“There appear to be few things more certain to us than the existence of our selves. We might be sceptical about the existence of the world around us, but how could we be in doubt about the existence of us? … While it seems irrefutable that we must exist in some sense, things get a lot more puzzling once we try to get a better grip of what having a self actually amounts to.”
Tag: 02.20.13
You Think You Live In The Present, Don’t You?
“It seems obvious that we exist in the present. The past is gone and the future has not yet happened, so where else could we be? But perhaps we should not be so certain. … Our experience of the world resembles a television broadcast with a time lag; conscious perception is not ‘live’.”
Do We Still Need To Know How To Write By Hand?
“There are, from time to time, proposals to stop teaching cursive, usually motivated by the conviction that handwriting is passé in the digital age. The outraged response is that handwriting is an art; there is an intrinsic value in beautifully formed script and to lose it would be a step towards barbarism.”
How To Leave Music, And Then Return
“When you are a classical musician at a professional level there is no question about who or what you are, or what you do. Ever. Except that sometimes, oftener than any classical musician I know has ever admitted, it does eventually become a question.”
Justice: Hilary Mantel’s Book Sales Spike As Result Of Kate Middleton Flap
“Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has climbed the Amazon charts following saturation media coverage of her comments about the Duchess of Cambridge.”
New Headset Could Help You Manage Information Overload
Researchers at Tufts University “want to give computers the ability to directly monitor your brain as you work, responding to your needs in real time. In other words, it will act as a filter, letting through information when you want it while keeping the rest at bay.”
UN Starts Rescue Fund For Timbuktu Treasured Damaged By Rebels
“Mali’s minister of culture, Bruno Maïga, said in an interview with The Art Newspaper that 2,000-3,000 manuscripts had been destroyed by rebels at the state-supported Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research in Timbuktu.”
Could Chess Be A Big-Time Spectator Sport?
“Major sports leagues build brands around their stars. Doing that for young chess stars might be an inherently impossible task. Or maybe it hasn’t been done because–until now–no one’s been bold enough to try.”
Imagining The Bookstore Of The Future
“The ideas that emerged throughout the sessions encompassed everything from “bibliotherapy”, personal shopping, physical membership clubs, writers in residence, listening ports for audio books, moveable book shelves and a whole range of products and services including wedding gift lists, suggesting that future bookshops will be very much a social experience.”
What Became Of This Billion-Dollar Art Collection?
“A Greek heiress is fighting a legal battle in Switzerland to find out what has become of a collection of Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Cezanne and Degas art that she says should be part of her inheritance.”