The phenomenon, basically the inverse of the placebo effect, is when “inert substances or mere suggestions of substances actually bring about negative effects in a patient or research participant” – say, when taking a sugar pill makes a person feel nauseated because he was told it would.
Tag: 07.23.12
Weekly Reader, Which Served Generations Of US Schoolchildren, To Fold
“Weekly Reader, a staple in American classrooms for a century, has some hard news for its young readers: it’s shutting down. Chief rival Scholastic, which bought the school newspaper earlier this year, is folding it into Scholastic News and axing all but five of Weekly Reader‘s 60 employees.”
The 2012 Paralympics Have A Cultural Olympiad Of Their Own
“The Olympics and Paralympics are coming to the UK, along with the opportunity to showcase a wealth of disabled talent. … And the Cultural Olympiad’s Unlimited programme has pumped over a million pounds worth of National Lottery, Arts Council and British Council money into 35 commissions for deaf and disabled artists.”
Are These The Brain Cells That Give Us Consciousness?
When Constantin von Economo discovered them in 1926, he called them “rod-and-corkscrew cells.” (They’re now called von Economo neurons.) “Certain lines of evidence hint that they may help build the rich inner life we call consciousness, including emotions, our sense of self, empathy and our ability to navigate social relationships.”
Will London Really Erase Banksy’s New Olympics Art?
“In cleaning up London’s graffiti for the Olympics city authorities threaten to squelch the work one of its biggest celebrities, the street artist Banksy, but on Monday the secretive graffiti artist showed he wouldn’t be deterred from creating Olympics-related art while the whole world is watching.”
Children’s Author Margaret Mahy, 76
“Winner of many of the world’s major children’s prizes, including the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen medal, … [her] first picture book, A Lion in the Meadow, was published in 1969, and Mahy went on to expand her repertoire to encompass fiction for younger children and then for teenagers. In 1980 she became a full-time writer, with more than 100 books to her name today.”
Lost Katherine Mansfield Short Stories Discovered
“A young student has just struck literary gold, discovering four previously unknown stories written more than a century ago by Katherine Mansfield.”
Has Participatory Art, Once Revolutionary, Become The Oppressor?
“[Tino Sehgal’s] pieces, like so much other participatory art under neoliberalism, serve a double agenda: offering a popular art of and for the people, while at the same time, reminding us that today we all experience a constant pressure to perform and, moreover, this is one in which we have no choice but to participate.”
Britain’s Guardian Launches A ‘Great American Novelist’ Tournament
Correspondent Matthew Spencer has (after much argument from readers) created a list of 32 finalists – seeded and bracketed, just like in tennis – for the title. His key rule: “I’m looking for an American, writing within the last 100 years who went back to the well again and again and continued to find it wet with novelistic inspiration” – that is, candidates must have written four great novels.
Singer Leaves Bayreuth Festival Over Swastika Tattoo He No Longer Has
Evgeny Nikitin, who was singing the lead in this season’s only new production (The Flying Dutchman), was forced to withdraw after a German tabloid ran a photo of a bare-chested Nikitin, during his younger days as a heavy-metal drummer, with a swastika tattoo. (That symbol has since been inked over.)