Carlos Slim: “People are going to have to work for more years, until they are 70 or 75, and just work three days a week – perhaps 11 hours a day.” Other business icons, among them Google co-founder Larry Page, think similarly. Is this a practical idea? Possibly …
Tag: 07.21.14
Star Wars Wars, Or, The Problem With Film Preservation
“To preserve film as a work of art, one has to preserve ‘not just (but also) the strip, not just (but also) the apparatus, not just (but also) the screening space; what needs to be transmitted into the future is the set of relations between them while they are in performance—the working system.'”
How On Earth Does One Illustrate “Finnegans Wake”?
“The book is sui generis, a circle in a spiral, a linguistic Escher drawing … So when John Vernon Lord was asked to illustrated the book for the Folio Society it is no surprise that he found the experience ‘bewildering’.” But he seems to have pulled it off.
The World Around Us Shapes the Delusions Inside Us
“The current view of delusions is that they are the result of biology gone awry, of neurons in the brain misfiring, but [Joel and Ian Gold] argue that delusions are in fact the result of the interaction between the brain and the social world.” (audio)
Hollywood’s Favorite Non-Dance-Movie Choreographer
“If you’ve seen a movie in the last 20 years, chances are you know the choreographer Marguerite Derricks’s work, if not her name. Austin Powers’s epic go-go dance through the streets? Ms. Derricks’s idea. Abigail Breslin’s climactic strip routine in Little Miss Sunshine? Ms. Derricks was just off camera, encouraging Ms. Breslin to claw like a tiger. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s tango in Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Well, Ms. Derricks was Ms. Jolie’s first partner.”
Do Creative Geniuses *Have* To Be Nuts?
“Neuroscientist and literary scholar Nancy C. Andreasen tries to answer the question: If high IQ does not indicate creative genius, then where does the trait come from, and why is it so often accompanied by mental illness?” (audio)
Ian McKellen Calls For Living Wage For Actors
“Most actors are not rich – they are very poor indeed. … The one thing you can ask, I think, is that actors get paid a living wage. I would like it if all the repertory theatres that currently exist could do that. It would make a huge difference.”
Japanese “Vagina Artist” Released From Jail Following Arrest On Obscenity Charges
Megumi Igarishi, a 42-year-old sculptor and illustrator who uses the professional name Rokudenashiko (roughly “little good-for-nothing”), spent a week in custody after being arrested for distributing obscene materials. She had sent contributors to a crowdfunding campaign a file for 3D printer that would produce a replica of her vagina.
Stop Trying To Get Our Kids Into The Ivy League: The Stress Is Wrecking Them, And The Schools Are Overrated
“Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.”
Fending Off Murdoch, Time Warner Strips Shareholders Of Right To Call Meetings
“The move gives shareholders – and 21st Century Fox – fewer avenues to press the company into a potential deal with Fox, which recently made an unsolicited $80 billion offer to combine the companies.”