Jonathan Anderson at Artforum: In the end, Faith in Art offers neither comprehensive views of these artists nor definitive conclusions about the religious bearings of their work. Nor is it concerned with establishing these artists’ faithful (or unfaithful) adherence to particular … | Continue reading
John Last at The New Atlantis: Brown bears once roamed widely across Western Europe. But already by the Middle Ages, hunting and habitat degradation had pushed their populations to the east and north. In the Alpine region of Italy, at times with the backing of the state, brown be … | Continue reading
More here. | Continue reading
Sean Carroll in Preposterous Universe: Evolution is sometimes described — not precisely, but with some justification — as being about the “survival of the fittest.” But that idea doesn’t work unless there is some way for one generation to pass down information about how best to s … | Continue reading
| Continue reading
Helena Cobban in the Boston Review: Just days before October 7, President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, was radiating confidence that Washington had effectively brought all of West Asia’s long-roiling conflicts under control. Washington could now, he belie … | Continue reading
Ian Penman in Harper’s Magazine: Early on in Billie Holiday’s 1956 memoir Lady Sings the Blues, she recalls the picaresque world of New York nightlife in the Thirties: Prohibition was on its last legs then. And so were the blind pigs, the cribs and clubs and after-hours joints th … | Continue reading
Allan Stratton at Quillette: The Oscars have never been about art. As Louis B. Mayer once remarked, recalling the creation of his brainchild, “I found that the best way to handle [moviemakers] was to hang medals all over them. If I got them cups and awards, they’d kill themselves … | Continue reading
Joshua March and Kasia Gora in Noahpinion: The field of biology has driven remarkable advancements in medicine, agriculture, and industry over the last half-century, despite facing a significant hurdle: The immense complexity of biological systems makes them incredibly difficult … | Continue reading
Jordan Michael Smith in Smithsonian Magazine: Norval Morrisseau was certain. “I did not paint the attached 23 acrylics on canvas,” he wrote in a typed letter in 2001 to his Toronto gallery representative, who had sent him color photocopies of works that had recently sold at an un … | Continue reading
| Continue reading
From PBS: They are poets, playwrights, novelists and scholars, and together they helped capture the voice of a nation. They have fearlessly explored racism, abuse and violence as well as love, beauty and music. While their names and styles have changed over the years, they have b … | Continue reading
Jordan Castro at Harper’s Magazine: This, in so many words, is the activity that increasing numbers of us engage in on a regular basis—that has changed the lives of millions of Americans in recent years. Roughly half of Americans say they exercise at least a few times a week. Sin … | Continue reading
Susan Orlean at The New Yorker: Probably the only people at the Oscar Nominees Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel last week who were out on bail were Bobi Wine, the Ugandan politician and musician, and his wife, Barbie Kyagulanyi. Their presence was seemingly the result of some … | Continue reading
He Thanks His Woodpile The wood of the madrone burns with a flame at once lavender and mossy green, a color you sometimes see in a sari. Oak burns with a peppery smell. For a really hot fire, use bark. You can crack your stove with bark. All winter long I make wood stews: Poem… | Continue reading
Justin Smith-Ruiu at The Hinternet: A journal entry from me, dated January 1, 1984, records a list of what appear to be New Year’s resolutions. Most of them are unimaginative, and only testify to the common hopes and aspirations of an 11-year-old child. One however stands out: “N … | Continue reading
Rob Henderson in Persuasion: Before my first classes were scheduled to begin, I was sitting in the courtyard of my residential college when a young woman asked for help lifting some boxes into her dorm room. She introduced herself and told me she was a senior. I explained that th … | Continue reading
Raiany Romanni in Palladium: Twentieth-century science doubled the life expectancy of Homo sapiens, but our health still declines at nearly the same age today as it did in 300 BC. We’ve learned to keep chronically ill adults alive, and made some welcome progress in maintaining he … | Continue reading
Terry Eagleton at the London Review of Books: The Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle claimed he had once talked a student out of suicide by pointing out to him that the logic of ‘nothing matters’ is very different from that of, for example, ‘nothing chatters.’ For some who philosop … | Continue reading
John Witfield at Aeon Magazine: It is a familiar story: a small group of animals living in a wooded grassland begin, against all odds, to populate Earth. At first, they occupy a specific ecological place in the landscape, kept in check by other species. Then something changes. Th … | Continue reading
Egyptian Archers In Egyptian art, one archer stands for all archers, their contour drawn from his thigh, his shin, his chest, his bow and quiver, a deck of desires slightly spread. Archers are technicians; this frieze shows their discipline, how they draw as one, their almond eye … | Continue reading
