Australian Rock Art May Be 43,000 Years Old

 “Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control.”

— Tom Landry

BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE:  Why We Need To Fight For The Arts.

Data Science: The Creepiest, Most Ominous Word In Macbeth

It turns out that Macbeth uncanny flavor springs from the unusual way that Shakespeare deploys one particular word, over and over again. - OneZero

Australian Rock Art May Be 43,000 Years Old

Archaeologists using new measuring techniques have analyzed layers of a mineral glaze covering ancient figures in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and the oldest layer appears to date back more than 40 millennia. - ABC (Australia)

August 26, 2021

Gwion Gwion rock art found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED:  Man Can Change His Pupil Size on Demand, Something Scientists Thought Was Impossible.

Actors Stranded In Sydney With No Work Or Money By Lockdown And Border Closures

With the Delta variant on the rise in the city, many Melbourne-based actors who had been performing in Sydney were contractually obligated to their shows. Now theatres are closed, the border between New South Wales and Victoria states has slammed shut, and they're stuck. - The Guardian

Famous Writers Writing Books That Won’t Be Read For 100 Years

The works will be kept in a room lined with wood from the forest in the Deichman library in Oslo. One hundred years after Future Library was launched, the trees will be felled, and the manuscripts printed for the first time. - The Guardian

Origins Of The Term “Woke”

"A quarter of people think of it as a compliment, a quarter of people think it's an insult and the rest either don't know or have never even heard of the term." -BBC

The Complex Engineering of Underground Ant Cities Interesting Engineering. Next up, robotic mining.

 

 

1. “Democracy may not always be necessary to ensure that governments work for the people… yet the weakening of democratic political cultures… is concerning because good government can’t be sustained without public scrutiny” — Fabienne Peter (Warwick) on democracy and authoritarianism
2. “The sort of socially committed venture that should characterize public work in the arts and sciences generally” — an appreciation of public philosophy, particularly the “Ask a Philosopher” project created by Ian Olasov (CUNY), in The Chronicle
3. “The law requires reformation to protect our modern scientific and philosophical understanding that many animals can live their own meaningful lives” — Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) has submitted an amicus brief to the NY Court of Appeals in support of the effort to free an elephant from the Bronx Zoo
4. “Separateness as love’s aesthetic and ethical essence” — a look at Simone de Beauvoir’s lost novel of early love, in The New Yorker
5. “The great thing about philosophy, and what keeps me going at it: it’s so unpredictable. I simply have no idea where the argument might lead me” — an interview with Sophie Grace Chappell (Open University) about her work and life
6. “The growing awareness of the moral ambiguity among veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq burdens them with sensibilities of moral injury” — Stephen N. Xenakis and Jesse D. Hamilton (U. Penn) on helping those who “carry the moral burden of a nation at war”
7. “Machines can imagine what we cannot imagine and see what we cannot see” — Arthur I. Miller (UCL) on machine creativity