“Religion as faith and as an explanation of the world – why God exists, what happens after we die, who gets to heaven (or hell): most of us would run a mile from such a conversation. We know that argument was won a long time ago and there is no point discussing it. Real believers (as opposed to the soppy “there-must-be-something else” brigade) are infrequently encountered and are not in any case amenable to what we believe is reason. They have their private beliefs; let them get on with them.”
Tag: 01.01.04
Outta Time (I Think)
We all understand the concept of not wasting time. “But what is time? To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, we know it when we see it — but certainly, a few years into the 21st century, our understanding of time must be deeper than that. By now, you’d think, science must have figured out why time seems to flow, why it always goes in one direction and why we are uniformly drawn from one second to the next. The fact is, though, the explanations for these basic features of time remain controversial. And the more physicists have searched for definitive answers, the more our everyday conception of time appears illusory.”
Where Are The New Rock Critics?
“When you think of the kind of writing there was in Rolling Stone 30 years ago and look at magazines now, it doesn’t even need to be pointed out. Most writers are writing in the shadows of Bangs or writing bland stuff. No one’s been able to get over that and create a post-new-journalism template.”
A Business Approach To Italy’s Museums
Ten years ago, Italy’s museums were run haphazardly and were difficult to navigate. Then someone got the idea that m useums should be run more like businesses. “When I got here the idea was that money is dirty, art is sacred and the two things should not be mixed. It took a while, but that attitude has changed.”