Sans Forgetica is purposefully hard to decipher, forcing the reader to focus. One study found that students recalled 57 percent of what they read in Sans Forgetica, compared with 50 percent of the material in Arial, a significant difference. No word yet on the retention rate of Comic Sans. – Wired
Tag: 12.17.18
Edward Gorey And Frank O’Hara Were The Lucy And Ethel Of Harvard’s Postwar Gay Underground
“Insatiable in his cultural cravings, all-embracing in his tastes, unreserved in his opinions, O’Hara was in many ways Gorey’s intellectual double, down to the fanatical balletomania. … They made a Mutt-and-Jeff pair on campus, O’Hara with his domed forehead and bent, aquiline nose, broken by a childhood bully, walking on his toes and stretching his neck to add an inch or two to his five-foot-seven height, Gorey towering over him at six two.” — Literary Hub
Ex-Banker Starts Up Investment Fund Based On Rare Old String Instruments
Frankfurt financier Christian Reister and violin dealer Jost Thoene have founded Violin Assets GmbH as a fund that treats Strads, Guarneris, Amatis, and the like as an “alternative asset class” — one that, Reister observes, can appreciate at the rate of 8% a year or more. — Bloomberg
Is There Any Point, Really, In Pondering The ‘Big Questions’? (Maybe.)
“Kant put his finger on the problem when he observed in the Critique of Pure Reason that human reason is driven by its very nature to ask itself questions that it is unable to answer. … Should we, then, set aside the Big Questions, and train ourselves only to pose questions that are sufficiently well-defined and empirically grounded as to guarantee the possibility of a definite answer? This is, by and large, the scientific mindset.” Even so, argues Emrys Westacott, “an inclination toward the Big Questions should not be despised.” — 3 Quarks Daily
The Problem With Trying To Be Morally Perfect
Can the moral saint, if perfect, ‘waste’ time watching films and television? How about spending any money on fine food or travel? Or expending energy on sport rather than seriously important causes? Or going birdwatching or hiking? No time either for theatre or the pleasures of curling up with a good book. The problem with extreme altruism, as Oscar Wilde is reported to have said about socialism, is that it takes up too many evenings. – Aeon
Why There Are So Many Of Those Cheesy Christmas Movies
This, when uttered in the context of a Hallmark holiday movie, is a beacon to the Christmas spirits, who know one thing, and pretty much one thing only: No one should simply muddle through the holidays. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not — however you find meaning in the time of year that these movies shorthand as “the season” — the ideal, these films insist, is unmitigated joy. — The Atlantic
Women-Only Music Festival In Sweden Found Guilty Of Gender Discrimination
A new ruling said that although festival organisers did not enforce the “man-free” rule, since “no differentiation based on sex was made between visitors at entry”, the statements the company issued prior to the event “discouraged a certain group from attending the event”, breaching a law banning gender discrimination. – Irish Times
A Philosopher Asks: Would It Be So Bad If Humans Went Extinct?
What I am asking here is simply whether it would be a tragedy if the planet no longer contained human beings. And the answer I am going to give might seem puzzling at first. I want to suggest, at least tentatively, both that it would be a tragedy and that it might just be a good thing. – The New York Times
L.A. Backs Off Plan To Paint Over Mural
The mural of Ava Gardner on the wall of a public school campus in Koreatown recently drew objections from a Korean group that argued the sunburst in the background looks too much like the World War II-era Japanese imperial flag. After the LA Unified School District agreed to paint over the mural, Shepard Fairey warned that he’d cover his own mural on the same campus if the district went through with its plan. — Los Angeles Times
Brazil’s National Museum Ends Its Worst Year Ever With Some Good News, Thanks To Google And The Smithsonian
Google Arts & Culture has just opened a virtual recreation of the pre-fire museum, which was completely destroyed in a fire in September. In addition, the Smithsonian has launched a program that will let 14 displaced researchers continue their work with residencies at the National Museum of Natural History and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. — The Art Newspaper