“In recent years, there’s been evidence that sleep is important not just for remembering relevant stuff, but also for forgetting irrelevant things. Perhaps the mass-downscaling of synapses is part of that ‘smart forgetting.’
Tag: 02.02.17
Talk Of Canceling This Year’s Oscars
“The suggestion that the Oscars be canceled this year stems in part from principle. The idea of artists being barred from attending the ceremony because of their country of origin is markedly against the global principles of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Though it’s often derided for its stodgy choices, the Best Foreign Language Film category does bring wider attention to international filmmaking.”
Kids Ask A Lot Of Questions. Here Is The Way To Answer Them
“Giving a good answer to a ‘Why?’ question is not just a philosophical abstraction. An explanation has cognitive, real-world functions. It promotes learning and discovery, and good explanatory theories are vital to smoothly navigating the environment. In this sense, an explanation is what is known as a speech act, which is an utterance that serves a certain function in communication.”
Alexander Chancellor, 77, Editor Who Transformed The Spectator (And Had A Disastrous Year At The New Yorker)
While he had successful stints at most of London’s broadsheet newspapers, Chancellor was best known for turning The Spectator from a tired old Tory weekly into a lively magazine he once described as “more of a cocktail party than a political party.”
Calatrava’s New £1 Billion Project For London Will Change The Skyline
“Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava has designed a 24 metre-high (79ft) glass arcade with “winter garden” atrium for the complex, which will be topped by three towers, each rising more than 30 storeys above North Greenwich station, which is to be renamed Greenwich Peninsula.”
Six Critics Name Six Ways ‘Girls’ Changed Television (Or Didn’t)
For instance, sex: “According to Hollywood, women can have completely satisfying sexual experiences without ever taking off their bras, and manage to reach euphoric orgasms within minutes. Girls never bothered with any of these tropes. From the show’s first episode, the sex was sweaty, it was weird, it was jiggly, it was unflattering. Which is to say: It was realistic.”
A BIG Ten-Year Drop In Visitors To UK Public Libraries
“Despite ministerial pledges to halt the decimation of library services, the report from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport found that the number of adults who had visited a public library in the 12 months to the end of September 2016 fell to 33.8%, from 48.2% 10 years earlier.”
Amadeus – First It Was A Play, Then A Movie, Now A Play/Movie…
“Britain’s National Theatre has a sold-out hit with a revival of Peter Shaffer’s play about bad-boy genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his jealous rival Antonio Salieri, composer to the 18th-century Viennese court. The production, which mixes actors, opera singers and a 20-piece onstage orchestra, is being broadcast in movie theaters around the world Thursday as part of the NT Live series. There are repeat screenings over the coming weeks.”
Want To Reach New Audiences For Your Contemporary Dance? Stop Using Arty, Abstruse Titles
Lyndsey Winship, citing such examples as Siobhan Davies’s’ material/rearranged/to/be and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Babel(words) and m¡longa: “It’s the choreographer’s prerogative, of course, but in an art form that already feels distant and unreadable to some audiences, being wilfully abstruse in your labelling doesn’t exactly help. … It can feel as though artists are attempting to prove their cleverness and exclusivity when jargon actually functions as a barrier rather than an invitation.”
Bolshoi Prima Ballerina On How It Feels To Dance The Dual Lead In ‘Swan Lake’
Svetlana Zakharova: “This ballet is so difficult, not just technically, but also on an emotional level. It’s so complex. You need to be 100 percent sure that you have the full technique, that you will be interesting to the audience, that during the White Adagio, people won’t be able to tear their eyes away from you.” (includes video)