“Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”
ISIS And Its Sophisticated Cinema Of Terror
“The cinematography is as crisp and chilling as a horror movie. Men in orange jumpsuits kneel on a beach beneath a sky of broken clouds. Executioners hover over them, dressed in black, knives aglint. … This and other recent execution videos released by Islamic State are slickly produced narratives of multiple camera angles, eerie tension and polished editing that suggest the filmmakers are versed in Hollywood aesthetics.”
Stolen 400-Year-Old Books on Their Way Home To Italy
“This is the odyssey of two rare books that were taken from an Italian library and wound up in the hands of a Bay Area rare-book collector. The books are safe and sound, the Homeland Security Department said, and heading home to their rightful owner.”
Turns Out Fiction Is (Just) Slightly More Complicated Than ‘A Stranger Comes To Town; Someone Leaves Town’
“To the aficionado, Jockers’s sheep/goats, wheat/chaff division of imaginative fiction sounds about as sophisticated as dividing the world of music into the up-chord and the down-chord. It sounds, indeed, like the lady in the Monty Python sketch explaining her theory about the brontosaurus (it starts off thin, becomes very thick, then thin again).”
The Golden Age Of Indie Game Art Is Upon Us
“Even without the argument for higher beauty in a new medium, there’s plenty of other incentive for game developers to bring high-design into their games. The best incentive of all, really: sales.”
Andrew Jackson – The President – Was Far, Far Bloodier Than You Think (And The Musical Should Acknowledge That)
“The lessons of Bloody Bloody are seen in American society today. Today, Native women are murdered at a rate higher than any other race in America. The majority of the perpetrators of violent crimes against Native women are non-Native men. The ‘jokes’ in Bloody Bloody about killing Indians are not ‘jokes.’ They are a reality.”
How We See, Or, The Science Of Why No One Agreed On That Damned Viral Dress
“The point is, your brain tries to interpolate a kind of color context for the image, and then spits out an answer for the color of the dress.”
How Should The Owner Of A Former Plantation Build The U.S.’s First Slavery Museum?
“If opinions on the restoration varied, visitors were in agreement that they had never seen anything quite like it. Built largely in secret and under decidedly unorthodox circumstances, the Whitney had been turned into a museum dedicated to telling the story of slavery — the first of its kind in the United States.”
Writing On The Web, A Deeply Cynical Take
“Remember that first question: What is web writing in 2015? Is it still based on the author model? If you enjoy watching a writer’s mind work over time (or you enjoy having that freedom as a writer), is there still a way to do that? Or is the writer’s-voice-driven Internet over, forever, everything’s atomistic now and it’s no longer possible to scrape an audience together that way even if you want to?”
Stedelijk Museum Makes A Startling Public Admission
“The Stedelijk Museum in the Second World War” recounts the daring ways in which the museum’s employees fought Nazi censors after Germany conquered the Netherlands in May 1940. But the show also features 16 works in the permanent collection by artists including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Henri Matisse that the museum says it might not rightfully own.
ISIS Destroys Ancient Statues At Mosul Museum – Or So They Think
Just days after the extremists burned the rare books in Mosul’s library, they went rampaging through the city museum’s collection of Akkadian and Assyrian statues, smashing the works with sledgehammers and drills. It seems, though, that many of the destroyed pieces weren’t originals. (includes video)
FCC Approves Strict Net Neutrality Rules, Declares Broadband A Public Utility
“Following one of the most intense – and bizarre – lobbying battles in the history of modern Washington politics, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed strict new rules that give the body its greatest power over the cable industry since the Internet went mainstream.” Said the FCC chairman, “This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech.”
The New Net-Neutrality Policy, In Three Simple Phrases
“There are three major principles that Internet-service providers – like Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon – have to follow when sending data from their networks to your computer:”
Memphis Symphony To Lose Music Director Mei-Ann Chen After Next Season
“Roland Valliere, MSO’s president and CEO, said it was no surprise. … Her decision comes at a time when the orchestra has been struggling financially. The MSO announced in January of last year that it was deep fiscal trouble, and it cut staff and expenses to survive the 2013-14 season. It drastically reduced offerings for this season, and musicians took a 38 percent pay cut.”
“The Little Prince” Goes Out Of Copyright, And Turkish Publishers Go Nuts
“In the first two weeks of January, more than thirty Turkish publishers released translations of the 1943 novella. … In a newspaper books supplement the other week, almost half the adverts were for The Little Prince. One publisher put out a mandarine-flavoured edition. Another released three different versions, to show the differences in translation trends. There is a 3D pop-up edition.”
“Obscene” Poet Wins £40,000 David Cohen Prize For Literature
“[Tony] Harrison, 77, wrote his first poems 70 years ago, and has since written a number of films and plays. V., which describes the offensive language graffitied on Harrison’s parents’ grave, contains 25 uses of the word ‘f***’ and 17 uses of the word ‘c***’.”
Can God Lie? The Scientific Revolution Changed The Answer To That Question
“‘Can God lie?’ proved an important question for more than 1,000 years because it compelled theologians to consider in the starkest terms the nature of God’s relationship to the world. … These are important questions, but they also proved difficult to answer because the evidence seemed to contradict itself. … Far from being a mere curiosity of the past, concerns about God’s deceptions proved central to the Scientific Revolution and therefore to the modern world.”
Getty Museum’s Top Curator To Retire After 35 Years
Thomas Kren, the associate director for collections (not to be confused with Thomas Krens, the controversial longtime director of the Guggenheim), will depart in October. He’ll be replaced by Richard Rand, senior curator of paintings and sculpture at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass.”
Alexei Ratmansky Goes Forward To The Past For ABT’s New “Sleeping Beauty”
“This production is not an occasion for him to express his bold originality as is the case with his Nutcracker … Rather, his approach to Sleeping Beauty is to re-create as closely as possible the 1890 choreography by Marius Petipa,” notation for which has survived.
Carlos Acosta Says Dance Education Should Be Free
“[Dance education] should not have a cost or price. … When you put a price on [access], then you divide into two camps those who can and those who cannot. In the camp of those who cannot I bet there is a lot of talent there, a lot of Nureyev … I think we should demand at the highest level that these things should happen. It is a fight to take to the government.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.26.15
Metropolitan Museum Decries “Catastrophic Destruction” of Mosul Museum’s Collection
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-02-26
Music For the Rich – Only
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2015-02-26
Villain for a Day
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-02-26
Payton At The Portland Festival
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-02-26
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Westminster Abbey To Add First New Tower In 270 Years
The addition “will create public access to a museum of treasures and curiosities housed in the triforium, the church’s attic gallery. At present, the public can get only a distant glimpse of the spectacular and shadowy space through the stone arches 70ft up at the top of the walls above the high altar.”
BBC Will Have To Give Up Licence Fee, Say Lawmakers
“The BBC should reduce its output and the television licence fee should eventually be scrapped, a parliamentary committee has said after considering the role of the publicly funded broadcaster in the wake of a string of scandals and industry changes.”
Stop The Licence Fee? Shut Down The BBC Trust? Drop A TV Channel? What-All Is In This Committee’s Report, Anyway?
“The Guardian read the 164-page House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee report on the future of the BBC so you don’t have to.”
Is This The Banksy Of Iran? Or The Shepard Fairey?
“[Mehdi] Ghadyanloo has more in common with the metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico than he does with Banksy. Yet in terms of success as a street artist, he is undoubtedly the Banksy of Tehran. Astonishingly, there are over 100 walls in Iran’s capital decorated by Ghadyanloo. … His paintings are not illegal. On the contrary, he was commissioned by the city government to paint them.” (So he’s definitely not like Banksy.)