Asparagus, The Opera

Last month at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, chef Jason Bond and composer Ben Houge (best known for video game music) presented Food Opera: Four Asparagus Compositions, in which Houge tried to explore in music the flavors and textures of the asparagus dishes Bond served. (No voices in this opera, though.)

How Amazon.com Changed Research (And Then Made Us Into Research)

“Devices and technologies that have become second nature to us – scanners and searchable PDFs, for example – first became familiar to many through Amazon. So did disintermediation: the sudden realization that” – thanks to the Search This Book feature – “we could work our way into a subject without taking a box of file cards to a reference room, riffling through catalogs and consulting librarians.”

The Challenge Of The New

“This ability to attract audience through repetition eases the process of filling seats because a limited but dedicated fan base will reliably appear multiple times to hear the same band play the same songs in the same city. Unfortunately, ensembles dedicated to experimental music cannot rely on this sort of repeat business.”