A Million Dollars For Individual Artists

“The $100,000 no-strings-attached awards are distributed over a period of three to five years and are intended to recognize artists’ work over a period of at least 25 years and to encourage them, in the words of Bush Foundation president Peter Hutchinson, to continue “planting the seeds of change and growth, to serving as catalysts in their communities and to preserving and expanding our cultural traditions.”

Some Japanese Males Start Mellowing Out, Making The Rest Of The Country Nervous

“Ryoma Igarashi likes going for long drives through the mountains, taking photographs of Buddhist temples and exploring old neighborhoods. He’s just taken up gardening, growing radishes in a planter in his apartment.” This sort of 20-something male would be completely unremarkable in Seattle or Munich. But in Japan, these “soushoku danshi” (literally, “grass-eating boys”) are precipitating a national debate about masculinity.

The Second Death Star’s ‘Return To Classical Symmetry’

“Star-Wars creator and amateur architect George Lucas has been accused of rather too closely following the designs of media magnate William Randolph Hearst’s ‘Xanadu’ Castle. He should have looked closer to home for inspiration: his Star Wars films are full of wonderful architecture. Here the Architects’ Journal selects its top ten Star Wars buildings.”

The University Major Most Common Among Terrorists (It’s Not Art History)

Researchers “found that engineers are three to four times as likely as other graduates to be present among the members of violent Islamic groups in the Muslim world since the 1970s. … The largest single group were engineers, with 78 out of 178, followed by 34 taking Islamic studies, 14 studying medicine, 12 economics and business studies, and 7 natural sciences.”