Teens watch more TV than we – or they – may think.
Archives for December 5, 2013
How Cats Infect Our Brains (And Maybe Make Them Better)
Some of the side effects may be pretty great, but (as they said in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), “it is technically brain damage.”
What’ll Be The Real Problem For Amazon’s Delivery Drones? Angry Birds
And these predators are not drones.
How The Letter “E” Died (Yeah, Really)
“Long considered one of the most influential letters in the Roman alphabet, at the turn of the century E had originally been heralded as the signal letter in the digital world. But in recent years, the letter had suffered a series of debilitating setbacks that closely correlated with the rise of online applications. It died May 20, 2013.”
Is This The Golden Age Of Shakespeare?
“It is a heck of a lot of activity for a man who has been dead since 1616 and was once consigned to dusty textbooks – and it is a trend that I am not sure anyone would have predicted even in the Nineties when Shakespeare was performed regularly and well, but without generating the same enthusiasm.”
How Did The UK Become Such A Major Movie Production Center?
“Britain already had a world-class franchise, in the shape of the James Bond films – but they tend to only come along every three or four few years, whereas there were eight Potter movies in the space of a decade – which meant virtually continuous employment for literally thousands of film workers in this country.”
This Is How Music Works On Our Brains
“Something else that’s really interesting about how our emotions are affected by music is that there are two kind of emotions related to music: perceived emotions and felt emotions.”
Report: Here’s How Much Of The Economy America’s Creative Industries Generate
“Creative industries led by Hollywood account for about $504 billion, or at least 3.2 percent of U.S. goods and services, the government said in its first official measure of how the arts and culture affect the economy.”
Minnesota Orchestra Claims It’s Living Up To Conditions Of Its Hall Lease
“Several independent sources have called on the city to find the association in breach and to retake control of the hall, which Minneapolis owns by virtue of sponsoring a $14 million state bonding request for a recently completed renovation.”
UK Fringe Theatres Say Union Is Trying To Scare Them
Fringe theatre practitioners have claimed Equity is scaremongering about the potential legal consequences of shows operating on a profit-share basis.
Director For The 2015 Venice Biennale Named
In a statement, the biennial’s president, Paolo Baratta, referred to Okwui Enwezor’s knowledge of the “complex phenomenon of globalisation”. The curator of Documenta 11 in Kassel, Enwezor has organised biennials from Seville to South Korea and the major travelling survey of post-war African art “The Short Century” (2001-02).
Does Anyone Care About America’s Historic Houses?
“The investment in physical infrastructure may not correlate with income potential. Just because they are historic structures that should be saved doesn’t mean they should all be historic house museums.”
Is It Or Isn’t It A Leonardo?
“The drawing of Isabella in the Louvre, on which the painting is clearly based, was done some time between late 1499 and March of 1500, when Leonardo was a guest at her court in Mantua. According to the newspaper, carbon dating of the painting conducted at the University of Arizona confirms that it was executed sometime between 1460 and 1650, placing it in a corresponding timeframe.”
Baltimore Museum: Judge – That Renoir Is Ours!
“In effect, the motion asks federal Judge Leonie M. Brinkema to determine that the 1879 oil painting “Paysage Bords de Seine” belongs to the Baltimore museum and not to the 51-year-old Virginia woman who says she bought it at a flea market in 2009 for $7 as part of a box of odds and ends.”
Detroit Leaders Scramble To Save Art Before Politicians Plunder It
“Some of the city’s most powerful leaders are working furiously to fashion a grand bargain in which nonprofit foundations would put up $500 million to spin off the Detroit Institute of Arts from the city, and that money would be used to reduce pension cuts and help rebuild city services.”
Amazon Says That A Quarter Of Its Top 100 Books Are From Indie Publishers
“As many as a quarter of the top 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com are from indie publishers, according to data revealed at a trade presentation by the retailer.”
“Alarming” Study Shows Just How Few Silent Films Have Survived
“A new study unveiled by The Library of Congress notes that a scant 14 percent of the feature films produced and distributed in the U.S. from 1912-29 exist in their original 35mm format.”
