“In the spirit of Andy Warhol and Paris Hilton, [Bernard-Henri] Lévy has always grasped – more profoundly, or at least more profitably, than any mere philosopher could – an important truth: the media must constantly be fed… The French disdain for BHL is reflective of an inherent distaste for blatant self-promotion.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why You Paid Too Much on eBay
“[Researchers] enrolled volunteers in a series of simulated silent ‘auctions’ (bidding against a person they had met) and ‘lotteries’ (deciding repeatedly whether or not to bid against a computer). All while lying in functional MRI machines that scanned their brains… Overbidding was highest when the auction emphasized loss.”
The Stained Glass Windows Are of Microwaves
“At a time when the gulf between religion and science is growing ever greater, an artist has erected a temple for scientific worship. Jonathon Keats, designer of the petri dish God, built The Atheon to get people thinking about what a scientific religion (or religious science?) would look and feel like.”
Rasputin, the Opera, Bows in Moscow
A 1998 score by American composer Jay Reise (not to be confused with the 2003 works on the same subject by Einojuhani Rautavaara and Deborah Drattell) becomes the first opera on the Mad Monk to be staged in Russia.
An Extraordinary Bond: Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
A newly-published collection of all the two poets’ surviving correspondence documents “a remarkable friendship – part long-distance romance, part artistic collaboration, part AA meeting – that lasted almost thirty years.”
A Reason to Buy a Blu-Ray
“Francis Coppola’s masterpieces, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (really, who cares about Part III?), haven’t looked so good since they first came out three decades ago. Simply put, the new four-disc set amounts to one of the most spectacular achievements in the brief history of home theater.”
Top This, Peter Gelb
A Swiss television network has staged Verdi’s La Traviata from a train station. “With scenes transmitted live from the main hall, the coffeehouse, the botanist shop and the train platforms of Zurich’s neo-Renaissance Hauptbahnhof, the country’s largest rail hub, the performance provided a grittier version of the opera’s themes of love, betrayal and redemption.”
Eat Your Heart Out, I. M. Pei
Paris is to get its first new skyscraper in three decades: a tall, slender pyramid by the Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron (who designed the “bird’s nest” stadium for the Beijing Olympics).
Hey, If Finns Can Tango …
“Salsa fever is raging in China, with more than a dozen Latin dance studios having opened in the capital in the last four years. This week, an estimated 4,000 people from across the country and abroad are expected to attend the third annual China Salsa Congress in Beijing for four days of performances and competition, including for a second year an event on the Great Wall.”
Gen Y’s Answer to Karen Finley Takes On the Father of Our Country
“The same Ann Liv Young who has stepped onstage, torn off all her clothes and rolled around in her dog’s ashes like a bereaved stripper (‘Tribute to Elliot’) and has been penetrated with a dildo (‘Snow White’) has a new piece she describes as ‘the love story of Martha Washington, George Washington and Oney, their slave.'”