Tag: 03.11.19

What’s With All The Enormous Statues Going Up In India?

The “Statue of Unity,” which is actually of independence leader Vallabhbhai Patel and is currently the world’s tallest statue, was completed last fall, and more are on the way: a statue of the 17th-century warrior-king Shivaji in Mumbai, and enormous images of the Hindu god Rama and the 19th-century holy man Swami Vivekananda in Ayodhya. Why? A desire to stand out on the world stage, sure, but even more because of the Hindu nationalism of Narendra Modi’s government. – Apollo

What Are Vices Of The Mind, And Why Are They Dangerous?

“So-called ‘virtues of the mind’, such as open-mindedness, thoroughness, and intellectual humility, have been extensively discussed by philosophers. Arrogance, imperviousness to evidence and an inability to deal with mistakes are vices of the mind. They have until very recently attracted much less philosophical attention.” Philosopher Quassim Cassam argues that these vices need more attention, because they can cause so much damage. (Exhibit A: The Iraq War.) – IAI News

AI Is Not Just Changing How Scientific Research Is Done, It’s Changing The Scientific Method

Some scientists see generative modeling and other new techniques simply as power tools for doing traditional science. But most agree that AI is having an enormous impact, and that its role in science will only grow. Brian Nord, an astrophysicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who uses artificial neural networks to study the cosmos, is among those who fear there’s nothing a human scientist does that will be impossible to automate. “It’s a bit of a chilling thought,” he said. – Quanta

How Did Street Art Get Corporatized?

As more corporations and real estate developers across the country turn to murals to hawk their products, controversy follows. In New York City, for instance, Target had to apologize for a mural it installed inside a new store in the East Village. While the mural was designed as an homage to the neighborhood’s history as a home to punk rockers and struggling immigrants alike, it drew criticism for making light of the gentrification that had transformed the neighborhood. – In These Times

Jill Lepore On The Animating DreamS Of American Democracy

The history of the United States is a history of bias and brutality and hubris, but it is also a history of idealism and hard work and soaring optimism. What emerges is an invitation to regard these tessellated truths and conflicting motive forces with an equanimous understanding that can inform a juster, more beautiful, and less conflicted future. – Brainpickings

Does Listening To Classical Music While You Work Help Your Productivity? Study Says It Depends

For instance, on the simplest task, if someone was generally not prone to boredom, they tended to perform better when listening to the most complex form of music than with either simple music or complete silence, albeit when the volume of the music was relatively low.  If the volunteer was prone to boredom however, the opposite was the case, and silence was the best condition. – Forbes

‘I’m Not A Gay Writer, I’m A Monster. Gay Writers Are Too Conservative.’ Are American Readers Finally Ready For James Purdy?

“Despite praise in his lifetime from Langston Hughes, Susan Sontag, Edward Albee, Gore Vidal, as well as – in later years – John Waters and Jonathan Franzen, Purdy … cast out by the US literary establishment,” which wasn’t ready for either his experimental style or his outré subject matter. (Nelson Algren called one of Purdy’s books “a fifth-rate avant-garde soap opera [about] prayer and faggotry.”) And Purdy’s delight in burning bridges didn’t help. – The Guardian

Our Cities Are Lousy With Memorials. One Thing: Do They Really Help Us Remember?

Parks and squares are littered with markers that failed at their only job: to keep their topics from falling into oblivion. You may have paused a thousand times at the feet of that mounted king with the two swords crossed above his head in Central Park, but would you be able to pick Jagiello out of a lineup or recite a single fact about his exploits at the Battle of Grunwald? – New York Magazine

Now You Can Listen To T.S. Eliot Read, And Talk About, His Poetry

“On December 4, 1950, two years after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, T.S. Eliot stood behind a lectern in the Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd Street Y and read some of his best work in front of hundreds of people.” The director of the Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center and the poet Billy Collins recently came across audio of that event, and they’ve offered excerpts for streaming. – The New York Times