He believes we must go beyond neuroscience and into the mysterious world of quantum mechanics to explain our rich mental life. No one quite knows what to make of this theory, developed with the American anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, but conventional wisdom goes something like this: Their theory is almost certainly wrong, but since Penrose is so brilliant (“One of the very few people I’ve met in my life who, without reservation, I call a genius,” physicist Lee Smolin has said), we’d be foolish to dismiss their theory out of hand.
Tag: 05.04.17
Male Dancers Need To Eat A Lot To Get The Energy To Lift Bigger Ballerinas, Says Mariinsky Theater’s Director
That would be Valery Gergiev, the general director of the storied St. Petersburg house as well as a compulsively globe-trotting conductor who’s found himself caught in controversy before. This time, in addition to opining on male dancers’ diets and female dancers’ size, Gergiev discussed the preference for small breasts on ballerinas and dissed the Mariinsky’s Moscow rival, the Bolshoi.
How Shakespeare Sucks Up All The Oxygen
“New theories about the extent of Shakespeare’s collaborative work appear to chip away at the solitary-genius monolith, but in fact they gain their intellectual and institutional traction from our very investment in that monolith. Adaptations similarly reinforce Shakespeare’s dominance even as they attempt to overwrite his social and linguistic conventions.”
Melbourne Symphony Turns Its Financial Fortunes Around
The orchestra, where a new managing director recently joined chief conductor Andrew Davis, “post[ed] a surplus of A$761,000 for 2016. The result is significant, as the orchestra registered a deficit of A$577,653 in 2015, and the previous surplus in 2014 was only A$298,770.”
BBC To Produce First Period Drama With All Non-White Cast
“A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth’s sprawling novel set in post-colonial India, … will be adapted into a lavish eight-part series with a script from Andrew Davies, the screenwriter whose hits include the famous 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and last year’s adaptation of War and Peace.”
The Pursuit Of Happiness – At An Actual Happiness Summit Conference
A “consciousness lecture,” an “intention experiment,” electronic “personal meditation assistants,” and the MIT Mood Meter: a reporter visits the first-ever World Happiness Summit in Miami.
Man Slashes $3 Million Painting In Aspen Gallery
In an apparently pre-planned attack following several suspicious phone calls, an individual wearing a hat, sunglasses and one glove entered the Opera Gallery, went right up to Christopher Wool’s Untitled 2004, cut it twice, and jogged out – all in about 15 seconds. (includes security video)
Amazon And EU Settle E-Book Antitrust Case
“Amazon, the biggest e-book distributor in Europe, proposed to drop some clauses in its contracts so publishers would not be forced to give it terms as good as those for rivals. Such clauses relate to business models, release dates, catalogs of e-books, features of e-books, promotions, agency prices, agency commissions and wholesale prices.”
Designing An Online Tool To Demystify Contemporary Dance For New Audiences
Audience engagement researcher Ben Walmsley writes about his project called Respond, “a responsive online platform … [which] attempted to break down cognitive barriers to dance by showing and explaining the rationale behind certain choreographic decisions and giving audiences demystifying insights into the rehearsal and development processes.”
What Kind Of Theatre, Exactly, Do ‘We Need Now More Than Ever’?
Broadway this season has pure escapism, like “Hello, Dolly,” and socially engaged theatre, exemplified by Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat.” The problem isn’t either one, argues critic Jonathan Mandell. “Escapist fare is most irksome not when it focuses on something other than the world’s concerns, but when it demonstrates an active indifference to those concerns.”