“One of the hardest things about studying history, and especially the distant past, is trying to understand not just the speech, but also the mindset of the people one reads, and reads about. The people of the past are just as foreign to us in history as in historical fiction.”
Tag: 04.18.11
Here Comes Another Kerouac Movie: Big Sur
“Typical: you wait a lifetime for a big-screen beat generation movie and then three roll off the rank at once. Hard on the heels of last year’s Howl and Walter Salles’s yet-to-be-released On the Road comes Big Sur, an adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel by writer-director Michael Polish.”
Arthur Lessac, Revered Vocal Coach, Dies at 101
“His method, Lessac Kinesensic Training, is a holistic, almost spiritual approach encompassing speech, singing and movement. … In 1999, American Theatre magazine called him ‘one of the three or four most significant figures in modern American voice training..”
The Science Of Why Some People Refuse To Believe Science
“[An] array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. … It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.”
The Problem With Research Studies Of Happiness
“[R]esearchers often measure different things and then talk about them as though they were interchangeable measures of the same thing. We can measure how happy someone is in the moment or how satisfied they are with their lives, and while both are interesting, they are not the same.”
Re-Casting A Chorus Line, Moscow-Style
“Casting is a very loose adaptation of the story of A Chorus Line – a bunch of wannabe dancers converge on a rehearsal hall in order to audition for bit parts in a musical. But that’s pretty much all that is left of the original in this new work. [Yury] Yeryomin … completely reinvented the dancers, the director/choreographer, and her helpers to fit the reality of contemporary Russian life.”
Obfuscation – It’s The Key To Learning
“Impediments to easy understanding – hard-to-read fonts, hard-to-follow lectures and lessons that are all too soon forgotten – may be the key to really learning something.”
How Music Pulitzer Winner “Madame White Snake” Came To Be
Videos about the background of the opera.
Writing With Just The Right Amount Of Background Noise
“Put in a silent room before a blank page, it’s almost impossible to write. Neither is it be ideal to work near a television set that keeps drawing one’s attention or a room where a child keeps interrupting. In a coffeehouse, its rare for someone to intrude on the space of a patron with an open laptop and a look of concentration. Still, there is just enough conversation and foot traffic in the background that you’re forced to semi-consciously tune it out.”
Three Cups Of Tea Author Accused Of Fabrication
“Greg Mortenson, the co-author of the best-selling Three Cups Of Tea, a book popular with the Pentagon for its inspirational lessons on Afghanistan and Pakistan, forcefully countered a CBS News report on Sunday that questioned the facts of his book and the management of his charitable organization.”