It’s the question asked in frustration by every international traveler with an appliance. The answer, ultimately, goes back to the old rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.
The Worrisome Takeaway From October’s ‘Box Office Bloodbath’
“What’s worrisome is that this is going to be the takeaway from the October Bloodbath: not the equally loud belly-flops of bloated fairy-tale origin story Pan or kitsch cartoon adaptation Jem and the Holograms, but the underperformance of challenging pictures like Steve Jobs and Crimson Peak. It may stand to reason that the grown-up audience Hollywood ignores the rest of the year is a no-show in fall too. And the implications of that are very grim indeed.”
A Tale of 11 Cities: New Data-Driven Assessment Of The Nonprofit Arts Sector
“Last week, the [Greater Philadelphia] Cultural Alliance released 2015 Portfolio: Culture Across Communities, An Eleven-City Snapshot – a data-driven assessment of the nonprofit arts sector with particular attention to post-recession recovery and persistent fiscal challenges. … The cities represented in the report include: Bay Area (San Francisco and San Jose), Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Twin Cities and Washington, D.C.”
The Hustle Of Publishing Arts News In The Postprint Era: The Case Of The Brooklyn Rail
“The Rail, which reaches about 20,000 readers a month in print and an additional 200,000 online, is among a group of niche publications that have found ways to defy a media industry increasingly preoccupied with greater scale. For these publications, serving small, often highbrow readerships, it is not possible to follow the prevailing model – gathering audiences of millions, or tens of millions, to be sold for pennies to advertisers or converted to subscribers.”
How To Live A Lie: Accepting Morality And Free Will Even If You Don’t Believe They’re Real
“The philosopher Michael Ruse has argued that ‘morality is a collective illusion foisted upon us by our genes.’ If that’s true, why have our genes played such a trick on us?” Philosopher William Irwin considers the options of what he calls fictionalism – religious, moral, or free will – and compatbilism.
We Need To Learn More About Music As Clinical Therapy
“It often feels good to listen to Aretha Franklin to lift our spirits, or croon along with Adele to make sense of a breakup. But is it also possible to listen to music in ways that sabotage our mental health?”
PEN Petition Urges Ayatollah To Pardon Two Condemned Iranian Poets
Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Mousavi “were first arrested in 2013, placed in solitary confinement and interrogated … They were released on bail in January 2014, awaiting verdicts on charges that included insulting the sacred in their poems, publishing unauthorized content and spreading anti-state propaganda. The sentences [were] 11 and a half years for Ms. Ekhtesari and nine years for Mr. Mousavi, plus 99 lashes for both.”
Why Twitter Has Become Dangerous (The Medium Really Is The Message)
Robinson Meyer: “On Twitter, people say things that they think of as ephemeral and chatty. Their utterances are then treated as unequivocal political statements by people outside the conversation. Because there’s a kind of sensationalistic value in interpreting someone’s chattiness in partisan terms, tweets ‘are taken up as magnum opi to be leapt upon and eviscerated, not only by ideological opponents or threatened employers but by in-network peers.'”
The Lure Of Luxury: An Online Forum On Why Some People Spend So Much On Stuff
“Why would anyone spend thousands of dollars on a Prada handbag, an Armani suit, or a Rolex watch? If you really need to know the time, buy a cheap Timex or just look at your phone and send the money you have saved to Oxfam. Certain consumer behaviors seem irrational, wasteful, even evil. What drives people to possess so much more than they need?” But then: “Most people own things that they don’t really need. It is worth thinking about why.”
Ear To The Ground: Even South Dakota’s Corn Palace Isn’t Free From Museum Intrigue
“In the past two years, as the city has invested millions of dollars in renovating and refurbishing the building, something strange has been brewing at the Corn Palace. For 13 years, from 2001 to 2014, the arena was run by the same director, Mark Schilling. But in 2014, he was asked to resign” and convicted of petty theft. “Since then, the city has hired two directors, one of whom was asked to step down before even starting the job, and a second who lasted less than a year.”
Theory Of A New Theatre Review Paradigm
The Grand Unification Theory of Theatre Reviewing begins, as all theories must, by rejecting the historical paradigm. The historical paradigm, in this case is “A good review = A positive review.” But what to replace this with?
Barcelona’s Fantastical Sagrada Família Enters Its Final Construction Stage
132 years after construction began in 1883, the magnificent Sagrada Família has reached its final stage of construction. According to the current chief architect, Jordi Fauli, six more towers will be added to the basilica by 2026, bringing the grand total to 18.
