“It is unsurprising that simplified English is the lingua franca of Moria prison camp and its environs, spoken between asylum-seekers from formerly-colonised states as disparate as Iraq, Uganda, Pakistan and Burma. But in the crucible of the overcrowded detention centre … English is undergoing an accelerated evolution, tentatively beginning to develop its own unique grammar and idiom.”
How Restaurant Menus Manipulate Customers
“There is now an entire industry known as ‘menu engineering’, dedicated to designing menus that convey certain messages to customers, encouraging them to spend more and make them want to come back for a second helping.” Reporter Richard Gray ferrets out a few tricks of the trade.
Enough Already With The Wildly Overrated George Orwell
Ben Judah: “There is a simplicity and a clarity to Orwell’s prose. It flows nicely. But there is also nothing special about it other than the fact it has been canonised as the ultimate in English authorial excellence. This is still very much a surprise to me, because there is just so much wrong with it.”
Front Porches – New Houses Are Getting Them, And People Are Using Them Again
“In the 20th century, porches couldn’t compete with TV and air conditioning. Now this classic feature of American homes is staging a comeback as something more stylish and image-conscious than ever before.”
Beyonce Is 2017’s Highest-Paid Woman In Music
Lemonade was a hit with both critics and fans, giving Beyoncé her sixth solo No. 1. The ensuing Formation World Tour, much of it falling into our list’s scoring period, grossed a quarter of a billion dollars. Then she took time off as she and husband Jay-Z welcomed twins Rumi and Sir this summer. Adele finished second, earning $69 million, boosted by seven-figure nightly grosses on her first proper tour since 2011.
The Netflix Adaptation Of Margaret Atwood’s ‘Alias Grace’ Shows What Real Horror Is
The horror is the one reflected in the one painting in the book and adaptation – Guido Reni’s Susannah and the Elders. The horror runs through the heart of everything. “Everyone is possessed by the same demon that no one can exorcise. It’s a horror so pervasive and unimaginable that a glimpse of its true power drives Doctor Jordan mad.”
How Our Attempts At Crowdfunding Failed Big Time (And Taught Us How To Think Better)
Well, it was hard – possibly worse than anyone had advised.
Former Met Museum Director Ignites Leonardo Controversy With Instagram Post
Below the image of the Leonardo da Vinci, Campbell, who left the Met at the end of June, wrote the caption “450 million dollars?! Hope the buyer understands conservation issues…” followed by “#readthesmallprint”.
Why Charles Manson Has Loomed Large In Pop Culture
“Perhaps Charles Manson also remains a source of such horror and continued fascination because he was the ultimate symbol of insanity. With eyes that either projected total blankness or the agitated evil of a demon awakened, Manson looked like what most people stereotypically think of when they imagine a crazy person. In what may be the craziest time that many Americans have lived through, it makes twisted sense, then, that the most recognizable American psycho is still so omnipresent in our culture.”
Modern Languages Association: Full-Time Jobs Teaching English In Universities Declines To New Low
The association’s Job Information List — a proxy for the tenure-track (or otherwise full-time) job market in English and foreign languages — included 851 jobs last year in English, 11 percent (102 jobs) fewer than the year before. The foreign language edition list included 808 jobs, or 12 percent (110 jobs) fewer than the year before.
Shannon Michael Cane, 43: He Transformed The World Of Art Book Fairs
One force behind the rise of these fairs was Shannon Michael Cane, an exuberant, heavily tattooed Australian expatriate and autodidact book aficionado who in 2013 took over the Printed Matter book fair in New York, the granddaddy of such gatherings. He proceeded to transform it into a radically inclusive affair, attended by venerable rare-book dealers alongside obscure zine makers so scrappy that they could barely afford the plane fare to participate.
Study: Why So Much Sexual Harassment? It’s All About The Power (Or Lack Thereof)
“People who see themselves as chronically denied power appear to have a stronger desire to feel powerful, and are more likely to use sexual aggression toward that end,” writes a research team led by psychologist Melissa Williams of Emory University. “Power can indeed create opportunities for sexual aggression, but it is those who chronically experience low power who will choose to exploit such opportunities.”
Dallas Symphony Names Its First Woman President
Kim Noltemy joins a small but growing group of female symphony CEOs, including the ones who run the orchestras in Chicago, Pittsburgh and Detroit. But she also brings another possibly major change to the symphony. In her 21-year career with the BSO, Noltemy comes out of marketing and digital marketing in particular
Chinese Movie Box Office Tops $7.5 Billion, Up 15 Percent Over Last Year
Local reports say that as of 6:57PM on Monday night local time, a total of 1.45B moviegoers had attended cinemas in 2017 so far, a 15% increase on 2016. Last year’s box office saw a severe deceleration in growth, to just 3.7% (RMB 45.7B/$6.58B) after a record 2015 had surged 48.7%.
