“Bad TV,” in this case, doesn’t mean reality television, which has a kind of integrity in its shamelessness, but old-style idiot-box TV like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Gilligan’s Island, and Dynasty. And as the much-ballyhooed age of Peak TV runs on, argues Paula Marantz Cohen, some of the most insidious traits of Bad TV are creeping into what ought to be high-quality material.
Why We Need New Classes On Critical Thinking
We need courses devoted to such matters because we are living in a time where the dangers to informed and rational thought are not so much bad or sloppy thought but a poisoning of the flow of reliable information. It is not the transition from premises to conclusion that is often at fault but the premises themselves. Philosophers who teach Critical Thinking courses need to adjust their syllabi to take this into account.
Baku, Azerbaijan’s Capital, Aims To Become The Cultural Center Of The Caucasus
For much of the Soviet era, Baku actually was known for a busy arts scene, but it faded in the upheaval following the dissolution of the USSR. Now, flush with oil money and equipped with a flashy new cultural center designed by Zaha Hadid, Baku is rebuilding its arts scene. Stephan Rabimov gives us a survey.
How AI Is Changing The Ways We Sell Things
It’s become apparent to leading edge companies that leveraging their existing internal database, and mining it for new opportunities using AI, will allow them do to so prudently. If data is indeed the new oil, then companies who can capture the data, analyze it, and generate actionable insights will have salespeople who’ll be able to close more deals, more often.
For Nico, Being An Icon Was A Problem
Michael LaPointe: “When she sang ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ in 1966, she wasn’t asking to become a permanent surface for our collective reflections. … Today she is best known for the songs she came to loathe. Of course, they’re also her catchiest, but I wonder if her artistic mission — a mission of destruction — is simply incompatible with any of the images we’ve made of her. We construct icons, but Nico was an iconoclast.”
Why Studying Literature Can Make Medical Students Into Better Doctors
“In particular, [a new paper] proposes that certain literary exercises, like rewriting short stories that involve ethical dilemmas, can expand doctors’ worldviews and make them more attuned to the dilemmas real patients face” than traditional medical ethics case studies do.
How Dancers Can Argue For Dance As An Intellectual Pursuit
“Unfortunately, it’s difficult to explain to non-dancers how corporal movement is a means of thinking and engaging with complex ideas. That’s why it’s so important that dancers can talk or write about their work, translating the corporal knowledge into language.” Alice Blumenfeld offers some suggestions for how to go about it.
Pat De Groot, Doyenne Of Provincetown’s Artists, Dead At 88
“Ms. de Groot came late to painting, in her mid-40s. But for the next four decades she was prolific, using a palette knife to etch dozens and dozens of scintillating, layered, small-scale seascapes of Provincetown Harbor as seen from the home and studio she designed for herself and her husband … With room to spare under an M-shaped double-gable roof, Ms. de Groot often played summer landlord to creative figures like [John]Waters” – who called her “bohemian royalty” – “[Peter] Hoare, the painter Richard Baker and the gallerists Pat Hearn and Colin de Land.”
Orchestras And Opera Companies Try Young Professionals’ Clubs To Attract Millennials
“Symphonies are attempting to lure these 22-to-37-year-olds with drastically increased social media presences, discounted tickets, and exclusive backstage access. Opera companies are capitalizing on the socializing aspect of their milieu and setting snares of free hors d’oeuvres and drinks during intermissions.” Jeremy Reynolds looks at the programs of the San Francisco and Atlanta Symphonies, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Houston Grand Opera.
The Neuroscience Of Cruelty And Evil (Not Much To Go On)
Today, biology is a powerful explanatory force for much human behaviour, though it alone cannot account for horror. Much as the neurosciences are an exciting new tool for human self-understanding, they will not explain away our brutishness. Causal accounts of the destruction that humans inflict on each other are best provided by political history – not science, nor metaphysics.
Sixty Former Royal Winnipeg Ballet Dancers File Class Action Suit
When the ensuing police investigation ended in 2016 with no charges, they sued. Today more than 60 former RWB dancers, now adult women, have joined a class-action lawsuit that was certified in July and is seeking $75 million in damages from photographer Bruce Monk and the ballet company.
Is Art For The Sake Of Art Missing The Point?
Nonprofit organizations must be service-oriented to better the lives of those who cannot better it on their own. Using that as a jumping-off point, I believe that every single person has the right to succeed. Yet a whole slew of people cannot act on that right without being blocked. Therefore, if I should choose to run another nonprofit arts organization before my mortal coil shuffle happens, our group would happen to produce plays. But, everything we would do would be for the purpose of connecting and improving the effectiveness of those with expertise and working service portals — those with access to a proverbial “underground railroad.”
