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Life and Culture

Life and Culture

Human beings have always dreamed of magnificent cities. The imagined and mythical, like the so-called Lyonesse not far from the coast of Cornwall, or the Seven Cities of Cíbola located somewhere in the southwest of North America, or El Dorado, hidden in the pre-Colombian jungle. Surely behind these dreams looms the aspiration to find a model of harmonious coexistence. These would be cities attuned with the natural environment that surrounds them. With hanging gardens like those in ancient Babylonia or cloistered in a precious valley like Machu Pichhu, although these two examples actually did exist.

Loners and freaks who are addicted to video games, love junk food, and inhabit basements: the computer programmer stereotype, propagated by the silver screen, is a serious setback when it comes to attracting talent into this field. And it is much worse when it comes to attracting female talent. In Spain in 2017, the rate of women between 20 and 29 years old, graduating  in science, mathematics, information technology, or engineering per 1,000 inhabitants was 13.1 percent.  The scarcity of female talent in this field can also be witnessed at hackathons, but there's good news: women are willing to put an end to these clichés.

Noam Chomsky received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences in a ceremony at his home in Tucson, Arizona. BBVA Foundation President Carlos Torres Vila made the special trip to present him the award, as the U.S. linguist was unable to attend the award ceremony in Bilbao last June. “This is a recognition to your unparalleled contributions to the understanding of human language, which have had a tremendous influence in so many fields," said Torres Vila.

The exhibition ‘Sound Art?’, sponsored exclusively by the BBVA Foundation, addresses the issue of sound in art and raises the possibility of this aesthetic category. The art show explores the presence of sound elements in 20th Century visual arts. Curated by the expert Arnau Horta, the exhibit is open to visitors at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona from October 26, 2019  through February 23, 2020.