Features

Bittersweet Symphonies

What happens when different musical genres and their associated connotations—as represented in musicians, styles of music, and surroundings—collide?

Chuck Berry’s Blues

There are at least two great mysteries about Chuck Berry. The first is why the father of rock ‘n’ roll became so cavalier and dismissive about his work once he achieved popularity. The second is how someone so deeply scarred as Berry could continue, at least for a period in the ’60s, to create music infused with so much joy, feeling, whimsy, and bristling intelligence.

Hamilton is Innovative, But Not Quite Revolutionary

The ways in which Lin-Manuel Miranda reverses traditional accounts of musical history by focusing on values taken from popular music, rather than values from art music, often contributes to critiques that view Hamilton as a problematic example of a progressive historical narrative.

The Two Cultures as One and Many

While Shaw assumed the burden of “the whole unwieldy load” of contemporary sociology, politics and economics, biology and medicine and journalism, Yeats turned away, convinced that science and politics were “somehow fatal to the poet’s vision.”

Reflections On the Gender Gap

The gender salary gap is significantly more complex than a simple comparison of median earnings by gender. The gender salary gap among the highly-educated can be explained by many factors, some starting as early as middle school mathematics courses.

The Adventures of Bitcoin

It is unfortunate that all the useful features of bitcoin—decentralization, resiliency, anonymity, finality, censor resistance, and its ability to be used online—are twinned with price volatility. However, to write Bitcoin off this early in time would be premature.