Electronic reading ·
I’ve been reading a lot lately about reading books on paper versus reading them on electronic devices, such as computers, Kindles, Palm Pilots, and even cell phones
There are lots of people fighting desperate rearguard actions against the onslaught of digital reading devices. Their fundamental point is always, “But it’s not a BOOK. I can’t hold it in my hands and feel the paper, smell the ink, curl up on the sofa with it, and all those wonderful book things.”
I agree with them wholeheartedly with one caveat: those desires apply when I am reading for pleasure. When I’m reading for work, it’s a different story altogether. Word reading is work, and I want to get it done as efficently and productively as possible. I want that text searchable, sortable, indexable, compressible, expandable, translatable, linkable and every other kind of -able that digital technology can provide.
Then, when work is done, and I am free to relax and take pleasure in the word, then, and only then, give me a real, live, beautiful, tangible BOOK with all the pleasures it can provide.
— Robert Bethune (32 days ago)
Can Broadway follow where opera is leading? ·
Remember opera? That stodgy, old-fashioned art form all about fat women in Viking helmets cracking wineglasses?
Opera has figured out how to get itself into your local multiplex.
Lots of theaters have converted, and lots more are converting, to dgitial projection. Now, digital projection is a good thing; it gives you a sharper image and eliminates the need to rely on long strips of fragile celluloid that wants to rot as soon as it can.
But it also makes it possible to receive a digital transmission and put it right out on your screen. In fact, it makes it very easy to do so.
The Met, La Scala, and the San Francisco Opera have broadcast their performances this way, and it works. We’re going to see more of that.
When will Broadway get the message and start reaching out across the country and the world as these stodgy old opera companies are doing? When will the Great White Way get off the Great White Duff?
— Robert Bethune (58 days ago)
Acting and the brain ·
There’s a British impressionist named Duncan Wisbey who recently performed in an unusual venue. He did a bunch of different people, including Cary Grant and British TV exec Anthony Worrall Thompson, whille lying in an MRI brain scanner.
The results very clearly show that his brain is doing things while he performs that it doesn’t do when it merely speaks in his own voice. Centers involved with visual imagery, body representation and vocalization were activited in unusual ways.
To my mind, the really cooll thing is that the way the MRI images show his brain working agree with his own perceptions about how he does it. He tries to visualize the person he’s imitating, adjust his own body to match theirs, and let that shape his voice.
Our own perceptions about how we do things are not always valid. So it’s valuable to see an independent confirmation of his introspection.
One subject does not a study make, of course. The researchers are planning to work with other performers and try to make something systematic out of all this.
I think it’s really exciting to see this kind of work coming out of research in cognitive psychology.
— Robert Bethune (61 days ago)
Chronic myelogenous leukemia ·
The first week of March 2008 was a bit more exciting than one might prefer. I went to see my doctor about some aches and pains and the following day found myself down at the hospital being admitted for sky-high white blood cell counts. Now I’m back home, blood counts under control and improving, with a diagnosis of chronic myelogenous leukemia and the appropriate medication.
The word to the wise: if you are experiencing symptoms that don’t make sense, make sure your doctor includes a CBC – complete blood count – in your workup. It’s not an expensive test, it can tell your doctor a lot, and it will definitely sound the alarm for blood-related conditions like leukemia.
It’s also a good thing to include in your annual physical. Go ahead and ask for it.
— Robert Bethune (63 days ago)
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Letting Aeschylus be Aeschylus ·
I have a problem with the way scholarly analysis of the Greek text is done.
Suppose we run into a passage in the Greek that is confusing, difficult, complicated. What do we do?
The primary tool used by textual scholars to determine the meaning of a given passage is to find other passages that are comparable to it. First you look in the text itself, then in other texts by the same author, then in other authors related in some way to the target author, and so on outward.
Now, to some extent you have to do this. It’s really the only corrective you have for misperception of the Greek. After all, none of us are native speakers of ancient Greek, nor will anyone ever be such again.
However, this procedure is a Procrustean bed. It all but ensures that we will not read Aeschylus as a unique, individual voice, but as a writer who wroter as others wrote, a thinker who thought as others thought, a poet who saw as others see.
Isn’t the whole reason we so value his work that he did not write as others wrote, that he did not think as others thought, that he does not see as others see?
— Robert Bethune (72 days ago)