Philip Glass, Clothing, Fishing, Derailleurs, Auditoria


Hic sunt camelopardus: this historical edition of The Browser is presented for archaeological purposes; links and formatting may be broken.

Philip Glass On The Music Of Time

Fredericka Foster | Nautilus | 7th June 2018

“When I’m on a tour with the dance company we work in a different-sized theater every night. The first thing the dance company does is measure the stage. They reset the dance to fit that stage. You also have to reset the time of the music: In a larger theater, you must play slower. In a smaller theater, you have to play faster. I have a range of speed in mind. If the players don’t pay attention, it will look really funny. You can see the stage fill up with dancers because they are playing at the wrong speed. (2,150 words)

Size, By The Numbers

Hilary George-Parkin | Racked | 5th June 2018

The average American woman is 5’3″ tall, has a 38″ waist, and weights 168.5 pounds. She wants something upward of size 14. What the industry still calls “plus-size” is actually the mainstream, and a $20 billion market in America alone. Why don’t more manufacturers, department stores and chain stores get real? They force most customers to shop online. “Among brands that sell through both channels, all said that their most popular sizes tend to skew higher online than in stores” (3,100 words)

The Economics Of Fishing The High Seas

Enric Sala | Science Advances | 6th June 2018

Researchers assemble a grim picture of the fishing industry from satellite data. States subsidise fleets to overfish the oceans. “Without large government subsidies, fishing 54% of high-seas grounds at the current scale would be unprofitable”. After banking the subsidies, fleets boost profits by under-reporting catches and exploiting quasi-slave labour on land and sea. “Six countries — China, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Spain, South Korea — account for 77% of the global high-seas fishing fleet” (10,600 words)

Weird And Wonderful Derailleurs

Mike Sweatman | Guardian | 7th June 2018

If there is a bicycle or a bicyclist in your life, read on. Derailleurs that changed the world, from the author’s collection of 1,400. The weirdest: The Ofmega Mistral from Italy. “Despite being pink, plastic and vaguely suggestive, it actually functioned rather well”. The most wonderful: The EGS Up Cage, from France, “a masterpiece of doomed euro-technology in the fine tradition of the Concorde airliner. Find a blind alley, then charge up it at maximum speed, while deploying astounding creativity” (1,750 words)

Site And Sound

Andrew Balio | Future Symphony Institute | 7th June 2018

Conversation with Victoria Newhouse, the Jane Jacobs of concert halls, advocate of human-sized spaces. “I am convinced that these very large concert halls – I would say anything over fifteen hundred seats – are a thing of the past. I just don’t think there are audiences to go to them. And I think that’s one of the problems. I dread going to the Geffen, the former Avery Fisher Hall. I find it so unwelcoming, it’s so enormous. One has no sense of intimacy there whatsoever” (2,950 words)

Video of the day The Limits Of Human Vision

What to expect:

The standard eye chart was devised in 1862 by a Dutch ophthalmologist called Herman Snellen. Can it be improved? (5’33”)

Thought for the day

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working
Pablo Picasso

Podcast Radio Browser | 8th June 2018

Pilot for a possible daily podcast. Please say if you like the format. Robert Cottrell talks about today’s Browser
(3m 28s)

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