Friday, October 11, 2019

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN


“A constant theme in this book is the transmission of the past as an imaginative act; hence the title, Falstaff’s dying vision of `a table of green fields,’ probably a mishearing of his recitation of the Twenty-third Psalm, corrected by editors to ‘he babbled of green fields,’ a symbol of all fiction,an art that must be exact about the uncertain.” Richard Ewina at Yarra csalt



There’s a nice summing-up of Kay Ryan’s strategy: “an art that must be exact about the uncertain.”



Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan blasts away at report that tried to poke holes in Elizabeth Warren’s credibility.
On maze design: "What makes a maze difficult to solve? The more we consider this question, the more elusive it becomes.




LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Mind-controlled ‘exoskeleton’ restores movement to totally paralyzed man.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: The Beatles’ Abbey Road Is UK’s No. 1 Again, 49 Years & 252 Days Later


Van Gogh and Gauguin are seen as two great loners. Nonsense. Whatever the painters sought to escape, it wasn't human contact... MEdia Dragon 


The Dangerous Life of an Anthropologist - Quillette.
Scientific American has described the controversy as “Anthropology’s Darkest Hour,” and it raises troubling questions about the entire field. In 2013, Chagnon published his final book, Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—The Yanomamö and the Anthropologists. Chagnon had long felt that anthropology was experiencing a schism more significant than any difference between research paradigms or schools of ethnography—a schism between those dedicated to the very science of mankind, anthropologists in the true sense of the word, and those opposed to science; either postmodernists vaguely defined, or activists disguised as scientists who seek to place indigenous advocacy above the pursuit of objective truth.

Where Are Artists Priced Out Of Gentrifying Berlin Neighborhoods Going? Here


They’ve been moving into abandoned East German factories along the Spree River. “Although the area’s landscape may look post-apocalyptic, with its giant weeds and empty power plants, strangely, the future here can seem positively Arcadian: Real estate is still cheap enough that artists are able to buy, rather than rent, their spaces. Here, four artists discuss how their work is shaped by the Spree.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine



Artists, and their fans, who hit out at mixed reviews misunderstand the value of critical ambivalence






Jobs boom boosts NSW surplus to $1.2b - report that due to a drop in unemployment, payroll tax revenue has increased and helped lift the NSW budget surplus to $1.2b
 

Trump's whistleblower strategy backfires, new accuser comes ...


       Here we go: the Nobel Prizes in Literature -- two this year, for both 2018 and 2019 -- will be announced tomorrow at 13:00 Stockholm time (CET). You will be able to see the announcement live -- at the Nobel site or on YouTube, here. 

       There's been more pre-prize coverage, of course, though not too much of great interest or information value -- but at least some entertainment value:

       This year's most annoying mistake: journalists referring to: the odds at "U.K. bookies Nicer Odds", or "British website Nicer Odds [...] taking bets on the 2019 winner". Nicer Odds isnot a betting site; as it says relatively prominently on the site, they're: "The free odds research tool", i.e. an odds aggregator, listing what actual betting sites are offering for odds. On top of that, they're not doing a great job this year, currently onlylisting the Unibet odds ..... The actual sites taking bets, and the ones setting odds, are Unibet and Betsson.