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Thursday, May 23, 2013
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Lydia Davis Wins Man Booker International Prize For Her (Very) Short Stories "Davis - who has only written one novel - beat out a shortlist of 10 contenders for the 60,000-pound ($90,800) prize that included two authors banned in their home countries, the youngest ever nominee and one shortlisted for the second time." The American author won "for a body of work that includes some of the briefest tales ever published."
Reuters 05/22/13
dance
Brazilian Dance Sweeps The Internet "The Passinho dance style adapts elements of North American breakdancing and R&B with indigenous styles like Capoeria, Samba no Pé ("Foot Samba") and Forró. The result is a sleek dance style that has quickly spread through the urban slums where it originated and, with the help of social media, is cracking into the mainstream, both in Brazil and abroad."
CBC 05/22/13
media
Reality TV Is The New Family TV They make performance more exciting, or they game-ify aspects of adult life, like cooking or traveling or making money. And though "appropriate" is a relative term, they tend to do it in relatively clean terms.
Time 05/23/13
ideas
Research Suggests Compassion Can Be Taught The brain scans revealed "a pattern of neural changes" in those who had received compassion training, including "neural systems implicated in understanding the suffering of other people, executive and emotional control, and reward processing."
Pacific Standard 05/22/13
ideas
Debating How The Internet Is Changing Our Culture "The internet ideology is difficult to dislodge because it is not simply an immaterial ideal; it is materially embedded in a global infrastructure made up of machines, software, private businesses and public institutions. This infrastructure influences how we think and behave, and once locked in may be difficult to change."
Times Literary Supplement 05/22/13
ideas
publishing
A Plan To Sell Fan Fiction "On Wednesday, Amazon announced a new scheme in which writers of fan fiction can self-publish and sell that writing with the sanction of the original copyright holder."
Los Angeles Times 05/23/13
issues
Why Teens Are Turning Off Facebook "The report cites teens' dislike for over-sharing and stressful "drama" on the social network. Teens also don't like the fact that more and more adults are joining Facebook, although Pew found that 7 in 10 teens are Facebook friends with their parents."
Mashable 05/22/13
issues
An E-Book Education Revolution In Poorest Countries "Is there another way to provide affordable education to poor people on a giant scale Bridge is betting that there is -- in fact, its business and academic models are based on scale."
The New york Times 05/23/13
visual
Legendary Picasso Catalogue Returns To Print "Comprising 33 volumes and more than 16,000 images,"
Pablo Picasso - known in the art world as "the Zervos" - "was the result of an intense four-decade collaboration between the artist and [scholar/dealer Christian] Zervos."
The New York Times 05/23/13
people
Composer Henri Dutilleux, 97 "Known for his symphonies, concertos and other orchestral pieces, he was prized for his subtle blends of ear-catching colors and formal rigor. Though steeped in the French modernist tradition that spans Debussy through Messiaen and Boulez, Dutilleux was also notably independent minded, unwilling to chase the latest fashions."
WQXR (New York) 05/22/13
publishing
Lydia Davis Wins Man Booker International Prize For Her (Very) Short Stories "Davis - who has only written one novel - beat out a shortlist of 10 contenders for the 60,000-pound ($90,800) prize that included two authors banned in their home countries, the youngest ever nominee and one shortlisted for the second time." The American author won "for a body of work that includes some of the briefest tales ever published."
Reuters 05/22/13
publishing
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013 To Bakker's The Detour "Dutch writer Gerbrand Bakker has won this year's £10,000 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize with his novel
The Detour ... It is the author's second major literary prize win; his previous novel,
The Twin, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2010."
The Bookseller (UK) 05/21/13
theatre
Scotland's Oldest Theatre is Saved "The Theatre Royal in Dumfries, which has been in operation for more than 200 years, has been given £455,000 by Dumfries and Galloway Council. The grant ... will allow the theatre to be refurbished and additional facilities installed."
The Guardian (UK) 05/22/13
theatre
Casting Directors: The Unknown, The Powerful "They are rarely interviewed. Few people outside theatre, film and TV know who they are. Yet casting directors rank among the most influential operators in show business. ... So who are they, and what do they do?"
The Guardian (UK) 05/21/13
dance
ideas
Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories "'The best predictor of belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in other conspiracy theories,' says [researcher] Viren Swami ... Psychologists say that's because a conspiracy theory isn't so much a response to a single event as it is an expression of an overarching worldview."
