Monday, February 05, 2018

Culture Is Being Priced Out Of Our Cities. What To Do?


I’ve sat mesmerized watching online videos of the Canadian group Choir! Choir! Choir! They somehow manage to get hundreds of strangers to sing beautifully together—in tune and full-voiced—with rich harmonies and detailed arrangements. With almost no rehearsal—how do they do it??

They manage to achieve lift off—that feeling of surrender when groups sing together—when we all become part of something larger than ourselves...So, can anyone do this?

Italian village is selling homes for $1.25


I FEEL FINE: Surviving The Death Of The Blogosphere. I think that the old blogosphere was superior to “social media” like Twitter and Facebook for a number of reasons. First, as a loosely-coupled system, instead of the tightly-coupled systems built by retweets and shares, it was less prone to cascading failure in the form of waves of hysteria. Second, because there was no central point of control, there was no way to ban people. And you didn’t need one, since bloggers had only the audience that deliberately chose to visit their blogs.


Why It’s Important To Study “Useless” Subjects


"As robots take over routine jobs, we will need people who can think creatively, imaginatively, logically and laterally. Acquiring a narrow “skillset” of the kind society increasingly demands will, in fact, leave students not equipped for the future, but vulnerable to it." … Read More




Paying $430000 for advice on Centrelink call centre 'outrageous'



Unions say the government won't learn anything it does not already know, and should employ more staff instead

REMEMBER, ONLY THE POLICE CAN BE ENTRUSTED WITH FIREARMS:HORRIFYING: Ex-Cop Testifies That Baltimore Police Carried Fake Guns To Plant On Suspects: Former detective revealed the practice while testifying in Gun Trace Task Force corruption case.

Give yourself permission to be bad. You know what you’re really good at? Things you’ve done many times before. Mastery is boredom. Unfortunately, we like feeling like masters; we hate feeling like idiots. So we keep ourselves bored in order to protect ourselves from feeling stupid. This is a bad trade. (Trust me, I wrote the book on this.)
Not all conflicts can be resolved this way, but a surprising number can. You should never, ever argue with your spouse aboutanything that could be solved with a proper application of money or ingenuity. As for the rest: unless it is an existential threat to your future (out-of-control spending, wants/doesn’t want kids, abuse, substance problem, infidelity), leave it alone. On your deathbed, your spouse will be there, holding your hand. The dream house you’re dying to buy will not be.
Megan McArdle’s 12 rules for life




Related: Rod Dreher on “Jordan Peterson, Preacher:” “Peterson’s deep concern for the well-being of young men is transparently obvious. Where hardly anyone else seems to care for them, and they are constantly pathologized and stifled by the ascendant orthodoxies of the culture, Peterson is drawn out in compassion towards them. He observes that such young men in particular have been starved of compassion, encouragement, and support. There is a hunger there that the Church should be addressing.”

It takes a whole village to create cultureClaims that Icelanders are very creative

Culture Is Being Priced Out Of Our Cities. What To Do


As cities lose their creative communities and the spaces they operate from, they become at risk of becoming what Mark Auge referred to as “non-places”—homogenized cities in which aesthetic diversity and local authenticity is diminished. This impacts cities’ vibrancy and distinctiveness, economic dynamism and capacity for innovation. These cities face a dilemma: How can they continue to attract new residents and investment while preserving the cultural and creative milieu that made them desirable in the first place? …Read More


New Research Suggests Medical Students Do Better With Art


"The humanities have been pushed to the side in medical school curricula," said Mark Kahn of the Tulane University School of Medicine, the paper's senior author. "Our data suggests that exposure to the arts is linked to important personal qualifies for future physicians." … Read More