science journalists, there was plenty of protective coloration of another variety. Much of the prose from the hundreds of stories heralding the event arced decidedly toward the purple.”