Many people are surprised to learn what counts as a “drink”. The amount of liquid in your glass, can, or bottle does not necessarily match up to how much alcohol is actually in your drink. Even before the United States federal government withdrew from regulating alcohol, the conversation, and degree of agreement and attitude, remains remarkably regionally specific:
This project was created a few years ago in Kentucky to bring awareness to farm safety through a dinner theatre is continuing to gain momentum in rural communities. The focus now is more on farm mental health and wellness.
Our Knott County Extension Office recently worked with UK student-athletes who conducted the Cats Holiday Toy Drive, spreading holiday cheer to children in Eastern KY 🎁
This program has been adopted or implemented by extension services and related organizations in several other states. This initiative uses short plays performed during a community dinner to educate farmers and their families on health, safety, mental health, and farm-related issues in an engaging, non-traditional way:
Nebraska — Cooperative Extension services have hosted events as part of the program’s expansion.
North Carolina — The program is active through local extension efforts.
Tennessee — Events have been held, often in collaboration with extension agents.
Virginia — Particularly notable in the Shenandoah Valley, where Virginia Cooperative Extension offices (e.g., in Rockingham County) partnered with local groups like Valley Urgent Care and Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapters to organize Farm Safety Dinner Theaters, adapting the UK model for community-based participatory approaches.
The program is designed to be replicable nationwide. The University of Kentucky provides an online Farmers Dinner Theater Toolkit for any cooperative extension service, community group, or organization to stage their own events, customizing scripts to local needs. This has enabled wider adoption beyond the original sites. These efforts focus on helping farmers by addressing critical topics like injury prevention, hearing loss, skin cancer, stress, and suicide awareness in a social, farmer-friendly setting that encourages discussion and behavior change.
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“ I think that the theater is the initial glamorizer of thought; where it can be told – without too much disguise but without too much directness either – the secrets, and thereby its antipathies and sympathies – the secrets and the knowledge of the human heart…
…I think that makes the art of the theater as important as the doctor or the psychologist or the Minister…
…I think it’s vitally important that the world knows itself and I think the theater is one of the most immediate means of expression towards that end…”
Set design model by Marcel Jambon for an 1895 Paris production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello
Demand for live events in college towns — what is now called “entertainment content” — is gathering pace; owed somewhat to an older demographic that prefers expanded social interaction to the online entertainment offerings that the younger demographic prefers*. We see an expansion of the market in the construction of architecturally astonishing buildings; though the circumstances of pandemic has changed everything.
Today our interest lies in the complex safety and sustainability characteristics of the physical infrastructure — with particular interest in the fire protection, environmental air and electrotechnologies required to make them safe and sustainable. This facility class is far more complicated technologically and operates at significantly higher risk than, say, classrooms or office space.
The Entertainment Services and Technology Association is one of the first names in trade associations that support the ‘business of show business’ through networking, safe practices, education, and representation. We follow the standards making activity of its technical committees and monitor public commenting opportunities. ESTA releases markups of its consensus products for public comment at a fairly brisk pace on its standards development landing page:
You may obtain an electronic copy at the link above, along with a comment form. Send your comments to Karl Ruling, (212) 244-1505, standards@esta.org with an optional copy to psa@ansi.org). We encourage our colleagues in school districts and in colleges and universities large and small; with responsibilities for the safety and sustainability of cultural resource properties, media centers, performance venues to participate in the ESTA technical standards development program.
Glorya Kaufman School of Dance / University of Southern California
We keep the ESTA suite on the standing agenda of our Lively Arts colloquia; open to everyone. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting.
Since the electrotechnologies for the lively arts have evolved into complex, interoperable systems we also collaborate with the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee on technical specifics. That committee meets online four times per month in European and American time zones.
“We’re all actors: We all play different roles in different situations.”
Marlon Brando
Issue: [Various]
Category: Electrical, Infotech, Lively Arts,
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Christine Fischer, Mike Hiler, Nehad El-Sherif
Beer was discovered accidentally as a result of grains being left in water and undergoing fermentation. The process of making beer involves converting the starches in grains (such as barley or wheat) into sugars, which are then fermented by yeast to produce alcohol. It was often consumed as a safer alternative to water, which could be contaminated with disease-causing pathogens.
Beer was also used in religious ceremonies and was considered a valuable commodity for trade. Over time, beer-making techniques spread throughout the world, and different regions developed their own unique styles of beer; now supported by artificial intelligence algorithms that analyze chemical compounds to identify specific flavor and aroma profiles for more nuanced flavors.
