It is one of the most valuable purposes of reading imaginative literature that it allows the reader to sympathize with the values of a culture different from his or her own. Having done so, memory, strengthened by the force of narrative, will also preserve those values. Peter E. Gordon therefore aptly begins his review of […]
August 27, 2016 at 7:36 pm
From http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160822-the-mysterious-ancient-origins-of-the-book: The book is changing. Electronic books, or ebooks, are more portable than their paper counterparts, capable of being carried in their hundreds on a single reader or tablet. Thousands more are just a click away. It can be argued that ebooks are more robust than paper ones: an ebook reader can be stolen or […]
October 8, 2015 at 10:23 am
It seems folks are always fretting about the juvenile hijinks taking place on college campuses. However, going through some BU archives, we find an opinion expressed in 1931 that the immaturity was more or less over. Has this observation been borne out? You be the judge. From an editorial titled “Growing Pains”, published in a […]
March 23, 2015 at 10:30 am
The ease of publishing one’s writing online, in conjunction with the pleasure reading of popular fiction, may have changed our perception of the literary canon, says Arthur Krystal of The Chronicle Review. He fears a loss of appreciation for its greatness as new artists turn out works that will never have the same resonance as, say, a Shakespearean sonnet or a Homerian epic.
December 16, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Over at SoundCloud, the good folks of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have posted an audio interview with one of their hosts asking a certain familiar Core personality all about a certain familiar holiday song… can you guess who it was? Can you guess what song? Give up? It’s Professor Hamill! It’s “Jingle Bells”! Minds are […]
April 18, 2014 at 11:14 am
Egyptian scientist, Ibn al-Haytham (AD 950-1040), is hailed as the father of modern optics and experimental physics. Also, he’s apparently one of the first to make a statement on scientific methodology: The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, […]
The late 19th and early 20th century gave birth to some of our world’s favorite poets and poetry, something that could be written off as simple proximity, but we at Core believe what makes these writers so important was not only the still resonating effects of political and societal changes they commented on but also […]
December 18, 2013 at 11:49 am
Color photography has been around far longer than often assumed. Attempts had been made as early as the 1840s and in the mid 19th century several techniques were developed, although no affordable methods were readily available until the mid 20th century. One early technique was the Paget process, most memorably used by Australian photographer James […]
