It happens all the time. Take, for example, the Muhammad cartoons. “We live in the defining age of the image and the picture; how can it be that the whole point of an entirely visual story can be deliberately left out?”
Tag: 02.18.08
What The Movies Don’t Tell You About Stealing Art
“One thing art theft movies tend to have in common is that they dwell on the heist and not on the aftermath, for reasons that are probably more than cinematic: Art is an exceedingly dumb thing to steal.”
The Irrationality Of Everyday Behavior
“Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless–they are systematic. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over. So attached are we to certain kinds of errors, that we are incapable even of recognizing them as errors. Offered FREE shipping, we take it, even when it costs us.”
New Evidence: Musical Ability Learned, Not Made
“We already know there is something special about the way musicians’ brains react when they hear music. Now new scans have revealed that specific regions of the brain dedicated to musical syntax and timbre become even more animated than usual in musicians when they hear recordings of their own type of instrument.”
How Come English Non-Profit Theatre Rocks And Canadian Theatre Doesn’t?
“The secret weapon is subsidy. Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre gets 40 per cent of its budget from the government, unlike here, where Canadian Stage gets 18 per cent, Shaw 6 per cent and Stratford less than 4 per cent.”
Obama Puts Hollywood On Notice
“Hollywood’s moguls just got served notice that if they want a Democratic administration that will get the fine-happy, rightward-pandering FCC off their backs, they’re going to have to play ball on tough TV ratings, parental-lock technologies, and (this one will hurt) advertising.”
History According To Lapham
“Lewis Lapham’s zeal to combat the creeping debasement of truth in the culture, combined with his passion for history, drove him to leave Harper’s after nearly thirty years and found Lapham’s Quarterly. The Quarterly is billed as a historical journal and looks something like The Paris Review.”
Words, Words, Words!
“It is one of the livelier paradoxes of the English-speaking theater today that its two most dazzling wordsmiths are incurably suspicious of the language they ply with such flair. No other living playwrights give (and, it would seem, receive) more pleasure from the sounds, shapes and textures of their lavishly stocked vocabularies. And none is more achingly conscious of the inadequacy of how they say what they say. This contradiction is not just an element of their style; it’s the essence of it.”
Philadelphia Orchestra Rethinks The Ways It Sells
Quietly but quantitatively, the orchestra is reducing the number of traditionally formatted concerts and putting in their stead other kinds of performances. “I do think what we’re doing is groundbreaking. We’re really recognizing our audience in a meaningful way by putting together collections that are specific to their musical appetites.”
Russia “Improves” Copyright Laws
The new law seeks to clarify Russia’s collective rights management system, which under the previous legislation was a confused and opaque tangle of overlapping authorities.