“Most people don’t know the basic scientific facts about happiness–about what brings it and what sustains it–and so they don’t know how to use their money to acquire it. … Money is an opportunity for happiness, but it is an opportunity that people routinely squander because the things they think will make them happy often don’t.”
Tag: 10.26.10
Take Our Tutus, Please, Asks Ballet BC
“[It] was a cheeky publicity stunt by Ballet B.C., a troupe eager to change its image. The campaign encouraged people to ‘take our tutus’, a signal the company is a cutting-edge, contemporary ballet troupe that doesn’t need the classical attire anymore. In fact, you’re more likely to find the dancers in corsets, boy shorts, and athletic wear.”
Contemplative Neuroscience: Where Meditation Meets MRI Scanners
“Can people strengthen the brain circuits associated with happiness and positive behavior, just as we’re able to strengthen muscles with exercise?” Neuroscientist Richard Davidson and colleagues insist that we can, and he’s got the brain scans to back him up.
A New Breed of Euro-Imams Is Coming
New theology degree programs in Germany are aiming to train imams in an Islam with a European focus, thus giving their immigrant communities access to local clergy better able to understand European society and how to live within it than imams trained in or imported from the Mideast.
‘Longreads’: Aggregating Long-Form Journalism for Your Kindle
The new project at Longreads.com aims to gather the really good long-form journalism that magazines are producing and make it available in one place, ready for your iPad, Kindle or other reading device. The site even includes an estimate of how long a piece will take to read, so you can fit it into your commute.
Teaching Butoh to Horses
For a new show next year, Bartabas, trainer and director of Zingaro Equestrian Theatre, “has been training his horses in the art of butoh, an avant-garde dance form which originated in Japan and involves precise, minutely controlled movements.” (Zingaro’s horses already pirouette.)
Political Beliefs Meet Psychological Needs
“As much as we stake our identity on such core beliefs, it’s unlikely we emerged from the womb as little liberals or libertarians.” Yet one evolutionary psychologist “has come up with a fresh framework that links political orientation with the way we seek to fulfill our most fundamental human needs.”
A New Booker-Style Prize for South Asian Literature
“Worth $50,000 (£31,500), and sponsored by an Indian construction company,” the DSC Prize “has been set up to raise awareness of south Asian culture around the world, and is unusual in being open to authors of any nationality so long as the work is based on the region and its people.”
What Walt Whitman Understood About Death
“Before he became a nurse in Civil War hospitals, before he sat at the bedside of tens of thousands of wounded or sick soldiers as they passed over, he haunted hospitals and assisted at operations … From his researches at New York hospitals came at least one useful answer: Death is not the struggle before the end, the pain and the terror, but rather the deliverance.”
Can Teetering Charleston Symphony Survive Its Conductor’s Death?
“One effect of this sad confluence of events” – the orchestra’s suspension of operations due to lack of funds and the sudden death of longtime music director David Stahl – “is that the symphony — should it find its way to a recovery — is left with no heir- apparent, no interim music director and no slate of candidates for the position.” (And no concerts for conductors to try out with.)