Rachel Whiteread at Tate Britain
I enjoyed the Rachel Whiteread retrospective at Tate Britain. Indeed, I left liking her work more than I did before my visit.
Frieze Art Fair 2017
At this year's Frieze Art Fair there was little that stood out, to me at least, and the little that did stand out was by established artists.
Further Reading
A new theory may explain the success of deep learning. How do you make an AI curious? Why people migrate to the West. What the US heroin epidemic looks like. How many infinities are there? The semiotics of emoji. Interview with Kwame Anthony Appiah. A trucker’s tales of life on the road. And more.
Further Reading
The future of Himalayan glaciers. Imagining creativity beyond "Nature" and "Culture". Claude Shannon and the nature of information. Photos from the Cassini mission. How to choose wisely. Hidden memories of plants. Our genetic prehistory. Did our hunter-gatherer ancestors have it better? And more.
Further Reading
The mind of the octopus. How much more can we learn about the universe? A pre-history of post-truth. Religious freedom in Europe was driven by statecraft. The greatest civilization ever forgotten? J.M. Coetzee on a great writer we should know. 100 books set in/about Los Angeles. And more.
Further Reading
Charles Taylor on some conditions of a viable democracy. Alaska's permafrost is thawing. An appreciation of Fernando Pessoa. Arthur Schopenhauer the first European Buddhist. Francis Fukuyama still believes in progress. The mysteries of the Russian mindset. Karl Ove Knausgaard by the book. And more.
Further Reading
A new inventory of the universe’s dark contents. How your mind protects you against hallucinations. You are the product. The curious conundrum of Freud’s persistent influence. The LA rag trade. Books we don't understand. How to defeat procrastination. A blue pigment. Computer music. And much more.
Banff National Park
Banff National Park has it all: mountains, forests, lakes, waterfalls, glaciers, grizzly bears and lots of visitors. Three days clearly wasn't enough.
Further Reading
A Nash equilibrium is often impossible to reach efficiently. Space may not be not what you think it is. The strange topology that is reshaping physics. Hitchcock talks about film making. The clothing choices of the homeless. Uber's hard-charging corporate culture. An appraisal of Raphael. And more.
Jasper National Park
Jasper National Park is the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies. I had booked a full-day hike on the Athabasca Glacier. My hike to Mt Edith Cavell was cut short by an aggressive grizzly bear.
Stanley Glacier
The Stanley Glacier hike in Kootenay National Park is pretty awesome. It is sometimes referred to as the fire and ice trail, because it goes from burned forest to alpine meadow, to the receding Stanley Glacier.
Walcott Quarry
In 2017 another long-held dream came true when I had a chance to visit the Walcott Quarry, the most famous quarry of the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale.