“Understandably his sexier accomplishments, like painting the Mona Lisa and inventing the deep-sea diving suit, overshadowed his time as a wedding planner. But wedding plan he did – from approximately 1489 to 1493 – and like everything else da Vinci put his mind to, it was with gusto and moxie.”
Will Live-Streaming News Break The Cable News Networks?
“What we saw last week was live streaming’s Gulf War, a moment that will catapult the technology into the center of the news — and will begin to inexorably alter much of television news as we know it. And that’s not a bad thing. Though it will shake up the economics of TV, live streaming is opening up a much more compelling way to watch the news.”
Neuroscientists And Philosophers Debate: Does The World Actually Exist?
Where philosophers have long debated how much we should trust our perception of the external world, neuroscientists operate on the assumption that we shouldn’t trust it much at all. According to neuroscience, it’s pretty much all in your head. Your world, through neuroscience’s empirical lens, is a construct you’ve built from patterns your brain has identified in sensory experiences.
If Writers Billed For Their Time And Had To Account For Their Hours…
Here’s what the ledger might look like. Christopher D. Legras investigates.
The 12th-Century Author-Composer-Herbalist-Sex Advisor-Abbess Who Fought The Patriarchy And Won
St. Hildegard of Bingen was even cooler than you knew.
Will America Finally Recognize This Woman As One Of Its Great Living Novelists?
“Many, many writers are chronically broke. Many have a long list of grievances with the publishing industry. Many will tell you about the circumstances that would have allowed them to enjoy the success of Ernest Hemingway or David Foster Wallace. Many have had multiple brushes with suicide, but there’s only one who wrote The Last Samurai and Lightning Rods, two of the finest novels published this century.”
The Sliding Value Of Facts In A Social Media-Saturated World
“We are caught in a series of confusing battles between opposing forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness and cruelty; between the few and the many, the connected and the alienated; between the open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it and the gated enclosures of Facebook and other social networks; between an informed public and a misguided mob. What is common to these struggles – and what makes their resolution an urgent matter – is that they all involve the diminishing status of truth.”
Nico Muhly Is Ambivalent About Commissions And Deadlines (But *Loves* Cavafy)
“If I tell people I got a commission, they say ‘Congratulations!’ But a commission is almost like being challenged to a duel. … Or it feels like one of the tasks of Hercules. In this span of time, you have to solve this crazy problem which can be artistic or emotional or musical. … Deadlines are very odd. They’re these constantly shifting sources of anxiety. There’s no way to predict what they actually mean.” (audio)
‘The Hunger Games’ Foresaw The Meeting Of Reality TV And Politics
The titular games are themselves a reality TV show, after all, and (writes Alyssa Rosenberg) the franchise “feels uneasily resonant today not because [author of the books Suzanne] Collins treated reality programming as a diversion from more important things, but because she recognized the extent to which reality TV would capture our politics and become the means by which we make our most important decisions as a society.”
Little Old Lady Gives Possible Da Vinci Sketch To Expert For Authentication – And He Makes Off With It
“The drawing was given to the [octogenarian] by her father, an antiquarian in the center of Bordeaux, and had been in her possession for several years. … The supposed expert, with the sketch in tow, vanished quickly thereafter, but not before liquidating his company and leaving no trace of his whereabouts.”
Bach Manuscript Sells For $3.3 Million At Auction
“Likely written between 1740 and 1745, the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-flat Major (BWV 998) is a favorite among both harpsichords and lutenists. Like many works by [Bach], it can be played on different instruments, which is expressly indicated on this score in the composer’s handwriting: ‘Prélude pour la Luth ò Cembal‘ (for lute or keyboard).”
China Bans The New ‘Ghostbusters’ Because It’s Not Ideologically Correct (Yes, They Still Do That)
“China’s official censorship guidelines technically prohibit movies that ‘promote cults or superstition’ … and the country’s regulators occasionally have been known to use this obscure provision as rationale for banning films that feature ghosts or supernatural beings in a semi-realistic way (Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest suffered such a fate in 2006).”
