“While it’s tempting to focus on the flaws in older brains, that inducement overlooks how capable they’ve become. Over the past several years, scientists have looked deeper into how brains age and confirmed that they continue to develop through and beyond middle age.”
Tag: 12.29.09
The TV Business’s Biggest Mistakes Of The ’00s
The Hollywood Reporter catalogues the US television industry’s top ten blunders this decade, from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? overload and moving Jay Leno to primetime to the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” (“The biggest problem was that it looked intentional”) and the calamitous writers’ strike.
Newspapers And The Web: ‘The 20/20 Hindsight Fantasy Scenario’
Steve Outing (in his final column): “If Quentin Tarantino can produce a fantasy revisionist-history blockbuster like Inglourious Basterds, about a band of Jews killing Adolph Hitler and the Nazi leadership, then I can script how the newspaper industry’s previous 15 years should have played out.”
The Nature Of Memory, And Memory In Nature
Olivia Judson observes that “the conscious, brain-based memories that we humans set so much store by are not the only memories out there.” For instance, the immune system, which remembers pathogens it has been exposed to and mounts a quicker response the next time those pathogens appear (which is why vaccines work). And sometimes these memories fade, just like conscious memories do.
Banksy: Not Too Famous For A Street Fight
“The aerosol painter from Bristol stands accused of disrespecting a graffiti legend by modernising a 24-year-old work by ‘King Robbo’ in Camden, North London. On Christmas Day, a few days after Banksy’s latest spray paint spree, Robbo responded in kind by obliterating the artist’s work with 3ft high silver letters spelling out his name.”
Doomsayers Proved Wrong: Tech Isn’t Making Us Illiterate
“A large-scale study by the University of San Diego and other research universities revealed what some of us have long suspected: We’re reading far more words than we used to as we adopt new technologies.”
Ambassador Honchos Named Most Powerful In UK Theatre
“Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire, joint chief executives of Ambassador Theatre Group, have topped this year’s Stage 100, beating competition from both Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber.” Their rise in ranking “follows ATG’s acquisition, earlier this year, of Live Nation’s UK theatres, which they purchased for £90 million.”
London’s Barbican Sees Record Attendance
“The Barbican Centre has announced that 2008/9 was a record year for the arts venue with overall attendance up by 13% on the previous year. According to the centre, its ticket sales now number around 1.2 million annually and 2008/9 saw a particular increase in cinema and art gallery attendance.”
NY Times Asks Its Readers: What Play Changed Your Life?
“Was there a production you walked out of a different person? Share your memories – the actors, the emotions, the aftermath – of that experience” on the Arts Beat blog.
Leo Tolstoy, Chechnya’s Favorite Russian
The aristocratic writer “spent nearly three years [there] in the 1850s, living among Cossacks who were then engaged in the struggle to tame the Chechens.” Tolstoy “warned then of the pitfalls of Russia’s quest to tame the restive region in the Northern Caucasus.”