“When the researchers totaled up the results, there was no evidence the players could reliably pick old from new. And when players were asked to pick their favorite instrument, the winner was a modern, freshly made violin.”
In Praise Of The Power Of Slang
“For centuries, English’s defenders have decried the language’s decline. Looking back, it is hard to understand why they created a fuss about words that are now part of polite speech.”
How Freud Infiltrated Everyday English
It goes far beyond Oedipus complex, Freudian slip, and id – to father surrogate, sublimation, libido, character trait, and beyond. (We’ll leave aside parapraxis. And don’t even start about you-know-what envy.)
Could Software Run The Captioning Programs In Theatres?
“We need to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t. We can create beautiful captions that happen exactly on time, but if you’re spending 90% of the time looking at a tablet and not at the show it’s pointless.”
Race (And Racism, And Power) Causes Controversy, And An Art Collective Withdrawal, At The Whitney Biennial
White artist Joe Scanlon “has for years showcased the life and art of ‘Donelle Woolford,’ a black female Yale graduate and artist, even hiring black female collaborators to portray her.” Artists’ collective YAMS says that’s not OK, and pulls its own work in response.
Get Those Women Artists Out Of The Basement
“The Advancing Women Artists Foundation estimates that 1,500 works by women are currently stored in Florence’s various deposits, most of which have not been on public view for centuries.”
At These Theatre Performances, You’re Supposed To Fall Asleep
“Eager audiences expect to dance, dine, drink and exchange secrets and titillation with performers, sometimes for hours at a time. Now a new breed of experience seeks to stretch that artistic dynamic further, drawing spectators not just for lively participation but also to share their REM cycles and reveries.”
Take Your Google Glass To This Opera
“How to give mobile audiences the supertitle translations to which they have become accustomed?” Answer: Wearable tech – obviously.
So, Does Godot Ever Show? And How Many Kids Do Romeo And Juliet Have?
“There had been no curtain call but the thing that really fascinated me: if they thought it might be over, they can’t have known what happens at the end of the play. Did they think Romeo and Juliet had a happy ending?”
Who Didn’t Make Jonathan Safran Foer’s List Of Writers For Chipotle’s Cups And Bags?
“Not Pulitzer Prize-winning Junot Diaz, who also won a James Beard award for one of the finest pieces of food writing I’ve ever read. Not the doña of Chicano literature, Sandra Cisneros. Not best-selling author Luis Alberto Urrea. Not Tex-Mex loco Dagoberto Gilb. Not any other number of Latino authors who could easily contribute a story or two that would be appicable a Mexican-food chain. Judd Apatow made the list–but not one Latino.”
Elaine Sturtevant, Mother Of The Appropriation Movement, Dead At 89
“A Sturtevant work is as instantly and uncannily recognizable as a Warhol silk-screen, say, or a Johns flag. But, at the same time, each in its own way is a deliberately inexact likeness of its more famous progenitor.”
Kenneth Clark: Art-World Snob, Savior Of Art, Or Both?
“Above all, perhaps, Clark was a brilliant wordsmith, the most seductive writer on art since Ruskin and Pater, whom he greatly admired. Today, when most art historians write as joylessly as lawyers and accountants, such verve is sorely needed.”
When Your Friends Die All Around You, How Do You Keep Writing?
“‘I am trying to bring together all of the elements of the Iraqi experience,’ Mr. Saadawi said. ‘There are many messages. One of them is that with this war and violence, no one is innocent.'”
When The Composer Is Religious But The Audience Is (Mostly) Secular
“Historical distance has tempered the explicit Lutheran message of Bach’s cantatas or the Roman Catholicism of Palestrina’s Masses. Disregarding the scriptural details of Mr. Pärt’s music, though, might mean ignoring an aspect integral to a living composer, even if he is vague about it.”
The Royal Phil May Drop Dorchester Hotel Over Anti-Gay Ownership
“This comes after the Sultan of Brunei, who owns the Dorchester Collection of luxury hotels, unveiled a strict sharia (Islamic law) penal code last month. This will include death by stoning for offences such as homosexuality and adultery from next year, with other offences punished by flogging and severing limbs.”
Life In The Largest Artist Colony In The U.S. (And Maybe The World)
“There are very few rules for those hoping to nab a coveted loft space at The Brewery. Namely, no dogs or musical instruments.”
Can Action Movies Kill You?
Watch out: While test subjects watched an action film clip, “blood pressure increased, the pace of breathing became faster and the heart’s natural rhythm began to shift.”
Why “Franchise” Fiction Gets Dissed By The Literary World
“The parochial world of literary fiction tends to deal with mass-media franchises in the same way it deals with genre fiction, comics and the other narrative arts that eclipse it by magnitudes for size, influence and profit margins: by giving them the silent treatment. This isn’t an entirely stupid strategy.”
Incoming La Scala Boss: “I Am Not A Dunce!”
“Alexander Pereira, the incoming director general of La Scala has vowed to show the world’s most famous opera house he is “not a dunce” after a humiliating controversy between Milan and his current employers, the Salzburg festival, resulted in his original five-year contract being torn up before he had even begun.”
Why A New Production Of “Miss Saigon” Is Breaking Records
“It turned out that the return of this ambitious, sung-through musical, which tells the story of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly transposed to the Vietnam War, with its melodious, some might say soupy, love songs, and its bitter depiction of an urban underworld where desperate West meets impoverished East, was the most eagerly anticipated in theatreland. If this is a surprise, it shouldn’t be.”
Study: What Those Ums Ahhs and Likes (Filler Sounds) Say About How You Think
Psycholinguists have actually categorized words usually thought of as superfluous blips in speech into separate groups based on their function. “Um” and “uh” are known as “filled pauses.” “You know,” “I mean,” and “like” are termed “discourse markers.”
Rush Limbaugh Wins Prominent Children’s Book Award
“From the moment Limbaugh’s nomination was announced, in March, conservatives were delighted, liberals angered and others simply puzzled — emotions only amplified by Limbaugh’s victory, which raised his book from No. 71 on Amazon the day before to the top 10 Thursday.”
Andre Previn At 85
“Nowadays, if I had to fill out a blank thing that said what do you do, I would say I compose. And conduct and play the piano. But I’m really a composer. I really like that.”
La Scala Will Keep New Superintendent For One Year, Then Fire Him
“Alexander Pereira, the director of the Salzburg Festival, was to begin his six-year tenure at La Scala, the opera house here, in October, but Mr. Pisapia, the chairman of La Scala’s foundation, said that the board would honor his contract only until the end of the 2014-15 season, which coincides with Expo Milano 2015, the world’s fair expected to draw an estimated 20 million visitors.”