“Electronic books cannot benefit from the same reduced rate of value-added tax as paper books, the top court of the European Union ruled … the court argued that a reduced rate can apply only to physical books and that even though e-books can be read on tablets and computers, they should be considered ‘electronically supplied services,’ not goods.”
Tag: 03.05.15
These Ideas Must Die
“Rather than asking if a new idea is a good one, we ask whether it’d be better if some of the ideas we cling to were killed off.” For instance, testing products on mice. (podcast)
Can Performing Shakespeare Help Ease The Symptoms Of Mental Illness?
“Suffering can be alleviated through the discipline of creative practices that serve to weave formless, unarticulated pain into something tangible, ordered and ultimately pleasurable.”
“An Otherworldly Experience Not Quite Like Anything Else In The History Of Cinema”: The Maysles Brothers’ Masterpiece, “Grey Gardens”
Andrew O’Hehir: “The world it captures, with its mother-daughter pair of aristocratic castoffs and their crumbling, weed-choked East Hampton mansion infested with cats and raccoons, is now so utterly vanished as to seem fantastic, an allegorical dream concocted by Scott Fitzgerald and Flannery O’Connor more than real people who existed within living memory.”
ISIS Takes Bulldozers To Destroy Ancient Site At Nimrud
“Many of the massive Nimrud statues remain buried at the site. But the ISIS video from the Mosul Museum clearly shows at least one statue from Nimrud being defaced. And the site has many areas that archaeologists have not yet explored.”
Performers And The Art Of “Physical Leakage”
“We all carry a physical signature in our bodies. When we’re under any kind of stress, our bodies behave in their usual habits – it’s called “physical leakage”. Your real personality starts to come out. Often, actors and dancers aren’t aware of what those habits are. Having someone who can look at them, and suggest ways of avoiding them, helps them to find a proper physicality for the character they’re playing.”
Common Experience, Different Impact: Why Are People Affected Differently By Trauma?
“A strange fact of human nature is that two people can experience exactly the same seemingly traumatic event and respond completely differently. One might face years of struggles as a result of suffering from the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological fallout, while the other, after an initial period of being shaken up, bounces back completely.”
Inside The Theatre – Immersive Experience Taking Hold Of Audiences
“Immersive theater takes place without a stage of any kind, in deserted industrial spaces, nightclubs, hospitals, hotels and more. It invites audience members to explore the action at their own pace by following performers around. Guests can roam the site at will, experiencing it as an interactive art installation.”
Women Composers: Genius Is Gender-Blind – And So Should We Be
Sara Mohr-Pietsch of BBC Radio 3: “Someone asked me the other day if the reason there are fewer women composers represented at the highest level was that male composers were simply better. My response was unrepeatably rude. Frankly, it’s too ludicrous a question to validate with a polite answer. My litmus test for those kinds of comments is this: replace ‘female’ with ‘black’, and ‘male’ with ‘white’. Now put the question to me again, and see how comfortable you feel asking it.”
Why That “Things I Can Say About MFAs” Essay Struck Such A Nerve With Writers
Laura Miller: “Not much of ‘Things I Can Say‘ offers a fresh take on the endless MFA debate. More at issue is the swashbuckling, bridge-burning and sometimes contemptuous tone Boudinot adopts and the implication that, as a one-time MFA instructor, he is speaking the secret thoughts of every creative writing teacher to whom a student has entrusted her fledgling work.”