[youtube]https://youtu.be/rj17WbJ1k7k[/youtube] In 1968 Allen Ginsberg appeared on Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. The topic was the Avant-Garde but it wasn't long before Ginsberg, who Buckley refers to as "the hippie's hippie, the bohemian prototype," turns the discussion to the power of the media, censorship and language. He points out how the language of the media is a far cry from the language of the everyday and how the language the police use "toward hippies and Negroes" never enters the public discourse so one can never get a true picture of what happened. This was almost 50 years ago!
Famous Schools from Fiction
I know school's out for summer but this infographic courtesy of Rayburn Tours was too cool to leave for fall. From Hogwarts School to Pencey Preparatory to a slew of fictitious schools from film and TV I trust there is one that you wish you attended :-)
“From Aaaaa! to ZZZap!” – Printing Wikipedia for art’s sake
The latest exhibition at the Denny Gallery features a sampling of Michael Mandiberg's wild project called “Print Wikipedia.” Here's the skinny: Print Wikipedia is a both a utilitarian visualization of the largest accumulation of human knowledge and a poetic gesture towards the futility of the scale of big data. Mandiberg has written software that parses the entirety of the English-language Wikipedia database and programmatically lays out thousands of volumes, complete with covers, and then uploads them for print-on-demand. Built on what is likely the largest appropriation ever made, it is also a work of found poetry that draws attention...
The reading life of scientists explored in new series from the University of Cambridge
[youtube]https://youtu.be/i_Zq2FXTB5A?list=PLoEBu2Q8ia_OJey8wqE7pyczqsQ8BFrx3[/youtube] Taking its inspiration from the ‘What Scientists Read’ project which queried 30 scientists about their reading lives 'Novel Thoughts' is new film series focusing on eight scientists and the books that helped shape their lives. For some, a book came along at just the right time. Professor Clare Bryant, of the Department of Zoology, read A S Byatt’s Possession at a crucial point in her early career. Its page-turning portrayal of two historians racing to uncover hidden truths reminded her of the excitement of scientific discovery, and persuaded her not to turn her back on her own research career...
This summer’s “Reading Ambassadors” are coming from the Governor’s Mansion
School's out, summer is here and it's "summer slide" prevention time. One of the more prominent offerings comes from Scholastic who has signed on forty-four U.S. Governors’ Spouses, along with the Governors of Colorado, Vermont and the U.S. territories Northern Mariana Islands and U.S. Virgin Islands to act as “Reading Ambassadors” for the 2015 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. The free Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge encourages kids worldwide to log the minutes they spend reading in order to unlock original stories written by favorite children’s authors, earn rewards, and help set a new world record for summer reading, with the goal...