Art
Category archives for Art
Science Is Festive
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 5, 2009 Two announcements of science-related festivals have turned up in my email in the last week or so: The second annual World Science Festival will be held in New York June 10-14 this year. They feature an impressive array of speakers again, including Nobel laureates (Physicists David Gross, Frank Wilczek, and William Phillips), well-known authors, distinguished…
Denis Dutton Goes On About Art
Posted by Chad Orzel on February 2, 2009 There’s a mini media blitz underway promoting Denis Dutton’s new book The Art Instinct. He was on the Colbert Report last week, he’s reviewed in the Times, and he’s featured in this week’s Bloggingheads Science Saturday: While it’s kind of entertaining to listen to John Horgan struggling to get a word in edgewise, I’m kind…
Andrew Wyeth
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 18, 2009 Arts & Letters Daily has an item announcing the death of Andrew Wyeth (the link goes to the New York Times obit). This is noteworthy to me because he’s one of a very few artists whose work (in poster form) has ever hung on my wall. Specifically, this painting, titled “Soaring”: I picked it up…
What Humanists Think
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 4, 2008 Last weekend’s post, The Innumeracy of Intellectuals, has been lightly edited and re-printed at Inside Higher Ed, where it should be read by a larger audience of humanities types. They allow comments, so it will be interesting to see what gets said about it there. I may have some additional comments on the issue later,…
Paging Humanities Bloggers…
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 27, 2008 A question raised in comments to yesterday’s rant about humanities types looking down on people who don’t know the basics of their fields, while casually dismissing math and science: [I]t occurs to me that it would be useful if someone could determine, honestly, whether the humanities professors feel the same sense of condescension among science…
Categories: On the Beauty of Physics
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 27, 2008 Having admitted that I know noting about fine art, here’s an opportunity to prove it… A week or so ago, I was in the Schenectady library looking for something else, and noticed a book called Categories: On the Beauty of Physics, which is packaged in such a way as to make it difficult to attribute,…
The Innumeracy of Intellectuals
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 26, 2008 I know nothing about art or music. OK, that’s not entirely true– I know a little bit here and there. I just have no systematic knowledge of art or music (by which I mean fine art and classical music). I don’t know Beethoven from Bach, Renaissance from Romantics. I’m not even sure those are both…
NYC Trip: Excellent Art at the Met
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 14, 2008 I feel a little bad about posting a long ranty thing about stupid and annoying art at the Met, because every time I go there, I find something new and really impressive. For example, the renovations underway in the museum forced me to cut through the European Decorative Arts section, where I never go, because…
NYC Trip: Bad and Ugly at the Met
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 14, 2008 Having done a whirlwind and somewhat disappointing swing through the Museum of Natural History, I strolled across Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to get me some culture. I guessed correctly that it was less likely to be choked with middle-school kids, and I never fail to find something interesting to look at.…
Hugo Nominees 2008
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 21, 2008 The Hugo Award nominees for this year have been released. The category I care most about is Best Novel, where we have: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate) Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr) Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog Oct. 2006-Jan/Feb. 2007) The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)…
