Q: “What’s your best time-saving shortcut/life hack?” A: “I’ve got nothing. Reading other people’s answers to this question on your website today made me realize I live my life like an ape.” However, Ira does offer (after the product plugs this site seems to require) an excellent description of how he organizes a bunch of interview material into a structure.
The List To End All Lists Of ‘New Yorker’ Stories We Should Read While The Archives Are Open
Seriously, this is a post compiling all the lists the internet has made about what to read – and it’s complete with links. We’ll see you back here when the archive closes.
So Frank Gehry Is Designing A Campus For Youth Social Services In L.A.
“The idea is that this will be something special. There are so many messages that people, particularly children, get from their environment. There can be a certain bleakness.”
When Will Broadway Be Able To Deal With A Full-on Hip Hop Musical?
“It’s inevitable, but not without a certain amount of consideration towards rap’s unique and specific position in the music sphere. Also, I am doubtful of its ability to be successful using the same formulas of other more successful jukebox musicals.”
It’s Not Just “Mikado” – Opera’s Full Of Racial Stereotyping, And We Should Deal With That
Aida, Otello, Turandot, Madama Butterfly, and on and on. Gwynn Guilford lays out what she sees as the problem and how she thinks opera companies in 21st-century America might address it.
Artists, Officials, Celebrities Unite To Ask Venice To Ban Cruise Mega-Ships
“More than 50 leading figures from the worlds of art, film, fashion and architecture have signed a petition calling for a ban on giant cruise ships sailing through Venice. Cate Blanchett, Julie Christie, Michael Caine and Rob Lowe are among the signatories urging the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the Italian Minister of Culture and Tourism, Dario Franceschini, to ‘halt the passage of the big ships across the Bacino San Marino and along the Giudecca canal’.”
David Hallberg On Becoming A Celebrity Dancer
“Ballet needs figures that people can recognize and relate to. People don’t know ballet dancers as well as they know other artists.”
Where Hearing Voices Can Be A Good Thing (Other Places’ Schizophrenia Is Not Like American Schizophrenia)
“A new study suggests that schizophrenic people in more collectivist societies sometimes think their auditory hallucinations are helpful.”
Short Attention Spans? Why, That’s Just A Sign Of How Smart We’re Getting
“The world is faster, faster, faster these days. That’s the current reality, and it’s not going anywhere. Leaving a page that isn’t loading isn’t a character fault; it’s smart. You can get the information you were after elsewhere, and you can get it faster. If we really valued what we were made to wait for, well, we would wait.”
How The Summer Festival Has Gone Big Time (Mainstream, Commercialized)
“Long gone are the painted Volkswagen buses, talk of “free love,” and shoulder-length hair for men, but it’s only recently that the festivals associated with those things have also begun to disappear, replaced by a new breed of festival that’s tailored to a different group entirely: hipsters.”
Women’s Project Theater Gets A New Producing Artistic Director
Lisa McNulty, “who has been the artistic line producer at Manhattan Theater Club since 2006, will begin her new job on Aug. 11. She has a long history with the 36-year-old Women’s Project Theater, whose mission is to produce plays written and directed by women.”
Why Do Our Brains Leap To Stereotypes?
“In essence, they write, our minds are hard-wired to categorize information and create mental shortcuts (attribute A is associated with behavior B). This helps us retain knowledge using minimal mental effort, and provides a needed sense of structure to an otherwise chaotic universe. In doing so, however, nuances and complications tend to be discarded.”
Six Arrested In $1M StubHub International Hacking Case
“Six individuals in Russia and the United States have been charged with taking part in a broad international hacking scheme that attacked over 1,600 StubHub users’ accounts and fraudulently purchased more than $1 million in tickets.”
Does This Make Me Sound Insecure? The Linguistic Tics That Reveal Self-Doubt
“Like a scarlet sock in the load of white wash, insecurity has the irksome power to stain our speech and writing, interfering with the immaculate poise we’d like to project. Yet if you know what linguistic tics to look for, you can recognize self-doubt (and perhaps bleach the fuchsia from your pants before anyone notices).”
Self-Improvement, Original Sin, And The West’s Spiritual Crises
“Most people assume the western church shares the same creation story as Jews, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians.” Not so: the doctrine of original sin is unique to Western Christianity. “The search for salvation from an inherently broken self has defined modernity as much as it did Christendom. The need for redemption has shaped the language of the market, technological innovation, advertising, politics and, most obviously, self-help movements. But what is new is for there to be so little consensus on how to find salvation.”
John Hurt On Acting Beckett’s Krapp
“I’ve always felt that Krapp is an autobiographical piece. You do feel, all the time, that it’s Sam saying, ‘There but for the grace of …’ For me it’s a kind of essay in aloneness – and an essay on self-deception, too, which Krapp is well aware of. He is like any addict. One side of him says ‘I shouldn’t do this’ and the other side says ‘But I’m going to – and what’s more you know I’m going to’.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.23.14
If “Creative Director” Title Fits A Museum, Why Not?
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-07-24
Inventing an America
(How Kyle Gann would teach the history of the symphony in the U.S.)
AJBlog: PostClassic | Published 2014-07-23
Announcing Hothouse: Exploring new ideas in co-working with the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
AJBlog: Speaker | Published 2014-07-23
What nonprofits are for
AJBlog: The Artful Manager | Published 2014-07-23
How Do Writers Make Their Living?
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-07-23
Civil Rights Museum
AJBlog: Engaging Matters | Published 2014-07-23
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What Happened To Charlotte’s Brave Experimental Theatre?
“Was there really no alternative to euthanizing a company that had achieved so much over its 22-year history?”
What We Lose Of Books In E-Readers
“Regardless of their printed contents, books tell their own alternative stories, whether this be from smudges on the pages, or edges crinkled from a spilt drink; corners curled or margins dotted with sneaky annotations. Before self-service check-out systems, you could always tell how popular a library book was by how many pages were glued to the inside page, stamped with a list of past loan due dates.”
This Year’s Booker Prize Nominees (Americans Included)
“Thirteen novels were named on the longlist for the prize which for more than 40 years has rewarded only Commonwealth writers. The rules changed last year, sparking fears that it would quickly be dominated by Americans.”
This Year’s National Medal Of Arts Winners
It’s a “diverse roster of big names in the arts, literature and entertainment – including Linda Ronstadt, dancer-choreographer Bill T. Jones, author Maxine Hong Kingston, Broadway composer John Kander and L.A.-nurtured visual artist James Turrell — will receive the National Medal of Arts from President Obama.”
The Physicists Who Are Redefining The Art Of Animation
There is “an expanding cadre of high-level physicists, engineers and other scientists, including many former NASA employees, who have left careers in aerospace and academia to work in the movie business. Demand for their services has grown as animated movies, once created by hand, push the boundaries of what can be created on a computer screen.”
Angel Corella Named Pensylvania Ballet’s Artistic Director
The 38-year-old Spaniard, a former star at ABT, “is slated to start part-time in September, then full-time in January.” Earlier this year he announced that he would close his company in Barcelona and leave Spain.