“It’s well-intentioned to emphasize that libraries provide materials and services without exacting immediate payment from users for each transaction. But today it is at best a mistake and at worst self-destructive to underrepresent the considerable ongoing investment that the members of a community make to have library collections, technology, personnel, and facilities available to them.”
Tag: 03.13.13
Girls As Geopolitical Allegory
“The central journey in Girls is how immature people fumble their way toward maturity. The parallels to world politics here are surprisingly strong – after all, sovereign states are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history, so national polities also possess some immaturity.”
‘The Houdini Of History’ – Vladimir Nabokov, Escape Artist
“In 1919, he and his immediate family fled revolutionary Russia on the last ship out of Sevastopol, a vessel aptly named Nadezhda(‘Hope’). In 1937 he escaped Hitler’s Germany by fleeing to France, and in 1940, just weeks before Paris fell to the Nazis, he boarded a French ocean liner’s last voyage to New York with his Jewish wife and son.”
Philip Roth, Unmasked (And On Film)
“Given that his great subject has always been himself, it is Mr. Roth who dominates the screen. … He is, for 90 minutes, marvelous company — expansive, funny, generous and candid.”
What Should We Tell Young Black Playwrights?
“I have been reading plays written by black writers and working with these playwrights and let me tell you something–I am concerned. I have been asking myself about the future of black theater because I have been watching the black story die.”
How Is A Triangle Like A Soccer Game?
” What makes a game exciting is precisely the variability that unfolds from the same set of rules. Math and sports are expressions of our controlled creativity. The beauty of a play comes from the unexpected use of this creativity within the patterns allowed by the rules.
A Passionate Scientific Split That Was To Play Out In Public: Denied
“The tone of the dustup between Mr. Albert and Mr. Krauss — summed up by one blogger as ‘an ongoing cosmological street fight’ that had broken out ‘broad media daylight’ — would have certainly left those who saw both men’s names on early publicity material anticipating something closer to a wrestling match than dispassionate scholarly discussion.”
The School That Made Schiller Into The Man He Was
It was a military academy in Württemburg called the Hohe Carlsschule, and Gott in Himmel, was it twisted.
‘Brain Porn’ In The Media
“When writing about anything pertaining to psychology or human nature, people love nothing more than a brain image lit up like a Christmas tree. These omnipresent images have been mockingly termed ‘brain porn’, defined by journalist Alissa Quart as a ‘willingness to accept seemingly neuroscientific explanations for nearly everything'” – especially when it comes to mental health problems such as addiction and depression.
‘Processed Storytelling’ – The Problem With Pixar
Richard Brody: “The kind of recipe for success that a soft-drink company might guard with fierce vigilance, a movie company puts online for all to see. Emma Coats, a former storyboard artist at Pixar, sent out a list of the company’s ’22 Rules of Storytelling’.”