“A pair of Irish researchers conducted a sophisticated statistical analysis of three canonical texts, and concluded they give plausibly realistic portraits of their respective societies–once you remove certain obviously fantastical elements, and assume certain characters are actually composites.”
Tag: 07.24.12
Philly Pops Will Keep Founder Peter Nero For One More Season
“Peter Nero has prevailed. His lawyers successfully beat back a move to oust the Grammy Award-winning pianist and conductor as head of the Philly Pops. Nero, 78, … will stay on the podium through the end of the 2012-13 season,” and the final year of his contract has been bought out.
Turnaround At Vancouver Opera, Which Ended Season With Surplus
“After weathering a tough season of shortfalls and layoffs, Vancouver Opera is back in the black – to the tune of a cool half-million.”
Actor Blinded On Stage Sues Donmar Warehouse For £250,000
“David John Birrell was playing Colonel Ricci in the Donmar’s production of Sondheim’s Passion in October 2010, when a replica Colt 1851 Navy revolver misfired during a matinee, shooting debris into his right eye.”
Bob Saget On Aggressive Comedians
“I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years, and I’ll come out on stage and attack a helpless person for no reason. Just to set the tone. Andy Kaufman would do the same thing, in a jazzy-mime sort of way. He would attack someone, and then apologize. And then attack again. That is the genetics for a lot of people who take the stage.”
Ballerinas On The Baseball Diamond
Dancers from the Brooklyn Ballet and a local hip-hop troupe took to the field between innings at the Coney Island home of the minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones “and twirled, leapt and generally offered the fans a sort of graceful athleticism absent from the baseball diamond on all but the most exceptional of plays.”
The Paris Neighborhood That Loves Graffiti
“In recent years, the city’s 20th arrondissement has been deliberately positioning itself as a graffiti mecca. A traditionally working-class district whose population has more recently included immigrants and artists, the 20th is now a few years into a campaign that aims to ‘develop urban culture at the heart of the neighborhood,’ meaning graffiti, or as they call it in Paris, le graff.”
In Defense Of Stephen King – On Literary Grounds
“What we call ‘genre fiction’ … strips away the usual and familiar contexts of our lives and replaces them with radically simplified environments: a small crew on a spaceship, a detective trying to stop a killer before he can reach another victim … It is often said that such situations are unrealistic. This is incorrect; it conflates the unrealistic with the uncommon. People do confront such utterly decisive moments: A theater full of people in Aurora, Colorado confronted one quite recently.”
The Capital Of The Tango Is… Finland?
“The five-day festival has been going for nearly 30 years and attracts over 100,000 tango-mad Finns. And there are all sorts here. Men in sandals, cut-off denim shorts and cowboy hats. An elderly couple in matching shell suits. Women wearing leopard-print and polka-dot dresses – and there is a lot of leather.”
How The First Satellite Changed Our Sense Of Who We Are
“It wasn’t actually the first satellite broadcast but because it was seen by so many people when it was on, it had a tremendous impact on people’s perception of distance and extension of their consciousness. Suddenly you could see across the ocean as easily as you could make a phone call.”