Norman Rockwell’s Family Furious Over Deborah Solomon’s Biography
The man depicted in Solomon’s new book “lived a far darker life” than the scenes he painted, “fraught with anxiety, depression, and loneliness. He was a twice-divorced, thrice-married repressed homosexual who gravitated toward men and boys.” It’s that last bit that has the Rockwells so upset.
Egyptian Museum’s Antiquities And Staff Alike Suffer From Country’s Instability
“The century-old home of Egypt’s mummies and King Tutankhamun’s treasures is trying to make the best out of the worst times of political turmoil. But the Egyptian Museum is taking a hammering on multiple levels, from riots on its doorstep to funding so meager it can’t keep up paper clip supplies for its staff.”
St. Petersburg’s First International Winter Theatre Festival Faces Russia’s Chaotic Politics
“Strange days when a production of Death in Venice provokes an uproar, then ends in a theatre being defaced.”
The Rain In Spain Stays Mainly En Anglais: Paris My Fair Lady Is A Hit, Even In English
Director Jean-Luc Choplin: “How do you translate ‘the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain’? I mean, you can come up with something in French but it doesn’t have the same clarity or sonority. … And it’s such an important part of the play.”
Roy Orbison’s Final Interview, For The 25th Anniversary Of His Death
“You set out to whip the world. And then when you get beat up a little bit … In my case, you say, ‘Father, I’m gonna let you have it. I’ve done what I can do.’ You turn your will over to God.”
Sam Shepard On Why He Writes
“I couldn’t do anything else but drive a tractor. I felt like this is the only thing I had. … I don’t do it to get a message across. I’m writing just because there are certain kinds of raw material. The material may be very strange, but it takes shape in the course of writing. Whether that has a message or not is not my concern.”
Silicon Valley’s “Permissionless Innovation” Is Oppressive, Hypocritical, And Ultimately Dangerous
“The bigger fight here is that if they can do this with our songs, with our lyrics, then they can do it with your Instagram photos, they can do it with your Facebook profile, they can do it with anything you put on your Web page without your permission. That’s what permissionless innovation is.”
$80M MPAA Piracy Settlement Shuts Down File-Sharing Service
“Hotfile’s file-sharing service went offline just hours after the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered the website to shut down unless it implemented copyright-filtering technologies to prevent piracy. The court also awarded MPAA $80 million in damages.”
Little Photo Sharing Site Begins Morphing Into Mega-Social Network
“Imgur is shifting: from image host to user community to public destination. In that sense, it’s following the opposite trajectory of a Facebook or a Twitter or a similar sites – networks that are trying to become platforms. Imgur is a platform that is trying to become a social network.” (It’s pronounced “imager”, by the way.)
The Deathwatch App
“At the time of this writing, there are sixteen thousand two hundred and seventy-seven days remaining in my life. I know this because an app I have installed on my phone tells me so. … And this is essentially the point of the app. It’s supposed to make you think like this – to terrify you into productivity, turning mortal dread into a procrastination preventative.”
Is Your Native Language Your Financial Destiny?
“Differences in the way various languages talk about the present and future [i.e., verb tense] could help explain why Germans urge free-spending Greeks to adopt their fiscal discipline, and why Americans are baffled by China’s low consumption and high savings rates, according to research published [last spring].”
Alvin Ailey Co. And Wayne McGregor Stretch Each Other
Artistic director Robert Battle, looking to expand the repertoire and stylistic range of a troupe that had become a bit predictable, engaged McGregor to stage his stark and hyperkinetic Chroma on the Ailey dancers. They’re the first non-classical group to perform the work – and (to McGregor’s happiness) the first that’s dark-skinned.
When A Choreographer Joins The Circus (Yes, Ringling Bros.)
“He’s choreographed such musical hits as Rock of Ages, Dreamgirls, … and Blades of Glory. Now Kevin Wilson is taking on a new venture: choreographing what has been called ‘The Greatest Show on Earth.’ Wondering how this creative director pulls together a cast and crew that includes everything from clowns to a horse named ‘Comanche?’ We wondered, too.”