The New York Times Magazine 05/26/13
music
issues
The World's Largest Youth Arts Festival Is Beginning - But Did Anyone Tell The Target Audience? The Come Out Festival, which opens this week, has been taking place in Adelaide, Australia for four decades. But when Shona Benson asked around the city, she got fond-but-vague memories from adults and blank stares from teenagers (who showed interest once she filled them in, and obvious tie-ins in the national media have been going unmade. What gives?
Limelight (Australia) 05/22/13
ideas
What College Is Really For: Pleasure "Overall, college education seems a matter of mastering a complex body of knowledge for a very short time only to rather soon forget everything except a few disjointed elements." So what's the point of higher education? Pleasure, says Gary Gutting. (Yes, that's the word he uses.)
The New York Times 05/22/13
media
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Is 'Exactly The Kind Of Cultural Product America Should Be Exporting' "The Thompson/Shannons are the anti-Kardashians - an unprivileged and guileless family that gets along. ... They're not in denial of their problems, but they're not defined by them, either. ... Their antics offer a counterweight to the jealousy, striving, and backstabbing of the
Housewives. And they defy the tropes assigned to their many female reality-show peers: the slut, the fame-seeker, the betrayer."
The Atlantic 05/22/13 (includes video)
music
When Wagner's Music Was Hazardous To Your Health "His music was seen not just as a symptom of the physical and sexual pathologies associated with a nervous modernity - everything from neurasthenia [nervous exhaustion] and degeneration to perversion and fatigue - but also as the direct cause of these."
The Guardian (UK) 05/22/13
people
On Richard Wagner's 200th Birthday, His Great-Grandson Slams Him Again "The 66-year-old musicologist, writer and lecturer [Gottfried Wagner] sets himself apart from the other members of the sprawling Wagner clan by refusing, as he sees it, to sweep under the carpet the darker side of one of history's most controversial composers.
Expatica (AFP) 05/19/13
people
Wagner's Hitler Correspondence Will Not Be Published, Says Great-Granddaughter Katharina Wagner: "It's very difficult to make all the widely dispersed documents available to the public, because they are owned in part by all four branches [of the family] ... If even just one says 'No', then I can't do anything about it, no matter how outrageous I might find it."
Agence France-Presse 05/19/13
people
Researchers: Have Humans Become Dumber Since Victorian Era? "Our technology may be getting smarter, but a provocative new study suggests human intelligence is on the decline. In fact, it indicates that Westerners have lost 14 I.Q. points on average since the Victorian Era."
Huffington Post 05/22/13
visual
China's Museum Boom Doesn't Necessarily Include Museum Visitors "In recent years, about 100 museums have opened annually here, peaking at nearly 400 in 2011, according to the Chinese Society of Museums. The frenzied construction of cultural infrastructure follows earlier building binges involving roads and bridges. But it's harder to manage a museum than a highway. For one thing, you need to fill museums with worthwhile exhibits and visitors."
NPR 05/22/13
media
publishing
A Booker Prize Judge's Burden: A Book A Day (Or More) "We had 50 books to read in the first three months, and a book every other day is fine. Then publishers submitted more. A lot more. My reading speed had to double overnight: between March and July, I will have read the final 100 books in 100 days. You get ahead sometimes (a couple of short books in a row), and then a 900-page monster lurks behind them on the shelf, gobbling up the spare day and spitting out its bones. It's like running on sand, but less healthy."
The Independent (UK) 05/22/13
media
Video On Demand Is Finally Catching On Some shows, like Fox's "The Following" and ABC's "Scandal," now gain hundreds of thousands of viewers every week because of VOD, part of a decades-long shift from television on a linear schedule to television on viewers' own terms.
The New York Times 05/20/13
theatre
issues
Teens And The Privacy Paradox (It's Complicated) "So what explains the privacy paradox? Teens care about privacy in a social context, not a big data context. That teens are fleeing Facebook is illustrative of the phenomenon."
Pacific Standard 05/21/13
ideas
visual
The Whitney's New Logo (Having It All Ways?) From the museum's description of the logo: "It shows the Whitney as an institute that is breathing (in and out), an institute that is open and closed at the same time. An institute that goes back and forth between the past and the future, moving from one opposite to the other (history and present, the 'Old World' and the 'New World', between the industrial and the sublime, etc.), while still moving forward."
Hyperallergic 05/21/13
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