Genuine quotas were explicitly tried in Britain in the 1980s, and they failed. Well, they were sort of tried – Christy Romer argues that the attempt wasn’t serious, and that now’s the time to try to do it properly.
The Ghostwriter’s Dark Arts
“She went from sort of daffy and inattentive to intimately involved with her client’s world. Her head cocked, her timbre lowered, and she understood everything. A client could have sat down and told her they were going to murder their parents and she would have said, “Well, they have been very mean to you.” With her, the clients felt heard. They’d open up their lives, reveal deeply buried trauma. She was a truly fantastic interviewer.”
A Lot Of Knowledge Has Been Hiding In Plain Sight. Intelligent Search Engines Are Changing That
“With the ubiquity of the internet and the rise of machine learning, a new kind of solution is beginning to take shape. The infrastructure of the web, built to link one resource to the next, was the beginning. The next wave of information systems promises to more deeply establish links between people, ideas, and artifacts that have, so far, remained out of reach—by drawing connections between information and objects that have come unmoored from context and history.”
Nine Nations And Their Favorite Movies (And The Reasons Why)
These films rarely top critics’ lists, but they’ve definitely captured their people’s imaginations. Britain’s The Great Escape, Russia’s Irony of Fate, India’s Sholay – plus titles for France, Germany, Mexico, Japan, Nigeria, and, of course, the U.S. (for which the choice may be arguable but is certainly credible, especially when you adjust its box-office figures for inflation).
Meet Afghanistan’s First Female Rapper
“Life has not been easy for Paradise Sorouri. In the past seven years, the 27-year-old has been forced to flee her country twice, received more death threats than she can count, and was brutally beaten by 10 men on the street and left to die. Her crime? She covers her head with a baseball cap instead of a hijab, raises her voice for women’s rights, and is Afghanistan’s first female rapper.”
Does Railing Against Racism Make Racists More Racist?
“The idea is that the desire to counter racism might itself end up fomenting prejudice. Based on what we know about the human mind and the psychology of bias, should this ‘backlash’ explanation of the Trump Effect” – the marked rise in incidents of harassment and even assault since the election – “carry any weight?” Daniel Engber looks at the research.
What’s Behind The Staff Rebellion At Berlin’s Volksbühne Theater? The Prop Shop
“Since the Belgian ex-director of London’s Tate Modern, Chris Dercon, was announced as the successor of the Volksbühne’s veteran director Frank Castorf in spring 2015, staff have been in open revolt.” Part of the reason seems to be concern for the theater’s prop and scenery shop, which does some genuinely extraordinary work. But that concern may be based on a simple miscommunication.
Jazz Sucks! This Meme Is Picking Up Speed
“These may seem like isolated incidents, but they are not the only examples in an alarming pattern of offhand derision and dismissal of jazz in popular culture. Why are these media denizens suddenly picking on jazz? What does it mean?”
Instagram Has Fast Become Musicians’ Social Media Platform Of Choice
“Instagram has taken a series of small steps to turn its once photo-driven service into a creative haven where artists tease new music, reveal album artwork, announce tour dates, and offer intimate behind-the-scenes glimpses.”
Andrew Lloyd Webber Report Reports Diversity Crisis In Theatre
The report covers theatre across the board. It says “musical theatre has challenged the monoculture”, with successful productions such as Motown the Musical, “but the success of these shows has bred another problem. The failure of drama schools to take in enough BAME talent has led to a shortage of actors suitable for the roles and, as a result, touring productions have been cancelled”.
What Art Will Make A Comeback In The 21st Century?
Painting, of course. Jonathan Jones says: “Maybe, after years of being told by po-faced curators that we ‘should’ revere video art and various live interactive post-artistic phenomena, we just wanna have fun.”
What Went Wrong With The Met Opera’s Commissioning Program?
If you start handing out $50,000 commissions to major artists, there’s not a lot of excuse for coming up almost completely empty-handed at the end of a decade. Muhly’s “Two Boys,” which began under the program’s auspices, made it to the Met’s main stage; everything else was either rejected (like Rufus Wainwright’s “Prima Donna”), fell through, or simply withered on the vine, and no new blood has been added to the pipeline for years.
Theatre Artists Talk About What Comes Next For Theatre In The Trump Era
“We tell stories. As directors, we stand beside speakers with narratives other than our own and ask them to tell us what they see so we can build a telling of that narrative with sufficient doors and windows for an audience of wild multiplicity to all walk inside a shared moment of human condition. Samuel Johnson said that the human mind, once expanded by a new idea, does not retract to its original size. Nor, I think, does the heart. And all I know to do right now is the work of expanding the heart.”