Dealer Mary Boone Settles Art Dispute With Alec Baldwin
The actor received a seven-figure settlement from Boone over a $190,000 Ross Bleckner painting he bought in 2010 that turned out to be a different painting than the one she promised to deliver. The agreement, reached last month and finalized on Friday, concludes a civil fraud case that was scheduled to head to trial next year.
Scientists Are Wrong. A Lot…
Most reasonable people will begrudgingly accept that any given scientific finding has a small chance of being false. It’s like finding out that the FDA allows 1mg of mouse feces in a pound of black pepper; mouse poop is unsavory, but at least it only makes up 1 part in 450,000. However, there has been a growing concern for a bit over a decade that the state of science is far worse than this.
Gotta Dance: Woman Ejected From Stevie Nicks Concert For Dancing
“I’ve paid for a ticket I want to dance. I’m only 5’5, it’s not like I’m 6’7or anything,” she said. “All I wanted to do was dance.”
Scents Memory: How Actors Use Perfumes To Get Into Character
Michael Ball uses bay rum for Sweeney Todd and a cheap old perfume of his mother’s for Edna Turnblad (Hairspray). Fenella Woolgar deployed Chanel No. 5 (with an extra spritz) for a 1950s snob. David Greig sniffed canned mackereal to put him in mind of the chilly mountains of Scotland. Before playing a homeless man, Arthur McBain sniffed a paper coffee cup after the coffee was finished. David Jays explores the use of aromas, and the emotions they trigger, with these and other actors as well as a ballet star and a perfumer.
Why 30 Seconds Just Isn’t Long Enough To See A Kusama Infinity Room
Jori Finkel: “It turns out that half a minute is not enough time to experience the most powerful dynamic of these rooms: our shifting perceptions of what is far versus near, or personal versus universal, as one collapses into the other through the unending regression of mirrored images. … The Hirshhorn, The Broad and other venues have essentially decided to give twice as many people half as much art, with what you might call infinitely diminished returns.”
Della Reese, R&B Singer And Actress, Dead At 86
“Reared in gospel, Reese became a seductive, big-voiced secular music star with her No. 1 R&B and No. 2 pop hit ‘Don’t You Know’ in 1959. … She ranged through a series of releases that showed off her mastery of standards, jazz and contemporary pop through the early ’70s, and over the course of her career she received four Grammy Award nominations.” She went on to become an even bigger star on television, where she was the first black woman to host her own variety show and played major roles in Chico and the Man and Touched by an Angel.
Thief Carries Botero Sculpture Right Out Of Paris Gallery
“The Colombian artist’s 57cm-high sculpture, Maternity (2003), of a mother sitting on a plinth and cradling her baby, … was stolen from Galerie Bartoux in an upmarket district of Paris earlier this month in broad daylight. Gallery staff became aware of the theft only when they prepared to close the gallery.”
$1.5 Million Bounties For Beheading Bollywood Star And Director Offered By Indian Politician
A state-level boss of India’s ruling party, the Hindu nationalist BJP, is offering 10 million rupees each for the heads of the lead actress and director of Padmavati, a new movie about a legendary 14th-century Rajput queen. A leader of the present-day Rajput clans has threatened to cut off the star’s nose, and violent demonstrations have led to the delay of the film’s release. All this over rumors of a scene the director says isn’t even in the movie.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.20.17
Forgetting Hitchcock
Unlike most of my colleagues, I liked, and was even a little moved by the world première of Nico Muhly’s Marnie by the English National Opera (it goes to the NY Metropolitan next year). … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2017-11-20
All there is
I’ve worked on enough shows by now to be familiar with the all-consuming experience of rehearsing, yet its disorienting nature still comes as a surprise each time it happens. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2017-11-20
A Stat You Probably Didn’t Need: Netflix Says Many People Stream Video In Public Restrooms
According to new data from the video giant Netflix, about 12 per cent of Americans who watch television shows or movies outside of the home admit to having done so in a public restroom. And 37 per cent say they’ve watched at work.
How Babies Map Words And Build Vocabulary
“A new study suggests that the few words infants know are structured in their minds the same way as an adult’s vocabulary, in a complex web of related concepts. The evidence: When words have similar meanings, babies can get confused. That confusion hints that babies know more about language, at a younger age, than scientists have found before.”