“[W]omen playwrights live in a world where we are told it is a bad thing if women are 57 percent of the undergraduate population, because that’s too big an imbalance, but it’s an okay thing if women are only getting 17 percent or 6 percent or 9 percent of the best jobs in show business … and if we tried to rectify that it would be unfair because it would involve ‘quotas.'”
Tag: 03.16.10
Learning About Self-Control From Dogs
“[A]ccording to newly published research, the same mechanism that regulates human self-control also operates in canines. The study … confirms the notion that self-control is a limited resource, one that can and does get depleted. It also suggests this is not ‘a uniquely human process’.”
Infants Are ‘Born To Dance’ (And It Makes Them Happy)
“Babies are pre-programmed to dance and to enjoy it, research by the University of York has shown. The study of 120 children aged between five months and two years found that babies spontaneously started moving to music and rhythmic beats. Scientists also found that the better the children were at moving in time with the music, the more they smiled.”
Accent More Powerful Than Skin Color In Forming Affinities With Others
“Children choose friends based more on whether they speak alike rather than look alike, according to a Harvard University study. … While previous research has shown that white children in the United States tend to pick same-race friends, new findings … suggest that race takes a back seat when foreign or non-native accents come into play.”
Will The New Miami Art Museum Ever Be Built?
Miami-Dade voters have approved $255 million in bonds, starchitects Herzog and de Meuron have been engaged, $20 million in public money has been spent – all in pursuit of a shiny new waterfront building for MAM. That building is now two years behind schedule (so far), and the museum has lost its director and an unsettling number of trustees and donors.
The Precise Importance Of Vagueness
Computational linguist Kees van Deemter: “A vague concept allows borderline cases … such as the word ‘grey’. Some birds are clearly grey, some are clearly not, while others are somewhere in between. The fact that such birds exist makes ‘grey’ a vague concept. The vagueness does not arise from insufficient information: some concepts are fundamentally vague. … [And] vagueness is crucial if you want to build computers and robots that communicate with people.”
Laureate Pens Poem Inspired By Beckham Injury
“The work is entitled Achilles and mixes references to the ancient battlefield hero with allusions to battles on the football field and to Beckham himself. The cross-over was very apparent to a woman who admits to being a big fan of the game.”
MOCA Fund-Raiser At Private Gallery? Bad Idea.
“Appearances matter. In this case, there is no way to determine whether the relationship between the gallery and the museum is philanthropic or business-driven. That’s not the gallery’s problem, but it is the museum’s. MOCA is stumbling into troublesome territory.”
Few Southern Calif. Billionaires Are Big Arts Patrons
“By Culture Monster’s count, 73 of the 1,011 souls that Forbes pegs as worth $1 billion to $53.5 billion (the estimated worth of Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, top dog on this year’s list) have their main residences in California. Thirty-one live in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, and 42 in Silicon Valley and points north.”
Elmore Leonard’s Hometown Tour
“On a nice day in Detroit, you might take your kids to Bell Isle, near downtown, to feed the geese. Or, if you’re a crime writer, you might set a scene here. Perhaps, in the icy dark, a murder weapon goes into the Detroit River, or a car blows up on the bridge. … ‘That house was on fire last time I saw it,’ Leonard says, pointing at a red house. ‘That’s the opening scene in Mr. Paradise. Three bodies.'”