That’s what the science appears to say (so far).
Archives for April 2015
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.29.15
Approaching Justice & Democracy (in Beauty Class)
AJBlog: Jumper Published 2015-04-29
Can’t Buy Me Love
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-04-29
GPS Lady
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2015-04-29
Tralalalala
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2015-04-29
The Frank Strazzeri Film
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-04-28
Handel for hipsters: Revolution or red herring?
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2015-04-27
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Trumpeter Rolf Smedvig, 62
“Perhaps best known as one of the founding members of the widely acclaimed Empire Brass Quintet, Smedvig enjoyed a busy career as a soloist with major orchestras, including those in Boston, Chicago and Cincinnati. In 1973, the 19-year-old Smedvig was hired as assistant principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony by music director Seiji Ozawa. Smedvig, then the youngest member of the orchestra, moved up to principal trumpet in 1979.”
Little Hope Of Saving Nepal’s Treasures
“In many places, the detritus of centuries-old temples and palaces has been left unguarded, diminishing chances to eventually rebuild one of the world’s largest clusters of cultural heritage sites.”
Does Piano Music Help Patients In Medical Waiting Rooms?
“In the journal Musicae Scientiae, Michael Silverman and Jon Hallberg of the University of Minnesota describe a small program they created and implemented in which music students—specifically, classical pianists and guitarists—spent time performing in a primary care clinic waiting area. Subsequent interviews with staff members of the clinic found their reaction was overwhelmingly positive.”
Even The Best Reporters Are Leaving Journalism. But There Are PR Jobs Everywhere
“Of the four reporters who won the public service Pulitzer for the Oregonian in 2001, two have left journalism – one for a government communications job, one to teach journalism to college students. It’s hard to count how many of the other reporters who were doing high-value work back then at the paper – which gave me my first job out of college, in 2000 – have also left the business.”
Seattle PBS Affiliate KCTS Lays Off Most Of Its Production Staff
“The Seattle public TV station KCTS-9 has laid off most of its production staff, including employees who have spent 30-plus years with the station, as part of a plan to shove locally produced series off the television screen and onto digital media.”
Why Musicians Will Play For Free
“Venue owners ask musicians to play for free. And many performers, desperate for an opportunity to showcase their skills, agree to do just that. I don’t blame the musicians. In most instances, they struggle to survive and have to grasp at any opportunity, however meager. But the owners are a different matter. Is it ethical for them to ask a musician to play for free? Is it even legal?”
In Defense Of Collecting Physical Books
“What does it mean when what you own is essential to who you are? In our everyday grasp of owning things, we tag it materialism, consumerism, consumption. But I trust you’ll agree that the possession of books is not identical to the possession of shoes: Someone with a thousand books is someone you want to talk to; someone with a thousand shoes is someone you suspect of belonging to the Kardashian clan.”
And Here’s A College-Level Course In Wasting Time On The Internet (It’s An Art, You Know)
“There’s something wonderful about this dogged insistence on having nothing whatsoever to show for your time in class, especially given the cultural rage for productivity. And the seminar courts a drifting boredom that is seductive in its challenge to the cult of mindfulness.”
‘The Wire,’ The Burning Of Baltimore And The Limits Of Art
“The conflagration in Baltimore is a reminder that art’s power can work both in service of change and against it. Watching a fictional story is not precisely the same thing as bearing witness. And when consuming that story becomes a substitute for action or an argument that action is futile, fiction can paralyze us just as surely as it can inspire us.”
A List Of The World’s Top Art Collectors
“Our roster of collectors features those who have been most active within the past 12 months and have shown a remarkable commitment to collecting.”
Five Myths About Copyright
“Anti-copyright crusaders love to shout about remix culture and how copyright aims to stop it. Real artists understand. Remix culture was not invented by the Internet.”
The Bible Has Gone From (Super) Hot To Not In The Western Art World
“There seems to be no end to the creativity the Bible engenders – which makes it a crying shame the Museum of Biblical Art has to close, and a tragedy if we cannot acknowledge one of the great sources of modern culture.”
You Won’t Learn Everything You Need To Know About Baltimore From ‘The Wire,’ But It’s A Start
Scott Timberg: “[David] Simon’s show, and his point of view, clarifies the smoky, intensely sad scene better than anything else I know.”
MoMA Director Glenn Lowry Responds To Criticism Of Museum’s Pop-Culture Focus
“I was actually happy that nobody challenged us on doing Björk – that artists like her, who cross disciplines, have a place in a museum like ours … We just didn’t do the show we should have done. Fair enough. We just need to find a way to do those shows better.”
The End Times Are At Hand For New York’s Museum Of Biblical Art
“The small, secular museum, which is dedicated to exploring the Bible’s influence on Western art, is a casualty of Manhattan’s astronomical rents. For the past decade, the museum had been renting space inside the American Bible Society (ABS) building near Lincoln Center for $1 a year. In February, ARS announced it had sold the building and planned to move to Philadelphia.”
The Perils Of Writing About Your Own Family
George Hodgman, author of Bettyville: “You kind of have to face the fact if you write a memoir that you are a somewhat aggressive person, that you are appropriating lives, in a way, that aren’t yours. And you put yourself out there and you try to be really generous, and you do what you can to get permission, but a lot of times the permission is meaningless because they have no idea to the extent that you’re going to examine, or what you’re going to say. … So memoir is a total minefield, as you know. It’s best if you write the book and leave the country.”
How Eduardo Galeano Changed Writing (It Wasn’t With His Leftism)
The great Uruguayan author is best known for his 1971 anti-capitalist manifesto Open Veins of Latin America – a work he repudiated last year. (He calls the prose unreadable.) But his later “technique is difficult to precisely describe, but it is easy enough to read. The word most often applied is ‘fragmentary,’ though the fragments are carefully arranged into unified wholes.”
A Little Dose Of Nastiness Can Be A Creative Thing (Wait, What?)
“A spate of research published over the past couple of years reveals something surprising and new: measured amounts of dark-side traits, expressed at lower levels – too little to be considered a diagnosable personality disorder – open the doors of perception, helping us see the world through an edgier, more on-the-bias creative lens.”
How I Survived A Public Shaming Over A Silly Mistake
“When a Web site broke the news on April 3 that, instead of posting an Internet link to an article about writing legal briefs, I had inadvertently sent my law school students a link to a porn site, I thought I could never recover. (And if you’re hoping to find out here how that happened, among the many possibilities that have been raised by gleeful commentators, I’m sorry to tell you you’re going to be disappointed.)”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.28.15
Come Spring!
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-04-28
And the Buffalo Roam
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2015-04-28
Burroughs Makes Inroads, But What About Algren?
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2015-04-28
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Chandos Founder Brian Couzens Changed Classical Music Recording In Britain
“He steered the label through some of the recording industry’s most turbulent times, in the process championing neglected British composers, and regularly winning international awards for audio quality as well as musical excellence.”
In A Decade, The Percentage Of Female Playwrights In Britain Has Changed By … One Percent
“What the latest research demonstrates is how little progress has been made in the last 10 years on gender and play production. A decade ago, 30% of new plays produced in UK theatres were written by women. In 2013, it was 31%.”
The Oscar-Winning Cinematographer For Lord Of The Rings Dies At 59
“Words cannot express the absolute feeling of loss, particularly for his immediate family. Andrew gave us many personal cinema moments, moments that will live with us forever, and yet he has been taken from us way too early.”