“By the numbers, the best opening sentences to novels do tend to be short. Prolific author James Patterson averages 160 clichés per 100,000 words (that’s 115 more than the revered Jane Austen), and Vladimir Nabokov used the word mauve 44 times more often than the average writer in the past two centuries.”
Eric Grundhauser tells the story of what may have been the weirdest drug hoax of the 20th century.
“Today we are less troubled by the homogenizing effects of entertainment than by our deep partisan divisions in both politics and art. And the cultural shift that today’s literary writers struggle to parse is not the impact of TV sitcoms, but of social media and the internet. Even the notion of escape means something very different in the age of Trump than it meant during the Clinton years. In response, some of these writers have shifted their narratives into a safer, more myth-friendly past; others continue to deliver the hopeful feelings of a simpler time.”
The problem with most writing about Kristin Stewart post-Twlight is that (especially male) critics want to call her “mysterious” or “withholding.” But “her voice does not modulate wildly because most real voices do not. Her eyebrows do not flail because most eyebrows do not. Stewart does not take something away from her performances in order to tantalize her viewers. Instead, she intentionally fails to reach the pitch of thespian overcookedness audiences are accustomed to.”
With the first chapter of her new book, Kory Stamper of Merriam-Webster describes how she came to work for the venerable dictionary and offers a look at the complicated process of getting the reference work together.
“Should I say “we” instead of “I”? Am I pretending the museum is actually speaking? What would it say? How would it say it? Can I make jokes? How funny is my museum? Is Wellcome Collection sarcastic, staid, sombre, sassy? Some of the answers to these questions are found in the history, themes and approach of the institution (also expressed through branding). But social media has a range of functions and a certain tone; it offers museums a chance to sidestep outdated perceptions or subvert expectations.”
How are museums supposed to attract younger, more diverse audiences when they charge $20 or more to get in? (Except for, maybe, three hours one day a week.) Daniel Grant suggests a source of funding (granted, a controversial source) to cut or eliminate those admission fees.
“Maybe a more entrepreneurial classical world would be of benefit to everyone and help to attract more people to concerts?”
In his February 2 “state of the city” address, Mayor Kasim Reed said that arts funding is critical to Atlanta and that he wants to ensure the money reaches all arts organizations, large and small. “Organizations like the Woodruff Arts Center are thriving, but our small- and medium-sized groups, our young and emerging arts, need additional support,” Reed said. “We need to give back to the creative community that gives so much to our city.”
“Algorithms are a long way from being able to think like us. The biggest distinction lies in our evolved biology, and how that biology processes information. Humans are made up of trillions of eukaryotic cells, which first appeared in the fossil record around 2.5 billion years ago. A human cell is a remarkable piece of networked machinery that has about the same number of components as a modern jumbo jet – all of which arose out of a longstanding, embedded encounter with the natural world.”
