“Counter-intuitively, university art museums are proving capable of realizing the ideals that other art museums espouse in facile mission statements polished to a gleam by publicists – primarily a ‘commitment’ to serve as cultural resources for the public and to make art education accessible.”
Tag: 11.13.14
How To Make Fewer Stupid Mistakes, From A Man Who Knows
Dr. David Dunning “is probably best known for the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect, … which argues, in short, that people without a lot of competence in a given area tend to overrate how good they are at the thing in question.” Here’s some advice he offers on how to avoid that effect.
Good Grammar Is Important. But Some Of These Rules Make No Sense…
Plenty of scientific linguists have debunked the sillier rules espoused by language pedants – those proscribing split infinitives, ending a sentence on a preposition, and so on. But Steven Pinker wants to go beyond that, “to offer guidance, based in evidence from actual use of language, for how people can improve their prose without recycling these superstitions”.
Salvador Dalí’s Erotic Cookbook
“The book’s contents range from discussions of the grotesque shapelessness and immorality of spinach to the masterful tool that is the human jaw. Recipes include exotic and experimental eats like Thousand Year Old Eggs, Crayfish Consomme and Conger of the Rising Sun (which is an eel).”
Orlando School Board Would Rather Have No Religious Materials In Schools At All Than Allow Materials From The Satanic Temple
“Worried about facing national ridicule if a Satanic group is allowed to give out coloring books to children, the Orange County School Board moved Thursday toward preventing any outside group from distributing religious materials on campus.” Said the board chairman, “This really has, frankly, gotten out of hand. I think we’ve seen a group or groups take advantage of the open forum we’ve had.”
‘Serial’ Might Be Addictive, But It Has Some Serious ‘White Reporter’ Issues
“The accumulation of Koenig’s little judgments throughout the show — and there are many more examples — should feel familiar to anyone who has spent much of her life around well-intentioned white people who believe that equality and empathy can only be achieved through a full, but ultimately bankrupt, understanding of one another’s cultures.”
Photography In Art Galleries Is ‘Flat, Soulless And Stupid’
“Putting up massive prints is a waste of space, when the curators could provide iPads and let us scroll through a digital gallery that would easily be as beautiful and compelling as the expensive prints.”
Do Americans Understand (At All) What We Have In Our Arts?
“Any chamber of commerce will tell you that the arts help cities flourish by adding to quality of life, retaining creative talent and attracting business to the region. But maybe it’s simpler than that.”
If You Want To Be A Musician, Listen To All Music – Especially The Kinds You Don’t Like
“There is no way to make an argument that one type of music’s formal devices are better than another’s.”
When Aging Boy Banders Try To Reclaim A Piece Of The Pop Music Money Pie
“They’re taking a mode of salesmanship that’s traditionally worked on impressionable, wildly hormonal young girls and turning it towards two groups — the gays and the moms — who someone on their team decided would be the next-most susceptible.”