“Self-actualization,” the noble-sounding top layer of Maslow’s hierarchy, in their model has not only been dethroned, it has been relegated to footnote status. It has been replaced at the top with a more mundane motivation Maslow didn’t even mention: “Parenting.”
Tag: 06.22.10
Japanese Cinemas Reconsider And Agree To Screen The Cove
“The Cove, an Oscar-winning film about a dolphin-hunting village in Japan, will be shown in the country from next month, despite pressure from nationalist groups that caused several theaters to cancel screenings.”
Speaking Of Recycling: Artist Makes Old CDs Into ‘Shining Sea Of Obsolescence’
Light artist Bruce Munro has laid out more than 600,000 discarded compact discs in a 10-acre field in Wiltshire, England, creating “an ocean of light that from one angle glows with a soft blue haze and from another, dazzles with the light of 600,000 mirrors.”
Accomplished Rare-Book Thief Convicted Again
“William Jacques, nicknamed ‘Tome Raider’ after stealing hundreds of rare books in the late 1990s, drew up a ‘thief’s shopping list’, targeting the most expensive books that he could access. He used a false name to sign in to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley library in London before hiding valuable books under his tweed jacket, Southwark Crown Court was told.”
America’s Poet-President
Robert Pinsky: “The United States has had a head of state who was also a great writer. Only Marcus Aurelius can compete with Abraham Lincoln.”
Polaroids Are Worth Millions (If They’re By Warhol And Ansel Adams)
“Sotheby’s sale of 1,200 photographs from the collection of the bankrupt Polaroid Corporation shook out and developed into a $12.47 million triumph.” An Ansel Adams image of a winter storm at Yosemite sold for $722,500; two Warhol self-portraits drew a total of more than $400,000; a Chuck Close self-portrait from 1987 went for $290,500.
Gas Station TV (As If The CNN Airport Network Weren’t Bad Enough)
“In your living room, the broadcast age is over. Remote controls, VCRs, DVRs, on-demand cable, videogame consoles, Netflix, and the Internet killed it. But at the gas pump, broadcast lives on in its purest, most potent form, like an ostensibly slain slasher movie villain who’s come back from the dead, stronger than ever. It is an awesome thing to behold.”
In Self-Publishing Trend, Readers At Risk Of Slush Fatigue
“What happens once the self-publishing revolution really gets going, when all of those previously rejected manuscripts hit the marketplace, en masse, in print and e-book form, swelling the ranks of 99-cent Kindle and iBook offerings by the millions? Is the public prepared to meet the slush pile?”
As B’way Caves To Market, How Should Artists Respond?
“Even many Broadwayites, it seems, find themselves unhappy with the way things are,” as response to this year’s Tony Awards indicates. “If Broadway is purely a business, as commercial theater’s defenders love to maintain, then clearly business as usual has some problems.”
Whither The Cultural Relevance Of Fiction?
“Without a doubt, the next male or female Hemingway, Faulkner or Fitzgerald is out there somewhere, hard at work. But with the exception of a few ambitious-and obsessively competitive-fiction writers and their agents and editors, no one goes to a current novel or story for the ineffable private and public clarity fiction once provided.”