Sebastian Barry wins with On Canaan’s Side, which was up against hefty competition: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt, Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst, Pure by Andrew Miller and The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth.
Tag: 06.16.12
The 9/11 Museum Needs More Funding, Governors Say
“Amid the seemingly interminable wrangling over financing for the National September 11 Memorial Museum, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey sent a letter to the National Park Service on Saturday seeking federal money for the project.”
Eluding Censors, Chinese Authors Walk The Grey-Area Line
“They carefully calibrate what can be communicated in English but not in Chinese; in Hong Kong but not in Beijing; online but not in print; via allegory but not direct exposition. The tank-to-tractor substitution — as well as related techniques, like taking advantage of Chinese’s rich store of homophones to substitute a sound-alike anodyne term for a politically charged one — illustrates how the ever-present censorship machine turns Chinese writers into verbal acrobats. Put more bluntly, it forces them to lie to get their voices heard.”
Time For Cities To Stop Thinking Big And Start Thinking Doable
“Thinking small is the next logical step in America’s urban renaissance. When cities really started changing 10 or 15 years ago, the economy was booming and the Internet was a newfangled gizmo. Today, cities have less money but more ways to communicate, two conditions perfectly suited to more focused, low-cost planning. Now you can home in on a specific neighborhood (or even just a few blocks), find out what the residents there want or need, cheaply implement it on a trial basis, and make it permanent if it works.”
Rescuing (And Moving) A Mural With Digital Skill, And Paint
The L.A. mural’s original artist will use 120 digital frames to resize and repaint the mural smaller, and on a different side of the building, as developers destroy the old one.
Our Online Free Speech Remains At Risk – How Can We Protect It?
“Any attempt to regulate speech online — whether in service of ‘stopping piracy’ or ‘defending against cyberattack’ — must be ruthlessly interrogated for how it will be abused. Because it will be abused. Those with censorious impulses will push the four corners of the law as far as possible to silence speech they don’t like.”
That’s Sir Kenneth To You
Queen Elizabeth II knighted Kenneth Branagh and gave Kate Winslet an Order of the British Empire as part of her regular Birthday Honors. Branagh was excited to join the knighted actor side: “‘When I was a kid, I dreamed of pulling on a shirt for the Northern Ireland football team,’ said the Belfast-born, 51-year-old actor. ‘I could only imagine how proud you might feel. Today it feels like they just gave me the shirt, and my heart’s fit to burst.'”
The Rise Of The Very Young Maestro (And One Who Can Charm Audiences, And Donors)
“That is what conductors do: they concentrate the efforts and skills of an orchestra in one powerful individual, so that the paying public experiences the music, its emotional highs and soothing lows, through the personality of the maestro. [Gustavo] Dudamel, 31-year-old music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the leading US orchestras, fulfils that role better than most. He is the epitome of the 21st-century maestro – dynamic, articulate, media-friendly and, above all, young.”
A Court Case Could Dramatically Alter Fair Use For Artists
Museums across the country “argued that they would be forced to hire lawyers to investigate their collections for works containing borrowed images, and given the ubiquity of such images in 20th-century art, the cost to the museums would be unsustainable. The more likely, though no less troubling, alternative is for museums to censor what they exhibit.”
Classical Musicians Aren’t Exactly Known For Their Improvisation Skills
But could they start (re-)learning the skill?