Abstract: The art of brewing beer has a long tradition that dates back to the very dawn of civilization. While the brewing process has been automated to a great extent, the creation of new beer recipes remains the result of creativity and human expertise with only minor support from software to validate chemical constraints. We collected a dataset of 157,000 publicly available recipes from all over the world and created a transformer-based model to support the creative process in brewing by suggesting new beer recipe templates. As a proof of concept, we crafted the IPA “Deeper” along a recipe generated by our model. Over 100 international newspapers and radio stations have reported on the first AI-crafted beer from Switzerland over the past few months. For the first time, this paper reveals the underlying pipeline architecture of eight transformer networks trained end-to-end that made this remarkable success possible.
The Princeton Bonfire (a cherished campus tradition celebrating a sweep of football victories over Big Three rivals Harvard and Yale) has not yet occurred in 2025, as it depends on the outcomes of those games. The relevant schedule is:
vs. Harvard: October 25, 2025 (home game at Princeton Stadium)
vs. Yale: November 15, 2025 (home game at Princeton Stadium)
If Princeton wins both (securing the “Big Three” title), the bonfire is traditionally lit on the Sunday evening immediately following the Yale game—that is, November 16, 2025, around 7 p.m. on Cannon Green. It would feature student-built stacks of wood, speeches, the Princeton University Band, and communal festivities.
Dickinson College | Cumberland County Pennsylvania
“Every week, patrons of Farmers on the Square can count on locating the Dickinson College Farm’s wood-fired pizza oven right at the heart of the square. Our handmade and fresh-baked pizzas reflect the seasonal fluctuations on our farm in addition to quality ingredients grown within the Cumberland Valley. In addition to wood-fired pizzas, our stand features seasonal organic vegetables, fresh salad dressings, refreshing popsicles and “our farm in a jar” through canned soups, pickled favorites, salsa, hot sauce and more!”
Craving the College Farm’s wood-fired pizza and made-from-scratch soup? So are we! Now you can indulge in these mouthwatering treats without stepping foot off campus. https://t.co/7pxypmxb10pic.twitter.com/UYgxpDnms6
Craving the College Farm’s wood-fired pizza and made-from-scratch soup? So are we! Now you can indulge in these mouthwatering treats without stepping foot off campus. https://t.co/7pxypmxb10pic.twitter.com/UYgxpDnms6
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The term “lively arts” is attributed to American writer and poet James Thurber. It was popularized in the mid-20th century as a way to describe various forms of performing arts, such as theater, dance, music, and other creative expressions.
“What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist.
It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap”
— Marcel Duchamp
Today we refresh our understanding of the literature that guides the safety and sustainability goals of lively art events in educational settlements. Consortia have evolved quickly in recent years, leading and lagging changes in the content creation and delivery domain. With this evolution a professional discipline has emerged that requires training and certification in the electrotechnologies that contribute to “event safety”; among them:
ASHRAE International
Standard 62.1: This standard establishes minimum ventilation rates and indoor air quality requirements for commercial buildings, including theaters and auditoriums.
Standard 55: This standard specifies thermal comfort conditions for occupants in indoor environments, which can have an impact on air quality.
RP-16-17 Lighting for Theatrical Productions: This standard provides guidance on the design and implementation of lighting systems for theatrical productions. It includes information on the use of color, light direction, and light intensity to create different moods and effects.
RP-30-15 Recommended Practice for the Design of Theatres and Auditoriums: This standard provides guidance on the design of theaters and auditoriums, including lighting systems. It covers topics such as seating layout, stage design, and acoustics, as well as lighting design considerations.
DG-24-19 Design Guide for Color and Illumination: This guide provides information on the use of color in lighting design, including color temperature, color rendering, and color mixing. It is relevant to theater lighting design as well as other applications.
Dance and Athletic Floor Product Standards: ASTM F2118, EN 14904, DIN 18032-2
Incumbent standards-setting organizations such as ASHRAE, ASTM, ICC, IEEE, NFPA have also discovered, integrated and promulgated event safety and sustainability concepts into their catalog of best practice titles; many already incorporated by reference into public safety law. We explore relevant research on crowd management and spectator safety.
By design, we do not provide a SEARCH function. We are a niche practice in a subtle, time-sensitive domain with over 30 years of case history. We were the first movers in the largest building construction market in the world. We are happy to answer all questions but place priority on collaborations. We provide links to the most accessed topics in recent days. All queries presented during our “Open Office Hours” every work day, or via email, are gratefully received and prompt a near-immediate response.
As part of its ongoing, exhaustive effort to continually promote campus safety, the University of Georgia announced today several additional measures, totaling more than $7.3 million, to further strengthen campus security on its Athens campus. https://t.co/bTg6b4DLUX
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
