This Band Has Committed To Performing Women, Composers Of Color On Each Concert. It’s Not Easy

The band directors at Spring Lake, outside of St. Paul, Minnesota, have pledged to include at least one piece by a female composer and one by a composer of color in each concert, for each of the school’s bands. “We made a commitment this year to only buy music from composers of color,” says Brian Lukkasson, one of the directors. He says it’s been hard, but not because those composers aren’t writing for band. They are.

How Artificial Intelligence “Thinks”

“One can be book-smart, street-smart, emotionally gifted, wise, rational, or experienced; it’s rare and difficult to be intelligent in all of these ways. Intelligence has many sources and our brains don’t respond to them all the same way. Thus, the quest to develop artificial intelligence begets numerous challenges, not the least of which is what we don’t understand about human intelligence.”

Movies Have The Power To Change Minds, And Real Lives

Civil Rights leader Vernon E. Jordan Jr.: “Division has always been a product of assumption — assuming that our story is the only story, or that our lives are harder than someone else’s, or that people who don’t look like us don’t have the right to live and work for the American dream. But no matter how divisive life in this country may become, the movie theater has always been a place where we can rediscover what unites us.”

So What’s The Deal With The Foreign Film Nominees For This Year’s Oscars?

There’s a South Pacific island Romeo & Juliet-ish film from Australia, a Hitchcockian thriller from Iran, a post-WWII POW story from Denmark, the force that is A Man Called Ove from Sweden, and of course, the very tipped winner, Toni Erdmann – which is set to be remade in the U.S. with Jack Nicholson and Kristen Wiig (yes, really). Which will win? Which should win?