“I was interested that the president said he discussed the subject of same-sex marriage with his daughters. Their acceptance of the same-sex parents of some of their classmates was so automatic and total that their very ease convinced him that same-sex marriage was inevitable … Which shows something that anthropologists have known a long time: That innovative behavior comes from children, is passed to their mothers and recognized by their fathers last of all. This rule of innovation holds true throughout the primate world.”
Tag: 05.09.12
Regifting Is Officially OK (Research Says So!)
“Regifting is often presented as synonymous with tackiness, but the taboo on the practice is partly the result of a misunderstanding: Recipients of gifts think the givers are far more offended by regifting than they truly are. Givers assume that they’ve passed on ‘title’ to the gift and that recipients can do what they wish with it. Receivers, meanwhile, feel constrained by the giver’s original wishes.”
New Art Is Gradually Becoming Less Appropriate(d)
Artists who appropriate images (those not in the public domain) have been facing ever-increasing legal headaches. (Exhibit A: Shepard Fairey.) Appropriators often cite the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons as justification. It turns out that those artists may have begun as copyright outlaws, but they ultimately decided that securing rights was more than worth the trouble.
Writer Defends Amazon, Sees Big Opportunities In Publishing Revolution
“One, we have choices now that we didn’t have before, now that industry gatekeepers no longer control the sole means of distributing books in the digital-forward era. Two, publishing is a business, not an ideology,” and as such, innovation shouldn’t be frozen in place to keep brick-and-mortar booksellers afloat. And three, Amazon is not the great Satan.”
What Non-Profit Arts Might Learn From For-Profits
“Suggesting to the nonprofit sector they might learn something by studying the habits of their for-profit brethren is a bit like suggesting a priest might want to learn something from a rock and roll promoter. It upsets people. But who knows? Maybe the priest should take a gander at the fellow in the next auditorium.”
Study: Music Training For Infants Helps Development
“After participation in active music classes, infants showed much lower levels of distress when confronted with novel stimuli than after participation in passive music classes.”
NY City Ballet May Be Getting Too Pricey For Its Summer Hosts In Saratoga
“As the cost of hosting a two-week New York City Ballet season approaches the 2008 price of a three-week season, Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s outgoing chairman this morning hinted that the organization may need to turn to other ballet companies to fill next year’s season.”
Roman Polanski To Make Dreyfus Affair Film
“Roman Polanski, a director who has had extensive personal experience with a justice system he and supporters believe wronged him, will make a movie about another exceptionally high-profile trial: the Dreyfus affair” – a story he has reportedly wanted to film for many years. (Please tell us Polanski doesn’t identify.)
British Playwright Wishes UK Theatre Were More Like Germany’s
Simon Stephens: “British playwrights have tended to fall into two camps in the past 15 years: the type that succeeds on Broadway and the type that succeeds in Berlin. This is a gross simplification, of course … [but] I suspect there is something in it. Over the past decade my failure to have work produced in New York has been only consoled by the fact that I’ve managed to work in Germany. Something about this makes me happy.”
Ex-Royal Academy Of Music Staffers Admit Embezzling
“A former finance director and head of IT at the Royal Academy of Music have been charged with stealing more than £630,00 between them in unrelated deceptions.”