“Sometimes, our instinct to protect each other does more harm than good. … Why don’t we call each other out more? Identify the bad apples for the greater good? Imagine: if every money-wasting incompetence or petty dishonesty was called to account, what would the savings amount to?”
Tag: 04.30.15
This Summer’s Movies Are Playing Sex For Laughs
“Sex has always served as ample inspiration for comedy – every awkward encounter in bed is a potential gold mine for an observant writer or actor. But this summer, more than any other in recent memory, filmmakers are focused on what’s going on in hotel rooms, taxi back seats and anywhere else two people (or more) are getting it on. … Here, the stars and filmmakers from those films talk about what embarrassed them, what might embarrass audiences and what’s so funny about sex. These are excerpts from the conversations.”
Dressing Up The Brain: Wearing A Suit Changes The Way You Think
“[A team of researchers] found that wearing clothing that’s more formal than usual makes people think more broadly and holistically, rather than narrowly and about fine-grained details. In psychological parlance, wearing a suit encourages people to use abstract processing more readily than concrete processing.”
Le Corbusier – The Man, The Modernist, The Painter, The Nudist
“He redefined architecture for the 20th century, pioneered modernity, made radical urban utopias for the masses – and spent his last years nearly nude in a cabin inspired by human physiology.” (slide show)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.30.15
Bravo: Even the Whimsy At A Few Museums Is About Art
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-04-30
Too Mellifluous
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2015-04-30
So you want to see a show?
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-04-30
[ssba_hide]
Does The Tate Museum Have A Structural Problem?
“The relationship between Tate Britain and Modern, then, is really about what importance we give to old art and the concept of a national culture; and as it turns out, most people are more interested these days in the concept of internationalism and the culture of the contemporary, than what appears to be the stuffy, out-of-date world of narrow-minded nationalism; which is why almost 5.8 million visitors flocked to Tate Modern in 2014, and barely a quarter of that number made it to Tate Britain.”
How Did Storytelling Become So Devalued In “Good” Writing?
“Valuing the importance of the story is still considered unambitious, as though anyone could do it. I suspect the opposite: it is because writing a good story is so hard that it is such a tempting target, to be dismissed as a lower, populist skill. In the absence of a capacity, posit a principle.”
All Or Nothing: The Economic Reality Of Today’s Music Business
“The point is that while music is as lucrative as ever for those at the top, what’s diminished, as in so many jobs, is the comfortable middle, where once upon a time musicians who never quite hit the big time could nonetheless make their living: not super-rich, but doing fine and enjoying a certain stability. What we are left with now is a kind of all or nothing, in which you either scale the dizzy heights or languish forlornly at the bottom.”
LA’s Music Center Struggles As Dissention Mounts
“The … relationship the Music Center has with its resident companies is arm’s-length, remote, not collaborative. Each resident company is in its own little private world; collaboration is not encouraged.”
Hahaha, Heehee, Heh – How We Spell Laughter In Texts And Emails
Sarah Larson: “The terms of e-laughter – ‘ha ha,’ ‘ho ho,’ ‘hee hee,’ ‘heh’ – are implicitly understood by just about everybody. But, in recent years, there’s been an increasingly popular newcomer: ‘hehe.’ Not surprisingly, it’s being foisted upon us by youth. What does it mean?”