Ajdina Halilovic in Nautilus: Jessie Donaldson has played the flute for 26 years. One of her favorite pieces to play is “Romance No. 2” by Beethoven, a sweet and stately composition for flute, oboes, bassoons, horns, and violin. But mentally rehearsing the flute part is tricky fo … | Continue reading
More here. (Note: In honor of Black History Month, at least one post will be devoted to its 2024 theme of “African Americans and the Arts” throughout the month of February) | Continue reading
Mariana Petry Cabral at Sapiens: Sitting on a log, in the ever-present shadow of the Amazon forest, Roseno Wajãpi and I shared pieces of cassava bread and chunks of smoked fish. He told me about the beginning of time. Earth’s crust was recent, still in formation. Stones weren’t y … | Continue reading
Sophie Haigney at The Paris Review: I like the ashes on Ash Wednesday. I am at best a lapsed Catholic though it would be more accurate to say that I never really began, just that I was raised against the backdrop of already-faded-Catholicism and its associated traumas, now transm … | Continue reading
Daisy Sainsbury at The Public Domain Review: According to his memoirs, Eugène-François Vidocq escaped from more than twenty prisons (sometimes dressed as a nun). Working on the other side of the law, he apprehended some 4000 criminals with a team of plainclothes agents. He founde … | Continue reading
Miryam Naddaf in Nature: Moving a prosthetic arm. Controlling a speaking avatar. Typing at speed. These are all things that people with paralysis have learnt to do using brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) — implanted devices that are powered by thought alone. These devices capture … | Continue reading
Holland Cotter in The New York Times: Notoriously, in the winter of 1969 the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its first exhibition devoted to African American culture, but with a show devoid of art. Called “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900—1968,” it was … | Continue reading
Peter Andrey Smith in Undark: eDNA serves as a surveillance tool, offering researchers a means of detecting the seemingly undetectable. By sampling eDNA, or mixtures of genetic material — that is, fragments of DNA, the blueprint of life — in water, soil, ice cores, cotton swabs, … | Continue reading
Todd Moss in Asterisk: The solution seems so obvious. A region synonymous with abundant sun is hungry for more electricity. Given Africa’s colossal untapped solar radiation, the continent should be installing solar panels at a furious pace. But it’s not. Though home to 60% of the … | Continue reading
| Continue reading
Brown Small Bird The Nightingale will always be a mythical bird. Did you ever see one outside poetry? The Nightingale is named into anonymity, like a Monk, like the celebrated girl who is only beautiful. What a different thing it was when Wild-Bird took actual berries from my han … | Continue reading
by Ashutosh Jogalekar Bill Lanouette is the author of “Genius in the Shadows“, the definitive biography of the Hungarian-born American physicist Leo Szilard. Szilard was one of the most creative and far-seeing minds of the 20th century, imagining before anyone else both the reali … | Continue reading
by Tim Sommers Global migration has been remarkably stable for decades. Despite that, media coverage of immigration tends to give the opposite impression. In the US, for example, there’s always a “crisis at the border.” But if there is a real crisis it’s not about the number of i … | Continue reading
Who Spoke First? who knows from where the echoes come, who knows who forms the echoes? if, in a canyon, I speak loudly enough that echoes come, I might think it’s me, I am the maker of echoes, I belch a series of wave forms toward a mirror of cliff and hear myself return … | Continue reading
by Jerry Cayford Biden matters because he is taking on the real problems that are wrecking America, the deep structural problems, created over decades, that benefit powerful people who will do anything to prevent change (the way fossil fuel companies do anything to block climate … | Continue reading
by Nils Peterson This is what Abraham Lincoln said. “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through … | Continue reading
Sughra Raza. Let Me Just Absorb Today. Digital photograph, October 2023. | Continue reading
by Chris Horner Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death —Wittgenstein The anaesthetic from which none come round —Phillip Larkin What can we do with the thought of death? Nothing can be done about death: you, me, everyone will die. Thinking can’t remove … | Continue reading
by Ed Simon Demonstrating the utility of a critical practice that’s sometimes obscured more than its venerable history would warrant, my 3 Quarks Daily column will be partially devoted to the practice of traditional close readings of poems, passages, dialogue, and even art. If y … | Continue reading
by Claire Chambers I have already written columns for 3 Quarks Daily about starting Hindi language-learning early in the Covid-19 pandemic, continuing to intermediate level as things opened up, and then learning Urdu alongside Hindi once Covid became less of a problem. However, a … | Continue reading
by Thomas Wilk and Steven Gimbel Last month’s open mic night at New College of Florida revealed more than just the comedic ineptitude of its administrators; it exposed the underbelly of a culture clash at the heart of the academic institution. Amidst the cultural war that has eng … | Continue reading