“Memorials are how we recount and publicly value our history (although how we tell that history is often distorted by political correctness and who can afford to build them). Dismantling all of these Confederate monuments and simply pretending nothing ever happened – continues to happen 1 would serve no one.”
Book Publishers Are Finally Starting To Invest In Real Fact-Checking
“By tradition and by default, books aren’t verified to anything near the standard of a magazine piece. Publishers don’t even consider verification their business. … In fact, the practice of checking books is fairly common, though it’s also expensive. This fall, for the first time, one publisher is even promising to pay for it. Which is a pretty radical departure.”
What We’ve Learned From 30 Years Of NYC’s Percent For Art Program
More particularly, what we’ve learned from the (relatively few) serious dust-ups over particular projects: “each example reveals the hazards of placing confidence in the outstanding reputation of an artist, and in the notion that all it takes for the public to accept assertions by the avant-garde is time and patience. … It is as if one of public art’s undervalued and poorly recognized functions is to test the idea that no matter how negatively people perceive a work of art at first, they will in due course acquiesce.”
Another Architectural Treasure Destroyed By ISIS
“While the destruction of medieval sites has received far less media attention than attacks on better known ancient sites such as Nimrud or Hatra, the loss of Iraq’s medieval sites is perhaps even more tragic due to the relative lack of scholarly documentation.”
Dancing The Refugee Experience
“Would you know the moment when you must flee your homeland? Where do you think is the safest place to go? What do you do once you find it isn’t a welcoming haven? How do you navigate the roadblocks of immigration, citizenship, language?” How do you navigate all of these issues in an artform that, by nature, rarely uses words?
Panned By Critics, “50 Shades Of Grey” Sequel Sells Million Copies In UK In First Week, Breaks Sales Records
“Released last Thursday, Grey tells the story of the S&M-focused relationship between businessman Christian Grey and shy student Anastasia Steele from the perspective of Christian – something its British author James writes in her dedication that fans had “asked … and asked … and asked … and asked” for.”
Cleveland To Turn A Traffic Island Into A Destination Public Space
“It’s a stage set,” James Corner says of his designs. “You’re trying to set up situations where it’s not just about having nice places to sit in the sun. It’s also the whole theatricality of people-watching, and you being seen, or you being not seen.”
Who’s Making Money In The Music Business (Job-By-Job Analysis)
“Billboard followed the money to determine who’s pulling in the largest (and smallest) paychecks in the industry: from the tens of millions in equity awards reaped by Apple executives to a radio-station mascot’s minimum wage.”
Claim: Is UK’s Creative Writing Program Actually Making Students’ Writing Worse?
The authors, a growing group that already numbers 35, say that national curriculum assessment criteria have become a “prescription for how to teach children to write (to pass the tests), with quite adverse effects on their writing skills”. This means, they say, that children are taught “not to use simple words such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘small’ or ‘big’ but to always find other more ‘interesting’ words to replace them – such as ‘wonderful’, ‘terrible’, ‘minuscule’ or ‘enormous’”.
As Our Machines Get Smarter, Are We Nearing The End Of Work As We Know It?
“What does the ‘end of work’ mean, exactly? It does not mean the imminence of total unemployment, nor is the United States remotely likely to face, say, 30 or 50 percent unemployment within the next decade. Rather, technology could exert a slow but continual downward pressure on the value and availability of work—that is, on wages and on the share of prime-age workers with full-time jobs. Eventually, by degrees, that could create a new normal, where the expectation that work will be a central feature of adult life dissipates for a significant portion of society.”
Why Can’t We Just Let Favorite Book Series Die? (Five Franchises That Need To End)
“It seems like we’ve never been so overwhelmed with reboots, prequels, neverending series, and what Slate has called “famfic” — continuations of a series by the late author’s own family.”
San Jose Ballet Chief Steps Down After Only A Year
“News of Alan Hineline’s departure came shortly after the company announced that it had weathered yet another of many financial crises, raising $680,000 in 10 days to avoid a shutdown last March. Today, the company is on the road to fulfilling its “Bridge to the Future” campaign, having raised $1.5 million of its $2.5 million goal, expecting to reach that in May 2016, after completion of Ballet Silicon Valley’s next season.”
How The Talmud Became A Bestseller In South Korea
“Each Korean family has at least one copy of the Talmud. Korean mothers want to know how so many Jewish people became geniuses. Twenty-three per cent of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish people. Korean women want to know the secret. They found the secret in this book.”
Uprooting The Confederate Flag From American Pop Culture Ain’t Gonna Be Easy
It’s not just all the bumper stickers and belt buckles and shower curtains and other merch: it’s motorcycle clubs and Lynyrd Skynyrd albums and Dukes of Hazzard reruns. “How do you deal with a symbol that means so many different things, to so many different people? How do you ‘take down’ a flag that has ceased to be a flag at all?”
Cause And Effect: The Way The Universe Works, Or Naïve Illusion? (Yes, It’s A Real Question)
“In short, a working knowledge of the way in which causes and effects relate to one another seems indispensible to our ability to make our way in the world. Yet there is a long and venerable tradition in philosophy, dating back at least to David Hume in the 18th century, that finds the notions of causality to be dubious. And that might be putting it kindly.”
What’s Happening In Your Brain When You Keep Nodding Off And Can’t Stay Awake
It’s all about the thalamus and the group of cerebral regions sometimes nicknamed “the oh shit circuit.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.23.15
“Fragmented Exhibition Spaces”: Guggenheim Picks Architects for Helsinki
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-06-23
Entry from an unkept diary
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-06-23
Lookback: on discovering the joys of shuffle play
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-06-23
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Film Composer James Horner Dies In Plane Crash
“One of Hollywood’s most highly regarded and prolific film composers, Horner wrote the music for well over 100 movies in the course of his career, touching on every conceivable genre. His credits include some of the most successful films of the last three decades, and he collaborated with many of the industry’s top directors, including Ron Howard, Terrence Malick and James Cameron.”
French-Japanese Architects Chosen For Helsinki Guggenheim
“The design was the popular choice in an exhibition of the six shortlisted scheme, which closed in May. Winning support from the citizens of Helsinki—and its politicians—is crucial, if the design is to be built. Backed by Helsinki’s mayor Jussi Pajunen, the project still needs to receive a green light from the city authorities.”
Oscar-Winning Composer Killed In Plane Crash
James Horner wrote the scores for a host of successful movies, among them Titanic, Braveheart, Field of Dreams, Aliens, Apollo 13, Avatar, and Star Trek II and III.