“[In] engaging with a host of environmental technologies and issues,” the Plastiki – a solar-powered sailing ship built from 12,500 plastic bottles – “also mirrors a broad cultural shift in design’s focus. Design now exists less to shape objects than to produce solutions. Instead of creating a desire and designing an object to fulfill it, a designer spotlights a problem or need and solves it.”
Tag: 06.02.10
Collecting First Editions Of Books Is ‘A Kind Of Madness”
Samuel Pepys once “bought a copy of the second edition of the scientist Robert Boyle’s Origin of Formes, and charitably sent his old copy of the first edition to his brother, as if it were a pair of left-off shoes. To us, ‘first edition’ sounds like ‘diamond ring’, something inherently valuable. That is why Sotheby’s is getting excited at the prospect of auctioning 3,000 books from a secret collector in the autumn.”
Cincinnati Ballet Dancer Gets His Visa Renewed
“The Immigration Service had delayed visa renewal and has asked for specific evidence that [Liang] Fu has achieved ‘distinction’ through a high level of achievement in his field, substantially above that ordinarily encountered, and an explanation of why an American dancer could not bring the same ability to the stage as Fu.”
What Happens When The Paris Review Launches A Blog
Sportswriting, that’s what. “The Paris Review softball juggernaut marches on. The Vanity Fair team, who call themselves–no joke–the Veefers, put up a strong fight, but could find barely a chink in our defensive armor, and our bats warmed up in time to afford the Parisians a comfortable margin of victory.”
In Pages Of Haaretz, Novelists Write About Israeli News
“The invitations to Margaret Atwood, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Jonathan Safran Foer, Milan Kundera and others had already been scheduled to celebrate the nation’s book week. Book week it may be, but it is also a week that sees Israel facing international scrutiny over the deaths of nine activists attempting to bring aid to Gaza by boat.”
How The Online Experience Scatters Our Minds
“The idea that the brain is a kind of zero sum game — that the ability to read incoming text messages is somehow diminishing our ability to read Moby Dick — is not altogether self-evident. Why can’t the mind simply become better at a whole variety of intellectual tasks?” The author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” “says it really has to do with practice.”
Moviegoer’s Surprise: Peak Viewing Charges At The Cinema
“Theaters have long charged less for matinees and early morning screenings, but charging a higher ticket price to watch a movie in the film-going equivalent of prime time is a newer and less consumer-friendly trend.” Especially when a film that draws an audience of two dozen people costs $16 on a Sunday afternoon.
James DePreist To Shepherd Troubled Pasadena Symphony/Pops
In the wake of the abrupt departure of longtime music director Jorge Mester, the orchestra “has hired an artistic advisor – and, for two October concerts, a conductor – in James DePreist, who led the Oregon Symphony for more than 20 years and is current director of conducting and orchestral studies at the Juilliard School in New York City.”
Trove Of Rare 19th-Century Books Could Fetch Millions At Auction
“A ‘magnificent’ collection of first edition books is expected to fetch up to £15m when it goes under the hammer later this year.” The collection “includes a copy of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol complete with author’s inscription, … first editions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Pride and Prejudice, as well as important works by Charles Darwin, Chaucer and Milton..”
To Avoid Getting Sued, Apologize (Is That All It Takes?)
Studies by an Illinois professor of law and psychology indicate “that apologies can potentially help resolve legal disputes ranging from injury cases to wrongful firings, giving wounded parties a sense of justice and satisfaction that promotes settlements and trims demands for damages.”