“Texting, email, social media – we use these to self-stimulate throughout the day and, for some of us at least, throughout the night as well. So there’s got to be something deeply right in the finding that, in the words of the paper, ‘most people do not enjoy ‘just thinking’ and clearly prefer having something else to do.’ Deeply right, maybe, but there is good reason to doubt some of the findings of the study. Not the data, so much, as the way it gets interpreted.”
Tag: 12.12.14
War, Peace And A Culture Of Exceptionalism
“The most famous ceasefire was among British and German regiments around Christmas Eve. German soldiers actually decorated their trenches with Christmas trees and began singing carols. British forces began singing back, and in a matter of hours over 100,000 troops were unofficially crossing into disputed territory to sing, exchange gifts, and celebrate with one another. This all occurred, mind you, during the second bloodiest conflict in European history.”
‘Tis The Season For Kitsch (So Here’s Why Kitsch Is Bad – And Good)
“Kitsch, in other words, is not about the thing observed but about the observer. It does not invite you to feel moved by the doll you are dressing so tenderly, but by yourself dressing the doll. All sentimentality is like this – it redirects emotion from the object to the subject, so as to create a fantasy of emotion without the real cost of feeling it.”
This Museum Sold Off Art Works For Years And Replaced It With Fakes
“Between 1999 and 2014, museum workers replaced several original works by Russian and Soviet avant-garde artists, including Alexander Nikolayev, Richard-Karl Sommer and Victor Ufimtsev, who had lived and worked in Uzbekistan last century.”
Indianapolis Museum Of Art To Drop Free Admission
“The Indianapolis Museum of Art, which hasn’t charged an admission fee since 2007, will begin charging adults $18 for entry to the museum and gardens starting in April … The museum briefly imposed a $7 adult admission fee in 2006, but dropped the policy a year later” after attendance fell.
Social Science Shows Us How To Give Less-Bad Gifts
“Unfortunately, much of the research shows that all the best gift-giving intentions in the world do not necessarily lead to good gifts. Here’s a brief look at some recently published studies that give us some hints on how to give less-terrible presents this holiday season, or any other time of the year, really.”
How The Humanities Can Save The World
“There is tremendous suspicion — at least, in American society — that what makes a text a work of art is nothing more than some ideological prejudice: Eurocentrism, say, or political correctness. A related worry is that any provisional canon — the very notion that certain works call for heightened attention and a special place in the practice of education — is fundamentally anti-democratic or somehow elitist.”
If Today’s Languages Want To Survive, They’d Better Look To Egypt
“Whatever precautions we take against cultural annihilation, one intractable problem remains. There is a gorgeously convoluted name for those words that, in a given corpus, appear only once: hapax legomena.”
The Prime Minister Of Canada Is Still Atoning For A Remark About The Arts From 2008
“His attempt to brand the arts as an elite concern played particularly badly in Quebec; some analysts believe the quote cost him a majority in that election. Many outside Quebec were equally unimpressed: Surely ordinary Canadians, with their garage bands and their dance lessons, are as appreciative of the arts as any elite.”
Is Philly’s Proposed Velodrome A Cool Urban Plan – Or Just Another Land Grab?
“Project 250’s backers have come up with an ambitious plan and a seductive set of renderings, showing a sleek, 21st-century velodrome that looks like a cross between a spaceship and a tidal wave. Not only do they maintain they can build this high-tech, enclosed arena with zero public dollars, but they also insist they can operate it as a for-profit venture. All they ask is that the city gift them a four-acre sliver of South Philadelphia’s FDR Park.”