Social scientists are finding that individual willpower is a finite (if renewable) resource – that, for instance, resisting the urge to buy an expensive leather jacket leaves a person with less willpower to resist eating a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. Now consider that “[p]urchasing decisions that the wealthy can base entirely on preference, like buying dinner, require rigorous tradeoff calculations for the poor.”
Tag: 06.06.11
‘Digital Archaeology’: Finding And Displaying The Earliest Web Sites
“[The] first ‘digital archeology’ exhibit of the earliest websites is making its North American debut” this week in New York. “On display is an array of 28 culturally significant websites, displayed on the ‘vintage’ hardware and software of the era in which they were made.”
Was Pablo Neruda Poisoned By Pinochet?
“A judge in Chile has opened an investigation into the death four decades ago of the Nobel Prize-winning poet in response to allegations by his former driver that Neruda was poisoned by agents acting for Gen. Augusto Pinochet.”
National Pavilions At The Venice Biennale: Some Artists Resist The Very Idea
“Allora & Calzadilla’s work in [the US pavilion at] the Biennial is part of a growing trend: artists representing their countries at the Venice Biennale in unorthodox ways or resisting the idea of national representation altogether.”
The ‘10,000-Hours-Make-An-Expert’ Theory – Can We Test It?
“The concept that 10,000 hours of practice can make one an expert in a field – an idea developed by psychologist Anders Ericsson and popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers – has become prevalent enough” that Scientific American asked an MIT researcher if the theory could be tested empirically.
West End Gypsies: The Life Of A Backup Dancer In London
“You wouldn’t recognise them, as they head for freezing upstairs rooms in tatty gymnasiums and slink into backstage theatre doors. You wouldn’t know their faces, even though they appear regularly in sold-out musicals and on the nation’s favourite television shows. They have no money, even though they perform with famous singers in international tours.”
Banned In Britain!: The Human Centipede Sequel Is Just Too Gross
The original, “a 2010 horror film in which a scientist stitches kidnap victims together, was proudly touted as ‘the most horrific film ever made’. Now the British Board of Film Classification has declined to certify The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) as suitable even for adult audiences, effectively banning the movie from the country.
Scholars Wonder: Does Piracy Help Obscure Works?
“The majority of the titles that were infringed upon were scholarly monographs. It’s very hard to find a correlation between the appearance of these books on these sites, and lost sales. In some cases you can’t help but think that … obscurity might be our biggest problem, rather than piracy.”
The Dictionary That Took 90 Years To Complete
“Scholars at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute have finally completed the Assyrian Dictionary, listing 28,000 words of a language that hasn’t been used for more than 2,000 years. Published in 21 volumes, the dictionary project was started in 1921. In all, 88 scholars worked 90 years to compile it. At $1,400 a set, it will be sold mostly to universities.”
Guessing Game Over Who Will Lead Canada’s Stratford Festival
Who will succeed this internationally acclaimed, but controversial director as head of the largest, most overanalyzed theatre company in the country?