Mark Likes Music

It isn't until the end of his New York Times article "Who Killed The Catchphrase?," in which he spends much time discussing the media-consumption behaviors of millennials, that Teddy Wayne gets at what has really contributed to the diminished importance of those infectious punchlines to TV commercials: We are supplanting the catchphrase with GIF, Photoshop and Vine. As Ms. Fegley said, “It’s been replaced by viral videos and the eight million things we share every day.” The commercial catchphrase, meanwhile, has fallen, and it can’t get up. At one time, lines like "Where's the Beef?" or "Yo quiero Taco Bell" ruled not only TV, but were used in print and radio as well. Today, our culture has become increasingly visual, and the easily transferable catchphrase is now the shareable meme-image or video. We're no longer as interested in listening as we are in looking--but we are still interested in sharing.

On the Times Higher Education website , Belinda Jack derides academic language as cliche that inhibits imagination: As a writer I am, needless to say, a supporter of books and reading. I am an interested party. But if we are to avoid being caught up in self-contained linguistic prisons where everything that is said is, in effect, repetition and cliché, then we have to attend to words and their efficacy. Academic jargon can create just such a closed space in which the initiated talk to one another and there are far too few reality checks. Peer review, rather than acting as a control, can further strengthen the in-language and in-thinking. The pressure on academics to contribute to the research excellence framework can be yet another threat to the independence and integrity of the academic as writer . I've read lots of criticisms of academic jargon online and railed against it myself as a grad student (you have not lived until you've sat through an afternoon of professional

Benjamin Britten's centenary is Friday, and while WQXR gives you five ways to celebrate , NPR.org reminds us that the composer spent time in Brooklyn and gives us a Britten cheat sheet . In his home country, the Guardian has been streaming performances all week from Aldeburgh Music , the festival that Britten founded.  If you like Wes Anderson, you probably know Britten. Moonrise Kingdom featured a lot of Britten's music, as Russell Platt of the New Yorker discussed , including the second movemenbt of Simple Symphony (start below around 3:20):

Crain's New York Business reported back on November 8 that the board of the Brooklyn Philharmonic is considering bankruptcy. Another victim of the financial downturn of 2008, the Brooklyn Philharmonic canceled its 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons. While 2011-12, the orchestra's only full season with the now infamous Richard Dare as CEO and Alan Pierson as artistic director, was a great artistic success, they've been practically dormant since then. The New York Times also reported.  

A study out of the University of Westminster on contemporary metal music concluded that this group is made up of (mostly) males who aren't exactly the most confident people out there: Those with a strong preference for metal “were also more likely to have lower self-esteem,” the researchers write. They speculate this style of music “allows for a purge of negative feelings,” producing a catharsis that may “help boost self-worth.” The study focuses on thrash metal today, but heavy metal has always been a distinct subculture, dating back to its birth in working-class Britain. Fans have for decades used the music as a release of frustration and a way to build bonds with others who similarly feel outside the norms of society. At least it was like that when I was a boy.  

According to a new formula devised by the federal government , the number of poor in the United States stands at 16% of the population, not 15% as calculated by the existing, official formula. And without federal programs such as Medicaid and SNAP ( oh, no ), that percentage would grow significantly. Reading this, I was reminded of a blog post by Tressie McMillan Cottom on the logic that drives poor people t o buy conspicuously expensive things, especially clothes. She recounts this story of how her well dressed mother helped a neighbor work her way through bureaucratic morass of the local social services agency: The woman had been denied in the genteel bureaucratic way —lots of waiting, forms, and deadlines she could not quite navigate. I watched my mother put on her best Diana Ross “ Mahogany ” outfit: a camel colored cape with matching slacks and knee high boots. I was miffed, as only an only child could be, about sharing my mother’s time with the neighbor girl. I must have

Star Wars and Kinkade, together at last: Classic.  

A couple of weeks after reading about how music can bolster the academic performance of students in low-income schools comes some depressing news that underscores the importance of using everything at our disposal to close the education gap between rich and poor. Research by Anne Fernald, as reported in The New York Times , has found that by the age of two, children in low-income communities (where the median income is $23,900) know 30% fewer words than more affluent kids (in areas with a median income of $69,000); this gap in vocabulary can result in serious discrepancy in reading comprehension later on. On a related note, Dylan Matthews on the Washington Post 's Wonkblog tells us that those of us brought up in low-income households have brains less able to handle stressful situations and control emotions, according to a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.