“Rather than diffusing controversy and polarisation, it seems as if statistics are actually stoking them. Antipathy to statistics has become one of the hallmarks of the populist right, with statisticians and economists chief among the various “experts” that were ostensibly rejected by voters in 2016. Not only are statistics viewed by many as untrustworthy, there appears to be something almost insulting or arrogant about them. Reducing social and economic issues to numerical aggregates and averages seems to violate some people’s sense of political decency.”
Tag: 01.19.17
Some Lessons We Learned Bringing New Work To Small Theatres
Small venues are often encouraged to ‘buddy up’ with larger venues to develop their skills, expertise and knowledge. This can lead to an erosion of confidence, implying that small venues are somehow inferior and need help or advice. Small venues operate differently from larger ones, in that they manage their resources extremely well and develop a close understanding of and relationships with their audiences in ways that larger-scale organisations sometimes find difficult to achieve.
How Do We Make Jazz More Viable? Harvard Business School Takes Up The Case
“The dilemma here is how do you get young people at any age to start being interested in jazz? There is some research that says that people imprint on music in their romantic years, the time that they’re dating. That would be high school through college, more or less. Jazz is losing generations of young people because they’re not exposed to it during that time. Jazz is no longer the music of rebellion, hip hop is. This is not something that’s easily solved.”
Why Have So Many NYCityBallet Dancers Changed Their Names?
To go down the list: Melissa Hayden was born Mildred Herman; Allegra Kent — Iris Margo Cohen; Suzanne Farrell — Roberta Sue Ficker; Violette Verdy — Nelly Guillerm (even the French were doing it!); Merrill Ashley — Linda Michelle Merrill…
Targeting The Arts Is A ‘Lazy And Cowardly’ Way To Pretend To Cut The Budget
Alyssa Rosenberg: “Anyone who pretends that this is a particularly meaningful amount of money and that getting rid of it would be a serious step toward shrinking the federal government is trying very, very hard to delude the public. And targeting the arts is a particularly contemptuous, deceptive gesture because the Republicans who periodically propose it often suggest that the only people who care about the arts are elitist coastal liberals … But one of the things [the NEA, NEH and CPB] do is bring the arts and humanities to areas that don’t have big museums or lots of wealthy patrons.”
One Thing That’s Key To The Writing Life
“Wanting is not enough. I have wanted to climb a fourteener—here in Colorado, this is a peak over 14,000 feet—but I have yet to put in any effort to accomplish it. And unless I start training for a marathon hike, this will remain an unrealized ambition. Drive is the will to achieve. It is a state of mind that propels you to act. In the years before my book came out, I had the drive to write. I made compromises in order to have the time and space to make my art.”
On Stage Now: Resistance, Catharsis, Community
Questions for now: “What will the art be like? Will it offer effective resistance to the Trump administration? Solace to the audience? Will theatrical craftsmanship suffer in the face of what Martin Luther King Jr. called the fierce urgency of now? Is this a time that will allow for nuance and complexity? Will any protest plays emerge of lasting value?”
Known Unknowns, Or, How The Fossils We Don’t Have Are As Important As Those We Do
Evidence of absence: “Interpreting fossils that aren’t there comes with its own peculiar challenges, and these gaps and ghosts that haunt the fossil record are a big part of palaeontology’s allure. In dinosaur palaeontology, sample sizes are often small, and the challenge is to find creative ways to extract information from fossils. One of the most daring moves of all is to begin treating the fossils we don’t have as data.”
If We Can’t Articulate Something We Think We Know, Do We Really Know It?
“If something is beyond words, then it’s hard to get a handle on what, if anything, it means. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, was convinced that it was nonsensical to try to speak about what lies outside the limits of language. Even so, he wrote an entire book about what cannot be said.”
What Happens When We Lose Our Faith In Statistics
“Rather than diffusing controversy and polarisation, it seems as if statistics are actually stoking them. Antipathy to statistics has become one of the hallmarks of the populist right, with statisticians and economists chief among the various “experts” that were ostensibly rejected by voters in 2016. Not only are statistics viewed by many as untrustworthy, there appears to be something almost insulting or arrogant about them. Reducing social and economic issues to numerical aggregates and averages seems to violate some people’s sense of political decency.”