“I think making an airport as local as possible is a great strategy toward improving the experience. Some people live in this paradigm that an airport should be a global space, super-cosmopolitan, but we’ve seen a reversal of that trend. What you want is a unique experience, not a generic one.” That means good barbecue and jazz at Austin-Bergstrom, country singers at Nashville. BWI sells Baltimore-style crab, and Vancouver has one of the world’s great collections of Northwestern native art. Munich’s airport has a beer garden.
Tag: 12.07.17
Our Culture Wars Come Down To Modernists Versus Post-Modernists
“The practice of science cannot be long sustained without the co-operation of our wider culture (legally, economically, pedagogically). This is the theoretical half of our present crisis. As the culture becomes more doubtful of scientific legitimacy—whether through postmodern philosophy, the rise of fundamentalism and superstition, or some other means—proponents of empirical science cannot remain indifferent to these doubts if the practice is to flourish. The best of them, the ones entertained by thoughtful people, must be addressed. But how can the skeptical critiques of modern science and philosophy be met?”
Broadway Broke Box Office Records In 2017. But…
Though rich in new American plays and gussied up revivals, Broadway this year often felt like a letdown, taking fewer risks and reaping fewer rewards.
Hey – You’ve Just Won A Nobel Prize. Congrats! Now Here’s How To Accept It
“It’s a formidable challenge, and one winners have to undergo twice (usually, as with Ishiguro, delivering a lecture and a “banquet speech” three days later). But most attempts include at least three of the following elements: profuse thanks to the Swedish Academy; equally lavish expressions of humility and unworthiness (but don’t overdo this passive-aggressively, like Luigi Pirandello); confessing a personal debt to Scandinavian literature (WB Yeats’s entire speech, for example, consisted of tributes to Swedenborg and Ibsen); a potent childhood memory and a recent anecdote showing how grounded in mundane reality you are.”
How Classical Music Molds Itself To A Given Historical Moment
When David Patrick Stearns first heard Jacqueline du Pre’s 1970 recording of the Dvořák Cello Concerto, he thought she “sounded like a freedom fighter.” Turns out he was right: she had played the work in a protest concert shortly after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Stearns looks at other examples, from Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting Tchaikovsky just after Kristallnacht to Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Shostakovich in the Soviet Union to Bernstein performing Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony after JFK’s assassination to, perhaps, James Levine leading Verdi’s Requiem last week.
Big Tech’s Arms Race For Artificial Intelligence (And Why You Should Care)
“The advantages of AI are most visible in firms’ predictions of what users want. Automated recommendations and suggestions are responsible for around three-quarters of what people watch on Netflix, for example, and more than a third of what people buy on Amazon. Facebook, which owns the popular app Instagram, uses machine learning to recognise the content of posts, photos and videos and display relevant ones to users, as well as filter out spam. In the past it ranked posts chronologically, but serving up posts and ads by relevance keeps users more engaged. Without machine learning, Facebook would never have achieved its current scale.”
Where Are The Most Artists In America? Nope, No Longer New York
Los Angeles tops the list on our combined measure of employed and self-employed artists. Los Angeles not only has a larger concentration of artists than New York City based on its LQ, it has a larger number of absolute artists, even though New York City has a much larger general population. Indeed, it’s been shown that a significant number of artists are moving from the New York City to the Los Angeles metro.
In Texas, Prison Inmates Not Allowed To Read “Charlie Brown Christmas”
The publications are among the 10,000 titles banned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a list that includes best sellers like “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “A Time to Kill” and even obscure works, such as the “MapQuest Road Atlas.” Not banned: “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler and books by white nationalists, including David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. They are also prohibited from reading the pop-up edition of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “The Color Purple” and the 1908 Sears, Roebuck catalog.
William H. Gass, Postmodern Novelist And ‘Magician Of The Word’, Dead At 93
“Mr. Gass wrote just three novels, none of them bestsellers, but he was often described as one of America’s finest literary stylists – ‘a magician of the word, the writer of a prose so rich that it makes Vladi¬mir Nabokov’s seem impoverished,’ Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda wrote in 2013.”
Why Saratoga Lost $1 Million On New York City Ballet Last Summer (And Cut This Summer’s Performances In Half)
Says Saratoga Performing Arts Center president Elizabeth Sobol, “Here is what I observed: 80 percent of the audience only buys tickets to one performance, 11 percent buys a ticket to two performances. Only 9 percent buy for two or more night. And while it’s wonderful to have this deeply passionate audience, by presenting two weeks we are doubling our expenses and cannibalizing our audience.”