UK Claims For Tax Relief Were Sharply Up Last Year
Theatre tax relief was introduced in 2014, offering qualifying productions a reduction in corporation tax of 20%, or 25% if they were touring. It is among a suite of tax incentives offered by the Government to the creative industries, with other beneficiaries including film, video games and high-end television. Last year there were 910 successful claims for theatre tax relief, with both large and small productions benefiting. About half of the relief awarded (£39m) went to claims for over £500k, of which there were 40. At the other end of the scale, more than a third of the claims (330) were for amounts of less than £10,000.
A Public UK Museum Releases Its Images To The Public Domain, Abolishing License Fees
“I bring better news from the campaign to abolish fees for images of works in British public collections. Birmingham Museums Trust has decided to go for “open access”, the first major British museum to do so. In a pioneering move, the trust will make images of copyright-expired works of art freely available to use under a CCO Creative Commons licence.”
Why Would A Sane Woman Go On A TV Dating Competition? As Performance Art (Of One Kind Or Another)
Ann Hirsch is a video artist who created a YouTube persona that attracted many thousands of viewers and got picked up by 4chan. Cathy Nardone just wanted to be on TV; she had done one reality series and was itchin’ for more. As part of Slate‘s “Decoder Ring” podcast series, Willa Paskin looks at what happened when the two women assumed fake personas to get on VH!’s Frank the Entertainer in a Basement Affair. (audio)
Remember The Great Recession? Where Is The Music Of Social Commentary?
Part of what looking across the genres shows you is that the big-selling, celebrity-driven mainstream of just about every style of music offers very little social or economic critique. If that’s what you’re looking for, look to the edges.
How Popular Music Has (And Hasn’t) Responded To The Current Era Of Inequality
Scott Timberg: “During the Great Depression, which saw widespread homelessness and US unemployment reaching 25 percent, popular films showed the very rich drinking cocktails in formal dress; cheery songs like ‘Pennies From Heaven’ charted. And in the post-2008 decade of recession, instability, and income inequality, blockbuster acts spent a lot of time telling us the incredible time they were having. The real story of the past decade has been harder to hear.”
Dalouge Smith On How You Bring Back Music Education To Schools
The outgoing president of the San Diego Youth Symphony explains how he helped rebuild music ed in San Diego area schools: “We started with violins and cellos and violas and double bass. Actually we put third graders on double bass. We started that because we had asked the leaders in the community and the principals of the schools what instruments would be the right instruments to start with and the response we got was We have a tradition of string instruments in our community. We believe that there would be a strong response to string instruments. So when we first started this was 2010 we saw that kids were simply behaving better in their classes and as a result there was less disruption in the class. And that meant everybody was learning better in the class.”
How Does The Job Of Artistic Director For A Theatre Need To Change For Today’s World?
At its annual conference last month, Theatre Communications Group asked four leading figures – Howard Shalwitz, artistic director of Woolly Mammoth in D.C.; Lisa Portes, head of directing at DePaul University’s Theatre School; Jack Reuler, artistic director of Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis; and Mica Cole, repertory producer for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – to answer that question. Here are their responses.
Educator Warns: Big Orchestral Instruments Are In Danger Of Extinction
“Oboes and bassoons are generally not known at all in schools. They might have picture on the wall but they haven’t seen them in the flesh. This has been reflected in the massive falling off of the number of children learning them. The sheer physical size of the instruments, the complications of the reeds, and the expense of lessons has led to these instruments being sidelined.”
Dance Craze: People Are Dancing Alongside Moving Cars. Surprise! They’re Getting Hurt
A recent internet trend is inspiring drivers all over the world to jump out of moving vehicles and dance in the street while a friend in the passenger seat films, and now transpiration officials and law enforcement are starting to speak out against the dangerous fad.
YBAs of the 19th Century
Remember the Young British Artists of the ’80s and ’90s – Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and so on? Their 19th-century counterparts were the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, led by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. For the first time, a major museum show has matched the Pre-Raphaelites’ work with that of the Old Masters who inspired them.
An Actress Accuses French Director Luc Besson Of Rape, But France Hasn’t Quite Joined The Me Too Movement
France, you have a problem. “Eeveral forces have kept #MeToo and its French counterpart, #BalanceTonPorc, or ‘Expose Your Pig,’ from having the same impact in France that it has had in the United States. In France, if an accused man is not convicted of a crime, it is relatively easy for him to sue his accuser for defamation. … Other reasons are cultural.”
Classical Music’s #MeToo Stories Are Just A First Step
Last week’s Washington Post stories about sexual harassment in the classical music world are an important first step. But where’s the institutional accountability?
The Actor Whose Theater Is The Underground Drug Trade, And Whose Director Is The DEA
“Fluent in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Greek, [Spyros] Enotiades specializes in playing the role of cartel boss, middleman, or money manager, making phone calls and holding face-to-face meetings with the DEA.’s targets. During the past thirty years, he has become one of the agency’s longest-serving and most successful confidential sources, participating in dozens of investigations targeting narcotics and weapons traffickers in the United States, Europe, South America, and Africa. ‘His ability to migrate between different types of people and cultures is incredible,’ [one for DEA agent who worked with him] said.”