“[In] fact conversations are often designed to help this shifting take place. That is, when we engage in conversation, much of what we say does not involve making claims about the world but involves instructing our communicative partners how to adjust word meanings for the purposes of our conversation.”
Tag: 04.22.12
How The Tonys Change The Business Of Broadway
“The Tony deadline is now the central organizing event that drives Broadway, for better and for worse. A perverse twist on the laws of supply and demand now exists in the theater world because of the Tonys and several other theater awards, all given out in the spring.”
Artists Turn Against Pirate Party
“The Pirate Party has laid claim to another first: It’s the first left-wing party to have a considerable number of intellectuals not for, but against it.”
What Is The New York Times On About With The No One Talks Thing?
“These are the tools, practices, and communities that can make online life not a flight from conversation, but a flight to it. But we will not realize these opportunities as long as we cling to a nostalgia for conversation as we remember it, describe the emergence of digital culture in generational terms, or absolve ourselves of responsibility for creating an online world in which meaningful connection is the norm rather than the exception.”
No One Talks Anymore! (It’s All Technology’s Fault, Too)
“Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.”
How Do Mormons See Themselves? Check Out This Museum For Answers
” The museum shows how earthly a religion Mormonism is, how practical its actions have been and how intimately connected its history is to the American past. The printing press, the farm, depictions of the ordinary citizens who were the first church members — we see a vision of early American democracy. The covered wagon, the daring mapping of unknown territory: Mormon history is a version of the American pioneering myth.”
The Secret Life Of Alan Z. Feuer, By Alan Feuer
“My host sat back in his club chair, silenced, and I worried for a moment that I had made a terrible mistake. But then a look of wild delight sprang into his eyes — the look, I thought, of a man who hadn’t been surprised in 40 years.”
The Revenge Of The (Comedy) Nerds – Where’d They All Come From?
“What I think really worries Burr (and I admit I share his concern) is not that comedy nerds aren’t reverent enough to stand-up traditions. It’s that they’re too reverent — and that all this reverence, this study and dissection, this niceness, threatens to ruin a form of entertainment that has stridently avoided being declawed. That comedy nerds, like overexuberant fanboys, will effectively love, nurture and respect stand-up comedy to death.”
Work Of Adapting Poe For Cinema Almost As Bloody As His Stories
“Poe’s work, full of murder, madness, ghosts and febrile passion, is irresistible to filmmakers because of its bold imagery and powerful emotional impact. But despite these sensational qualities Poe is not nearly as movie ready as his writing seems. The big problem is that he wrote almost exclusively in short forms, and his stories’ effects are highly concentrated, like shots of neat whiskey.”
From Life In An Orphanage To Star Turns All Over The Country
“It’s a very different life than she could have imagined when she was 4½-year-old Mabinty Bangura, living in an orphanage in violent, impoverished Sierra Leone. Young Mabinty had only one friend and was anything but a favorite with the ‘aunties’ who ran the orphanage, perhaps because she had vitiligo, a pigmentation condition that left white patches on her upper chest. One day, she found a magazine that had blown against the orphanage gate. In it was a picture of a ballerina in pointe shoes. She tore it out and kept it, and dreamed of dancing like that one day.”