“I’d bet my entire future income that more people read and discussed Kant last year than in 1950, or that the size of the class of people who study and produce ideas for a living is now much larger than it was in 1950.”
Tag: 08.24.11
Oregon Bach Festival Names Successor To Founding Director
“Matthew Halls, 35, a bright British conductor who comes out of the early music movement, will replace founder Helmuth Rilling as artistic director at the Oregon Bach Festival at the end of the 2013 season. Rilling, who led the 17-day festival since its founding in 1970, will remain with the University of Oregon event as director emeritus.”
How Do We Define ‘The Universe’? (It’s Not Easy)
“A first answer could be ‘the set of things within the volume of space we can measure.’ What things? Galaxies, stars, planets, galaxy clusters, black holes, that is, objects that we can probe with our instruments … The difficulty is that the universe is not a ‘thing’ in the sense that a star or a galaxy is a thing.”
Buddhism: The Most Accurate World Religion?
“Subtract the ‘hocus-pocus’ about reincarnation, karma, and ‘bodhisattvas flying on lotus leaves,’ and you’ll find a rigorous, clear-eyed account of the universe and our place in it – an account, in fact, designed to satisfy even the most ardent modern-day materialist. Buddhism matters, in other words, because it’s actually right.”
Surprise: Sales Of Classical Music CDs Rise
“Hold those obituaries for the classical CD. Nielsen SoundScan’s report for the first half of 2011 indicates that classical music had the biggest gain in sales of all genres, 13%, over the first half of 2010, for a total of 3.8 million albums.”
Budget Cuts Kill US Historic Preservation Program
Federal budget cuts forced the closure of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Save America’s Treasures (SAT) office in July. SAT had provided more than $315m in funding for historic preservation since 1999.
Art Theft Up To $6 Billion In US Last Year
This figure has doubled from around $3bn a decade ago, according to former federal agent Robert Wittman. “Art crime is on the rise because it is basically an economic crime. Art is one of the safe havens at this point, as far as assets are concerned, and criminals are not immune to seeing that in the papers and seeing the rise in auction prices.â€
Inside Job: Art Institute Of Chicago Makes Acting Director Permanent
“Douglas Druick, a 26-year veteran of the Art Institute of Chicago, was named its director this morning following an early morning meeting of its board of directors. Druick had been the museum’s interim director since July 1 following the unexpected resignation of James Cuno, who left the Art Institute to head the J. Paul Getty Trust.”
Oslo Massacres Will Change Crime Fiction, Says Author
“Jo Nesbø, the Norwegian author whose books about the driven, enigmatic detective Harry Hole have made him a bestseller in Britain, said yesterday it was inevitable that crime writing would change in the wake of the Anders Behring Breivik shootings last month.”
The Secret Languages Of Twins
“Scientists … have spent the last few decades quietly building up a body of research into what they call ‘cryptophasia’ or ‘twin language,’ and they are of two minds about it. They find it fascinating, as a window onto the origins of human language, but they also worry that it hampers children’s development.”