Just a quick reminder post to note that you can win an advance proof copy of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in one of two ways: By captioning pictures of the dog with physics apparatus By writing short poems about dogs and physics Regarding the last one, I’m thinking of adding a second […]
Category: Art
Understanding and Enjoyment are Orthogonal
In a comment to Friday’s classical music post, Chris Evo recommended a TED talk by Benjamin Zander that has the goal of convincing his audience that they love classical music: If you’re not able or inclined to watch it, he goes through a Chopin piano piece in detail, and explains how it plays off our […]
If It’s Not Boring, It’s Not Art
One of the PDF-only studies that I complained about earlier is a hand-wringing report from the NEA on how public appreciation of art is on the decline. As summarized by Inside Higher Ed: Compared to the NEA’s 1982 survey, the steepest decline was in ballet, which that year was seen by 11.0 percent of college-educated […]
The PDF Plague
There have been a half-dozen stories in the past few weeks that looked interesting, but didn’t even make it into the Links Dump for the day. Why not? Because the stories or studies were only available as PDF files. I have no idea if this is actually getting worse, but I’m finding this more irritating […]
Festive Science
There’s a nice write-up about the World Science Festival in the New York Times today: The second annual World Science Festival, a five-day extravaganza of performances, debates, celebrations and demonstrations, including an all-day street fair on Sunday in Washington Square Park, began with a star-studded gala tribute to the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson at […]
Hugo Nominations Announced
The nominees for this year’s Hugo Awards were announced last night. The most important category is, as always, Best Novel: Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK) Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK) — Free download Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit […]
(Wis)Con or Bust
In an effort to wrest something positive from the smoking ruins of the fannish precincts of LiveJournal, a number of people (Kate included) have put together a community to raise money to provide financial assistance to fans of color who want to attend Wiscon or some other convention. They’re auctioning off a lot of interesting […]
Science Is Festive
Two announcements of science-related festivals have turned up in my email in the last week or so: The second annual World Science Festival will be held in New York June 10-14 this year. They feature an impressive array of speakers again, including Nobel laureates (Physicists David Gross, Frank Wilczek, and William Phillips), well-known authors, distinguished […]
Denis Dutton Goes On About Art
There’s a mini media blitz underway promoting Denis Dutton’s new book The Art Instinct. He was on the Colbert Report last week, he’s reviewed in the Times, and he’s featured in this week’s Bloggingheads Science Saturday: While it’s kind of entertaining to listen to John Horgan struggling to get a word in edgewise, I’m kind […]
Andrew Wyeth
Arts & Letters Daily has an item announcing the death of Andrew Wyeth (the link goes to the New York Times obit). This is noteworthy to me because he’s one of a very few artists whose work (in poster form) has ever hung on my wall. Specifically, this painting, titled “Soaring”: I picked it up […]