Love Of Creative Work Versus Making Money
“Can we who labor for the common good find common cause? Can we activate our collective will to be part of finding solutions that would allow us to dedicate ourselves to work with meaning while also making a decent living—with health care, time off, and savings for when we can’t work?”
After Years Of Cutbacks, Arts Education In L.A. Schools Is In Tatters: District Study
“For the first time, L.A. Unified in September completed a detailed accounting of arts programs at its campuses … Arts programs at a vast majority of schools are inadequate, according to district data. Classrooms lack basic supplies. Some orchestra classes don’t have enough instruments. And thousands of elementary and middle school children are not getting any arts instruction.” (complete results of study here)
100 Women Directors Hollywood Should Be Hiring
“Studio executives often protest that there simply aren’t enough talented female filmmakers to choose from. They are wrong. … Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, it wasn’t hard to assemble such an enormous list of smart, eminently hireable female directors. The only difficult part was culling it down to just 100.”
A First: UK Theatres Sell £1 Billion In Tickets
UK Theatre member venues – predominantly theatres outside London – recorded £429 million at the box office in 2014. When added to the box office for theatres that are members of the Society of London Theatre in 2014 (£624 million), it reveals that theatre across the whole of the UK recorded a total box office of £1.05 billion.
How Amazon Is Trying To Reinvent The Physical Bookstore
“Not only is it one of Amazon’s first physical locations, but it’s also Amazon’s first physical bookstore. Amazon says that it won’t entirely be doing things like a traditional store, however; it’ll be relying on Amazon.com data — including customer ratings, sales totals, and Goodread’s popularity — to decide which books to stock. Curators will have some say, too.”
Italy Declares Museums Essential Services So Museum Workers Threaten To Strike
On 22 October, Italy’s Chamber of Deputies passed a measure to reclassify museums as “essential public services” on a par with schools and hospitals, effectively limiting the right to strike.
Independent French Bookstores Celebrate As Fixed-Pricing For Books Continues
Last month, that threat was taken off the table by the European Union’s chief negotiator, who stated unequivocally that fixed book pricing — or “le prix unique” in French — would not be a matter of debate.
Yundi Li Has Onstage Memory Lapse; East Asian Internet Explodes
The 33-year-old pianist – who, along with rival Lang Lang, has megastar status in their native China – was performing Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with David Robertson and the Sydney Symphony in Seoul when he took a wrong turn in the music and got lost; he and the orchestra had to stop briefly and start again. So far, so human. Then Li suffered one of the downsides of megastardom …
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘Half Of A Yellow Sun’ Named Best Women’s Prize For Fiction Winner Of The Decade
“Pitted against nine other titles – from Zadie Smith’s On Beauty to Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing – Adichie’s novel of the Biafran war … has been named the best winner of the [Baileys] women’s prize for fiction of the last decade – by both the public and a 10-strong judging panel.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.02.15
From Vaudeville to the Streets
Eleven dancers take the stage at NYU Skirball Center in Donald Byrd’s The Minstrel Show Revisited. They’re strutting, prancing, raising white-gloved hands. How come I don’t recognize any faces? I can hardly tell which are women and which are men. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-11-02
More by Mustill: A Smokin’ Victorian and an ‘EVENT’
Finding lost and uncollected artworks by the late Norman O. Mustill has been a continuing project here. An old friend of his, Kurt Wold, recently … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2015-11-02
Dreams so real
Paul Hindemith once called America “the land of limited impossibilities.” My own life has been a string of increasingly extreme improbabilities, and every once in a while something happens that cause me to stop dead in my tracks and reflect on just how improbable certain of them have been. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-11-02
A Day to Forget
I love Paris. I have visited this city more than thirty times over the last sixty years, and I will continue to love it even after today. I have a warning, however, that might alert … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2015-11-02
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Can ‘Entry-Level’ Classical Concerts Please A Pop Music Fan?
“To me Bach was the soundtrack to dry winter assemblies, the intricacies of the music merely a measure by which to display and applaud proficiency. I was a devout pop kid and there was nothing inclusively sexy about classical music – I was far more likely, one day, to get drunk with Blur than Brahms.”
What’s The Point Of Nonfiction Books When You Can Look Everything Up Online?
“The information may be finite and fixed but it can be has been specially selected which makes it have more coherence. This can give readers an experience that is different from searching the internet but equally satisfying.”
Is It OK To Use Music As A Primary Way To Regulate Your Mood?
“Studies like this emphasize how particular our engagement with music can be. In the past, entire genres like punk or heavy metal were accused of being inherently damaging to adolescents’ mental health. The reality is likely much more complicated. Some may seek out Metallica’s rapid riffs and screeching guitars to gain solace; others may vent anger through Mozart.”