The Tender Side Of Edward Albee (Wait, What? Edward Albee??)
“Here, four people who crossed paths with this famously irascible writer [who died in September] recall him as a friend, a mentor and an inspiration.”
The Elusive Martha Argerich Sits Down To Talk With Anne Midgette
“Argerich’s is a story about someone with superhuman gifts trying to find a way to live a normal life. Many musicians live a life of monkish order, focusing on the discipline of music. Argerich, by contrast, has seemed to go out of her way to be disorganized. She’s so given to canceling performances, sometimes at the last minute, that she long ago stopped signing contracts: Presenters who want her have to take the risk. And her personal life has been turbulent. The three daughters by three men are one illustration of a life filled with relationships; over and over, she has established veritable communes of young musicians and non-musicians who have wandered into her large, chaotic houses.”
The Problem With Concert Music Reaching For Political And Social Relevance
“What often seems to go unasked is: ‘Who is it for?’ … It’s unlikely that victims of gun violence will draw solace from [a percussion concert], or that grass-roots members of the National Rifle Association will come out of it reconciled with the idea of tighter controls. … [And] how many police commissioners send their law enforcement officials to the opera house for sensitivity training?”
New York Film Critics Circle Continues The Love For ‘Moonlight’ And ‘Manchester By The Sea’ – Except For Best Picture
“[They] gave three apiece to each movie, … But lest we forget that there is a beloved modern-day musical starring charming actors Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling also campaigning vigorously for critical attention, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land snuck in at the tail end of voting to win Best Picture.”
And Another Daily Newspaper Cuts Its Last Full-time Arts Writer
This time the Austin Statesman. “In an email exchange this week, Statesman Editor Debbie Hiott confirmed that, beginning in 2017, the local daily will no longer ‘have a dedicated reporter covering only the visual and performing arts.’ She attributed the move to a familiar culprit: the long, steady drop-off of advertising income that’s had mainstream newspapers across the country cutting back staff and coverage until they’re practically on life support.”
Is Jake Heggie About To Give Opera Houses Their Equivalent Of ‘Nutcracker’?
He and librettist Gene Scheer have adapted one of the most famous, and most daunting, of classic Christmas stories: Frank Capra’s film It’s a Wonderful Life. (Talk about daunting: the lead tenor has to risk comparison to Jimmy Stewart.) (includes audio)
Violinist Convicted, Jailed In $440,000 Craigslist Cancer Scam
British freelance violinist Bethan Doci (aka Bethan Morgan) conned several men out of more than £350,000 total by posting online classified ads claiming she needed money for cancer treatment. (Would patients even need to do that in the land of the NHS?)
Harper Lee’s Lawyer Has Plan To Turn Her Hometown Into ‘Mockingbirdland’
Tonja Carter – who found Lee’s earliest draft of To Kill a Mockingbird and turned it into a bestselling but controversial “sequel,” sued the local museum for selling things like a Mockingbird cookbook and got its director fired, and muscled the local community out of the annual Mockingbird play – is creating a “Harper Lee Trail” to attract tourists to Monroeville, Alabama. (No word if she’s planning to charge admission.)
He Couldn’t Believe He Ate The Whooooole Thing: Comedian Milt Moss Dead At 93
The man in that immortal Alka-Seltzer commercial was, in fact, a stand-up comic and MC who specialized in one-liners and Candid Camera-style fool-the-audience gags.
How Parchment Supplanted Papyrus (It Was An Ugly Business)
“[It] papyrus was rough, brittle, and prone to fraying. Its rise at papyrus’s expense, however, had little to do with the ergonomics of its use or the economics of its manufacture and everything to do with ambitious pharaohs who ignored the cardinal rule of military leadership: never get involved in a land war in Asia.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 12.01.16
Other Matters: Journalism, Jefferson And Rivera
Charges about biased reporting are as old as journalism itself. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-12-01
Eduardo Mendoza Wins The 2016 Cervantes Prize (Spanish Literature’s Highest Award)
Education and Culture Minister Inigo Mendez de Vigo announced the prize Wednesday, saying that beginning with Mendoza’s 1975 novel, “La verdad sobre el caso Savolta” (The Truth about the Savolta Case), the author had reinvented Spanish fiction. He said Mendoza’s books are “full of subtlety and irony.”