“Over the next decade, new implantable technologies will fundamentally alter the social landscape. We are fast approaching a milestone in the eons-long relationship between human beings and their technology. … Simply put, prosthetic limbs help people move, and neural implants help people think.” But these devices “may not only erase physical or mental deficits but leave patients better off than ‘able-bodied’ folks.”
Tag: 06.02.12
Funds To Bail Out Artists
“It turns out that a number of small, private rescue funds have been lending a hand to a group that is definitely not in the too-big-to-fail camp: writers, artists and other creative types. Think of these funds as sort of a TARP for the arts crowd, only with much smaller dollar figures, and with little or no help from Washington.”
Annie Liebovitz, Portrait Photographer Extraordinaire, Has A New Book With No People In It
“‘It was great to be in rooms without people, like a meditation of sorts,’ she says. ‘I think of the great society portrait painter Wright of Derby who at the end of his life finished up painting cow pastures because he’d just had it with people. I do think we all head there.'”
Turkey Charges Pianist For His Tweets
“A court [in Istanbul] on Friday charged Fazil Say, a classical and jazz pianist with an international career, with insulting Islamic values in Twitter messages, the latest in a series of legal actions against Turkish artists, writers and intellectuals for statements they have made about religion and Turkish national identity.”
Vampires: They’re Not About Sex (They’re Actually About Death)
‘Every vampire story has its day or, I guess, its night. But there’s a longer history here, too. In the 18th century, when Barnabas Collins and Lestat became vampires, the shape and length of life were different. So was death. When Abraham Lincoln was born, the average age of the United States population was 16, and life expectancy was under 40. Two centuries later, the average American can expect to live to nearly 80. Living longer hasn’t made dying any easier; arguably, it’s made it harder.”
Leverage Means Everything In Ballet – And Life
Andile Ndlovu, of the Washington Ballet: “I am really fortunate to have bigger hands to help stabilize my partner. I always think about what the correct leverage is going to be. Developing the wisdom to apply the right leverage in the right place at the right time is what training and even life is about.”
Director Steps In As Injured Actor Bows Out
Actor/director Samuel West happened to be in the audience during a Saturday matinee when one of his actors had to leave the stage after a fall from a ladder. Naturally, he stepped in.
Open Submission Makes For Fabulous Art Shows In London
“When I first visited in the 1970s, it seemed old-fashioned; among today’s ubiquitous white cube displays and curator-led, thematic shows, the abundance and randomness look radical. What museum curator now would dare present, say, as artist Alison Wilding has in the sculpture galleries, some hundred works assembled as if they had just fallen off a lorry into a storeroom?”
Sound Dude For Shakespeare (And Everybody Else, Too)
“For all his scavenger skills,[Todd] Barton hopes he doesn’t distract audiences. ‘I don’t want you going out humming tunes, because then I’ve brought too much attention to myself,’ he says. ‘I’m vodka. I enhance whatever you put with me. If you put lemons in vodka you get essence of lemon. If you put a play in me, I enhance the story, propel the plot.'”