Tag: 04.29.19

Digital Life Is Changing Our Brains. How You Read Turns Out To Be Important

There are old rules in the brain’s design that do not change: Use it or lose it. I would add, Choose it. A great deal hangs on how we work as a society to choose who we want to be—whether we choose to preserve the use of deep reading processes across every medium in our young and in ourselves as we expand our technologies. The stakes are multiple for our next generation: the capacity to discern truth; to appreciate and create beauty; and to be transported outside themselves—to encounter the thoughts and feelings of others so as to contemplate their own novel thoughts, the basis of our shared future. – Pacific Standard

Confederate Statues In Charlottesville Are Protected As War Memorials, Rules Judge

In 2016, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove statues of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson that were erected in the 1920s. (It was this vote that the notorious 2017 Unite the Right rally was protesting.) A group called the Monument Fund sued to have the vote reversed, arguing that Virginia law forbids cities to remove war memorials; the city maintains the statues are, in effect, monuments to white supremacy. The state judge wrote in his ruling, “the statues to [Lee and Jackson] under the undisputed facts of this case still are monuments and memorials to them, as veterans of the Civil War. … It does no good pretending they are something other than what they actually are.” – The Daily Progress (Charlottesville)

$4.7 Million Artemisia Gentileschi Painting Greets Patients In Doctor’s Waiting Room

The self-portrait of Gentileschi as St. Catherine of Alexandria, purchased by the UK’s National Gallery last year, is currently in a GP’s office in East Yorkshire; before that, it was at Glasgow Women’s Library. The painting is touring “as part of a scheme reminding people that the National Gallery’s collection belongs to the nation.” (How are they keeping it from getting stolen?) – The Telegraph (UK)

Using Chickens, Kate Winslet, And Theatre To Help Fight Climate Change

Australian theatre artist David Finnigan’s first piece on the subject was, perhaps imprudently, titled Kill Climate Deniers. (It was about an attack by, er, highly motivated environmental activists on the parliament in Canberra.) Reporter Steve Dow has a look at Finnigan’s new show, You’re Safe Til 2024, which, yes, involves chickens and Kate Winslet (Titanic version). – The Guardian

Mark Richter, Who Founded Two Opera Companies In San Antonio, Dead At 51

The former tenor founded San Antonio Pocket Opera in 1995, and over 16 years he developed the company into what is now San Antonio Opera, presenting full main-stage works. He left that company in 2011 as it began what became a financial crisis, and the following year he founded a chamber opera company now known as Alamo City Opera. – San Antonio Express-News

Protesters Have Banana Eat-In At Poland’s National Museum After Culture Ministry Pulls Video Of Woman Eating Banana

“The 1973 video Consumer Art, by prominent artist Natalia LL, showing a young woman eating a banana with great pleasure, was removed from the National Museum in Warsaw last week after the new museum head, Jerzy Miziolek, was summoned to the Ministry of Culture.” And once word got around, scornful protesters did what we’d expect them to do. – Yahoo! (AP)