“Genes aren’t what they used to be. In 1976 they were simply stretches of DNA that encoded proteins. We now know about genes made of DNA’s cousin, RNA; we’ve discovered genes that hop from genome to genome, inserting themselves into a new host to be replicated there. And what by far the larger part of the genome is doing for much of the time is still something of a mystery.”
Tag: 05.29.16
Who Gets To Tell Other People’s Stories? Locating The Line Between Empathy And Exploitation
Anna Holmes: “Here’s how I see it: Empathy is the ability to respect and maybe even understand another’s point of view, revealing larger truths about ourselves and others. Exploitation is the use of another’s experience for personal gain.”
James Parker: “To the degree that you are using a person, a character, simply to propel your plot or give shape to your ideas, to that same degree you are denying this character his or her full reality – and your story will suffer accordingly. Where empathy stops, in other words, exploitation starts.”
You’ll Probably Marry The Wrong Person, So The Best Approach Is Pessimism
Alain de Botton: “This philosophy of pessimism offers a solution to a lot of distress and agitation around marriage. It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage. The failure of one particular partner to save us from our grief and melancholy is not an argument against that person and no sign that a union deserves to fail or be upgraded.”
How Diane Arbus Pulled Herself Out Of Absolute Misery To Become The Photographer We Know
“Diane Arbus was teetering on the edge of a breakdown. In 1956, she tearfully dissolved the decade-long fashion-photography enterprise that she had been conducting successfully but stressfully with her husband, Allan. Her misery was longstanding. Fashion photography is built on artifice. Diane needed, temperamentally and philosophically, to poke through pretensions and masks to expose the hidden truth.”
Look Out – Here Come The Art Robots!
“If you want your robots to get good, they’ve gotta learn—and make—art. And they’ve gotta learn—and make—funny, weird, sometimes stupid stuff.”
After 61 Years, Violinist Retires From San Diego Symphony
“In 1955, a teenage violinist from Hoover High School played her first concert with the San Diego Symphony. On Sunday, after 61 years with the orchestra, she played her last.”
If This Is True About London, What Does It Mean For That City’s Arts?
“If I asked what is the most corrupt place on Earth, you might say it’s Afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the south of Italy. I would say it is the UK. It’s not UK bureaucracy, police, or politics, but what is corrupt is the financial capital.”
The Monument To Fallen U.S. Soldiers Before They Actually Fall
“To many, a memorial with nearly half of its space reserved for upcoming conflicts is an eerie statement that such conflicts and casualties are an inevitable wave on the horizon.”
Will The Geffen Hall Renovation At The Lincoln Center Ever Come To Pass?
“While officials have described the plan as likely to cost around $500 million, Ms. Farley said that the actual figure could be different. ‘It’s a number that passes the sanity test — it’s not a budget,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what it’s going to cost until you know what it is.'”
Fighting Through The ‘Traditional’ Noise To Get Unconventional Characters In Movies
Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast and Maleficent writer Linda Woolverton on working at Disney: “I wasn’t wanted. … And I was a girl. They were, like: Who the hell are you?”