Claim: WikiLeaks Didn’t Usher In New Era Of Transparency

“That basic idea — leak, publish and wait for outrage — is an old idea. The premise of this recent episode was that new technologies were basically supercharging the process. It was easier to leak, easier to publish, and by implication, more likely to produce substantial policy change. But in the grand scheme of things, the scope of these leaks was perhaps not that much larger than similar breaches in the pre-Internet.”

The Vegas-ification Of Worldwide Real Estate Development

“There’s Beverly Hills, a residential and commercial development built in the late 1990s on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. There’s the newly built Dubai International City, with various districts representing countries from all over the world. And there’s also Orange County, a Southern California-style gated golf community of ranch homes about an hour north of Beijing,” and Thames Town, a recreated English village 20 miles from Shanghai.

What Looking At Lucian Freud’s Paintings Does To The Way You See People

James Polchin: “I was much more attentive to the exposed flesh around me, to the blemishes and rashes, the discoloration and mutations of skin tones of those I passed. A young woman’s arm was blossoming a small purple and hazel, clover-shaped bruise near her shoulder. An attractive man’s razor burn ran along the side of his neck, a contrast to the smooth sliver of a red and blue tattoo that crawled beneath his shirt sleeve.”

How Is Modern Dance Staying Modern?

“The idea that modern dance is trivial or dead is like the idea that ballet, post-Balanchine, is dead; a perspective from those who no longer like or can find recognizable referents in what they see. The company model has almost gone, which changes the way that choreographers work, and might be one of the reasons that they seem less interested than a previous generation was in developing a physical vocabulary.”