There are the expected ones (Trinity College Dublin, Wren Library at Cambridge, the Sorbonne), modern marvels (Caltech, U. Chicago), places you might not expect (Oklahoma), and one you’d swear was from the English Middle Ages that is, in fact, in the Pacific Northwest. (So, what’d they miss?)
Tag: 07.25.17
It Is A Truth Universally Acknowledged, That Jane Austen’s Most Famous Sentence Is Perfect For Riffing On
Geoff Nunberg: “If you’re looking to add a literary touch to your article on pension schemes or emergency contraceptives, you’re not going to get very far with ‘Call me Ishmael.’ But ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged’ is always available as an elegant replacement for ‘As everybody knows’ when you want to introduce some banal truism.”
A Cancelled Memorial In Norway Speaks To The Fraught Nature Of Memorials
“All public memorials are vulnerable to disrespect—by pigeons on statues, wherever there’s a statue, and by selfie-snapping yahoos, everywhere. But that’s a reality of living in a teeming world. Monuments aren’t churches. The most affecting ones enable, but don’t seek to impose, fitting emotional responses.”
How They Make Swimming Pools, Drill Halls, Soccer Fields, Car Parks And Other Weird Spaces Safe For The Edinburgh Fringe
“Since every one of these spaces will be open to the public, each one has to meet the kinds of safety standards that are common in theatre buildings across the country … And ensuring that this vast archipelago of pop-up spaces comes up to the mark requires a huge amount of work.”
A Philosopher Argues Why No One Has The Right To Refuse Services To LGBT People
Mark Reiff: “[The wedding-cake case] brings this supposed conflict between marriage equality and religious liberty to the fore. In my view, however, characterizing what is going on here as presenting a conflict between marriage equality and religious liberty is incorrect. To see why, it will be helpful to get familiar with some of the terms that political philosophers like myself use when we talk about liberties and rights.”
Was Every American Movie Of The ’60s And ’70s Really A Vietnam War Movie?
If you limit the genre to “movies that deal explicitly with combat, or the American presence in Vietnam generally,” you get about two dozen movies (including post-’70s films). Yet, argues Clay Risen, expand those limits somewhat and “the genre spins off into dozens of subcategories, the shape of which say a lot about how America has viewed the war over the decades since it ended.” (Risen includes Rambo, Hair, MAS*H, Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, and even Love Story and Shampoo.)
Philosopher Dies While Trying To Save Children From Drowning
Anne Dufourmantelle, a well-known professor and columnist whose entire career was centered on the concept and embrace of risk, was swept out to sea when she attempted a rescue under dangerous conditions at a beach near St.-Tropez.
Indigenous Dance Festival That Focuses On Contemporary Indigenous Culture Across The World
The festival will highlight commonalities, as well as differences, across geographically or politically separated Indigenous cultures. National borders are of scant relevance to the peoples whose ancestors inhabited Turtle Island long before Europeans “discovered” North America. Santee Smith emphasizes that today’s Indigenous artists are highly individual. “We’re all rooted in our world views — societal, spiritual, philosophical — and share a belief that art and performance are an integral part our daily lives, but we’re far from being homogenous.”
Study: Art Hung Higher Than Eye Level Is Rated Higher Quality
Those who looked up at the work “rated the painting most positively, while participants who looked down gave the lowest aesthetic appraisals,” the researchers report. “Eye-level presentations received judgments in between.”
A Brief History Of ‘No’
In this Lexicon Valley podcast, “John McWhorter goes negative, exploring the evolution of no and not.”