“By the time she entered Vassar she was the fully formed person she would be for the rest of her life: beautiful and brilliant, possessed of an eye protected against sentiment coupled with a steel-trap mind and a tongue feared by all who had been at the receiving end of its talented sarcasm … She married straight out of college in 1933, came to live in New York, soon got divorced, rented a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village, and began her life.”
Tag: 06.17.13
‘Orphaned’ Cézanne Turns Up In Ottawa
“The count of the known dispersed holdings of the French dealer and collector Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) has just increased by one. Group of Trees, 1890, a watercolour by Paul Cézanne, has surfaced at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.”
YouTube Is Not Destroying Classical Music (Despite What Krystian Zimerman Thinks)
Zimerman may complain that all those free videos on the Web have cost him recording contracts, but Valentina Lisitsa’s career has skyrocketed thanks to the following her videos developed. “The moral of the story … Treat YouTube with hostility and you risk missing the party you so desperately need to attend.”
A Buddhist Monk Confronts Suicide In Japan
“Larissa MacFarquhar … talks with Sasha Weiss about the culture of suicide in Japan and how Ittetsu Nemoto’s belief in suffering as a path to self-knowledge has prepared him to help the suicidal.”
Canadian Opera Company Attendance Is Down – To 90%
“In 2011/12, the COC had 91 per cent attendance over 67 performances and the 2010/11 season saw attendance of 94 per cent over 66 performances.” The season just ended “achieved 90 per cent attendance throughout the season, which featured seven productions and 61 performances.”
How Caffeine Can Short-Circuit Creativity (Uh-Oh)
“We do know that much of what we associate with creativity – whether writing a sonnet or a mathematical proof – has to do with the ability to link ideas, entities, and concepts in novel ways. This ability depends in part on the very thing that caffeine seeks to prevent: a wandering, unfocussed mind.”
They’d Watch Paint Dry: Norwegians Just Love Their Incredibly Boring Television
“Norway’s love affair with slow-moving shows dates back at least to 2009, when an NRK employee suggested putting a camera on top of a train as it made the seven-hour trip from the capital Oslo to the west coast town of Bergen. It was an immediate success.”
Researchers Create New Copyright Protection That Changes Words In Your E-Book
“German researchers have created a new DRM feature that changes the text and punctuation of an e-book ever so slightly. Called SiDiM, which Google translates to “secure documents by individual marking,” the changes are unique to each e-book sold. These alterations serve as a digital watermark that can be used to track books that have had any other DRM layers stripped out of them before being shared online.”
Canada’s National Theatre School Faces An Identity Crisis
“Is the National Theatre School of Canada on its way to becoming the national theatre school of francophone Quebec?”
Broadway Has A Great Week, Basking In Tony Glow
“Summer tourism and the PR boost of the Tony Awards combined to land 11 Broadway shows in the millionaires’ club last week, with the four trophies scored by “Pippin” helping that revival to break the $1 million barrier for the first time.”