Yearly Archives: 2021
Song-writer Dave Frishberg, 88
His songwriting wit was for grown-ups, yet he reached his widest audience with sharpshooting ditties for kids as a regular musical contributor to ABC-TV’s...
New Buyers Are Painting San Francisco’s Colorful Old Houses “Gentrification Gray”
"To their proponents, they're understated and contemporary, with paint jobs that will take a beating without ever looking dirty. To their detractors, they're unimaginative,...
French Dictionary Adds Gender-Neutral Pronoun; Education Minister Is Horrified
Because younger people are starting to use it, lexicographers at Le Petit Robert added the pronoun iel (a portmanteau of il and elle). The...
Are All-Female- Or All-BIPOC-Composer Programs The Best Way To Diversify Classical Music?
For example, the group Resonance Works Pittsburgh, which has committed to make half of all works it plays by women and at least one-third...
A First Printing Of The US Constitution Is Now The Most Expensive Document Or...
The price was $43.2 million, and the anonymous winner outbid an impromptu group of cryptocurrency players who raised money via blockchain over a few...
“I Knew That My Actions Were Wrong And Illegal”: Art Dealer Inigo Philbrick Pleads...
He had previously pled not guilty to several charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft; in an apparent plea deal, he confessed to...
Qatar Says It Will Make Itself A “Vast Outdoor Art Museum” For World Cup...
The public art project will ultimately involve 100 installations (70 are now in place), by both local artists and Western big names such as...
Australia’s Conservative Government Refuses To Insure Arts Against COVID Closures
"(Prime Minister Scott Morrison's Coalition) government has rejected a call by the Greens and Labor to provide Australia's live performance sector with an insurance...
Talk To The Hand – How Our Hands Help Us Communicate
I hadn’t perceived how hard it is to read the responses of one’s audience when the most expressive part of the face is hidden. -...
Will The Supreme Court Finally Declare Copyright Piracy Theft? (Wait… What?)
For quite some time, there’s been an esoteric debate running in intellectual property circles as to whether copyright infringement is best characterized as thievery. -...
Why Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla Is Stepping Down In Birmingham
If this period of enforced home life made her reassess her priorities – she lives in Salzburg with her husband and their two children...
A Sharp Rise In Demands To Ban Books In Libraries
“We’re seeing an unprecedented volume of challenges. I’ve worked for ALA for 20 years, and I can’t recall a time when we had multiple...
Why Did We Organize Time Into Seven-Day Weeks?
The development that really established the seven-day week as insurmountable, David Henkin contends, came in the middle of the twentieth century: the television schedule....
Why Does Sad Music Make Us Feel Better?
It can act as a social surrogate. Sad music can be experienced as an imaginary friend who provides support and empathy after loss. -...
The Scheme That Saved Classical Music In Melbourne Is Expanding To The Rest Of...
Melbourne Digital Concert Hall streamed 430 performances, with over $1.6 million going to musicians during one of the longest, strictest lockdowns in the world....
Education As A Class Indicator (But Maybe Not How You Think)
Historically, in America, the true strength of the Classics and of a Classical education has not been among the elite but among the rising...
Climate Change Is Damaging Australia’s Ancient Aboriginal Rock Art
Veteran archaeologists have noted visible changes just over the past half-century or less. Much of the rock art is painted on sandstone, which absorbs...
Technology Is Promising Boosts To Your Enlightenment
Technoboosts include brain stimulation, which uses electric currents or other means to directly target certain brain areas and change their behavior, and synthetic psychedelics,...
Zadie Smith Never Meant To Write A Play. A Press Release Made Her Do...
First of all, when her neighborhood submitted a bid to be London's Borough of Culture, she agreed to participate, thinking it wouldn't win. Then...
Why We Sleep
Sleep’s benefits extend far beyond the brain, and that muscles, the immune system, and the gut can all have a say in when and...
Jimmie Durham, Native American Artist And Activist (Or Was He?), Dead At 81
"(He was) celebrated for incorporating traditional Native American imagery and materials into lively, unconventional sculptures before his claim of Cherokee ancestry was widely challenged,...
Students And Teachers Of The Afghanistan National Institute of Music Flee
The school became known for supporting the education of girls, who make up about a third of the student body. The school’s all-female orchestra,...
How Children’s Radio Grew Popular And Then Faded Away
"Back in April, the only real player in the kid-centric terrestrial radio space, Radio Disney, which started life on the airwaves 25 years ago...
Finally, A Creative is Suing Over A Hollywood Studio’s Creative Accounting Of Profits
Studios have long had a reputation for promising actors or writers a percentage of a movie's profits, then using accounting tricks to show that...
One Of New York’s Biggest Collections Of Antiquities Is In The Manhattan DA’s Office
"The Antiquities Trafficking Unit is very much a victim of its own success. Set up in 2017 … to curb the smuggling of cultural...