Music Training Boosts the Brain
As the US eliminates music education from its curriculum, we begin to see proof that music has "real" benefits. I thought that exposing kids to beauty and greatness was enough, but what do I know?
Wes Phillips
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Alex Ross on Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
The name of the essay is "Fervor," and that's what Ross writes with. If you can read the last paragraph of this tribute to Ms. Hunt Lieberson without tearing up, you have my condolences.
Freewheeling Outtakes
Holy moly! <I>An Aquarium Drunkard</I> has posted an entire album's worth of outtakes from the 1962 <I>The Freewheeling Bob Dylan</I> sessions. That's 25 tracks—cancel work for today!
Quack, Quack
The theory was perfect but the patient stubbornly died. Two new books set Druin Burch a'thinking.
Drunk Fruit Flies Don't Lie
Why you get more of a buzz from that cold beer on a hot summer's day. (News you can use!)
Obligatory ITLAPD Post
Jill Lapore on how she spent International Talk Like a Pirate Day in 2003. It's a good 'un, me barnacle-encrusted boobies.
Greatest Operatic Performance Ever?
My first year in New York, my friend Larry Bassman was stunned to learn I'd never been to an opera, so he picked up the phone and ordered two tickets to that night's performance at the Met. It was <I>Peter Grimes</I>, starring Jon Vickers. What a tough act to follow.
This Can't Be Right
This comic strip from the Perry Bible Fellowship seems to suggest that you can screw your way out of a crises. If they say so . . . .
Royal Society Rocks!
I am in nerd heaven! The Royal Society has just put <I>all</I> of its journals online, going back to volume one in 1665. Read Robert Boyle's "Observables upon a monstrous head," Ben Franklin's kite experiments, Edmund Stone's invention of aspirin, Daines Barrington's observation of a "remarkable young musician" (Mozart), William Henry Fox's first accounts of photography, and Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA.
Male Restroom Etiquette
Somehow it all relates to Maslow's hierarchy of human needs.