Palmyra And Its Warrior Queen: Return Of A Forgotten Rossini Opera (Whose Overture You Already Know)
Aureliano in Palmira, which gets its U.S. premiere next week, “tells the story of Roman emperor Aurelian’s 272 A.D. campaign against Queen Zenobia of Palmyra … [It] has had a fascinating journey – from highly anticipated star vehicle to underwhelming opening night to obscurity to recent rediscovery as one of Rossini’s most beautiful works.” And you’ll probably recognize the opening notes immediately.
Why Are Sports Surging But The Arts Aren’t?
Bottom line: I think it has a lot to do with the fact that sports has succeeded in being part of kids lives to an extent that arts have not.
Conductor Chung Myung-whun Returns To Seoul As Prosecutors Summon Him
“Former Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra CEO Park Hyun-jung, who was ousted as the orchestra head in December 2014 over allegations of sexual and verbal harassment by members of the SPO, has filed a suit against Chung and his wife, surnamed Koo, who are currently staying in France, on charges of defamation.”
Classical Music In China Represents So Much More That Classical Music
The story of western classical music’s trajectory in China summons a vast canvas, featuring priests, revolutionaries, heroes and emperors.
Ragers And Tantrum-Throwers Now Have A Diagnosis In The DSM Because Their Brains Are Wired That Way
“Given enough frustration, it’s normal and healthy to get angry. But for a subset of the U.S. population – some 7 percent of adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health – the propensity to fly off the handle is so great that they can be professionally diagnosed with ‘Intermittent Explosive Disorder,’ or IED.” (Yes, IED as in improvised explosive device.)
Vatican Digitizes a 1,600-Year-Old Illuminated Manuscript of the ‘Aeneid’
“In Rome, around the year 400, a scribe and three painters created an illuminated manuscript of Virgil’s Aeneid, illustrating the the ancient hero Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Italy. 1,600 years later, the Vatican has digitized the surviving fragments of this manuscript. Known as the Vergilius Vaticanus, it’s one of the world’s oldest versions of the Latin epic poem, and you can browse it for free online.”
Pokémon Go Started As An April Fools’ Joke
“For April Fools’ Day in 2014, Google created a ‘game’ in which users looked on Google Maps for Pokémon à la I Spy or Where’s Waldo. … Accompanying the game was a heart-pounding, highly produced video showing people out in the actual world climbing mountains, riding camels across the desert and taking to the sea in order to find Pokémon. The goal? To win a job as ‘Pokémon Master’ at Google.”
Oh, Great, The Dumb-Tenor Stereotype Is Back In The Spotlight – And Tied Up With #BlackLivesMatter, No Less
At a Major League Baseball game on Tuesday night, a member of the pop-opera group The Tenors, without warning his colleagues, changed the words of Canada’s national anthem to add the words “all lives matter” – and, of course, all hell broke loose. Said tenor evidently had no idea that “all lives matter” is an anti-#BlackLivesMatter backlash slogan and thought he was being inclusive. And so the jokes begin …
Baltimore Symphony Cuts Administrative Jobs
“Four of the [eliminated] jobs were in the marketing department, and a fifth was cut from the education department, symphony spokeswoman Julia Kirchhausen confirmed in an email.”
Marie Chouinard Named Director Of Dance At Venice Biennale
“The Quebec City-born artist has been involved with the Biennale since it first launched a dance section in 1999, participating in the initial edition and invited back several times over the years.”
Leon Botstein Accepts New Position At Grafenegg Festival
“Austria’s Grafenegg Festival, now approaching its tenth year as a destination summer event, with preliminary events beginning July 16, has appointed Leon Botstein as artistic director of the Grafenegg Campus and Academy, effective in 2018. The position is a new one, not to be confused with artistic director of the festival itself; that is Rudolf Buchbinder, in the job since the event’s beginnings in 2007.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.13.16
If you think you need a publicist …
… look for one who thinks strategically.
By which I mean the following. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-07-13
Other Places: Desmond On Night Lights And Mosaic
Good things go around and come around, if we’re lucky. Many good things having to do with jazz show up on the Daily Jazz Gazette of the Mosaic Records website. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-07-13
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Most Of The Traditional Measures Of TV Success Have Melted. But The Emmy Endures
“Over the last decade, television has both taken flight and blown itself up. In the new landscape, where the armies of cable networks, streaming platforms and video-on-demand services have trampled all the old mileposts, an Emmy is the last traditional, tangible mark of success.”