“Everything we know about war we know with ‘a man’s voice.’ We are all captives of ‘men’s’ notions and ‘men’s’ sense of war. ‘Men’s’ words. Women are silent. No one but me ever questioned my grandmother. My mother. Even those who were at the front say nothing. If they suddenly begin to remember, they don’t talk about the ‘women’s’ war, but about the ‘men’s.'”
Tag: 07.27.17
Finland, Land Of Bizarre Sports
The wife-carrying race is only the beginning: there’s swamp soccer, competitive hobby horse, cell-phone tossing, and the Mosquito Killing World Championship. Among others. Why? “Finns offer various deep-seated factors, including an enthusiastically outdoorsy populace (that goes slightly stir-crazy during the region’s oppressively dark winter months), widespread public access to recreational spaces, and a continuing relaxation of the traditionally reserved national character. (Also, alcohol.)”
How Today’s Art Market Became Today’s Art Market
Jeffrey Deitch: “One of the biggest misunderstandings of this is that somehow there’s the art market and then there’s, let’s say, the ‘good’ part of the art world,” such as non-profit organizations or museums, with their educational mission.
Do Dance Companies Pay Enough Attention To Dancers’ Mental Health?
“The same drive to succeed that make so many ballet students great may also predispose them to depression. And yet, as a dance writer, when I call up so many of the great training institutions in this country to ask for an interview with the psychologist they refer their dancers to, they can’t produce one.”
Data: Online Ticket-Buyers Are More Likely To Donate
The average percentage of online ticketing transactions that included donations was 15% last year, while only 3% who booked tickets over the counter or on the phone added a donation to their transactions. Of these, concert hall attenders were the most likely to donate online (19%) but among the least likely to donate by phone or in person (1%).
How Academic Writing Gets To Be Meaningless
“The use of words without fixed or clear meanings is a major part of what makes academic writing so terrible. People often complain that academic writing is “obscure” or overly convoluted and complex. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with either complexity or obscurity in themselves; research papers in the sciences have to be complex and technical, and introducing people to obscure and unfamiliar words or concepts can be a key part of developing human knowledge. The problem largely comes when words are vague and unclear, admitting of many possible interpretations.”
So Banksy’s Balloon Girl Was Voted “Best-Loved” Art Work In Britain? OMG
Under its fake radicalism, Banksy’s Girl with Balloon is the kind of sentimental tosh our great grandparents too would have voted as Britain’s best-loved. Its kitsch pathos resembles one of the most popular Victorian images, John Everett Millais’ painting Bubbles, a picture of a child blowing bubbles used as an advert for Pear’s Soap. Today we laugh at it and sneer at them for liking such soppy stuff. Imagine how future generations will mock us for sanctifying Banksy, the Boaty McBoatface of modern art.
Poet Ocean Vuong On Translation, Success, And Optimism In This Moment
Vuong says that it’s far more common to be from a poor background than a middle-class one, but the literary world doesn’t seem to know it. “The fact of the matter is that displacement, immigration and war are some of the most common factors of human history, so I always insist with a little mischievousness that I’m writing something very normal, very common. In fact, perhaps the middle class story is the exotic.”
To Avoid Stepping Into The Shoes Of A Former ‘Hamilton’ Actor, Mandy Patinkin Steps Down From ‘Great Comet’
Will the move, which Patinkin said he made because he agreed that the choice was one that wasn’t good for actors of color, cause yet more ticket sales problems for “Great Comet,” which has struggled since musician Josh Groban stepped down?
Marshall McLuhan’s Ideas Only Become More Relevant As Time Goes On
“The splintering of traditional media, the hostility of contemporary politics, the ways in which modern technology pulls us together while at the same time driving us apart – if you look, you’ll find traces of it in McLuhan’s work, which explored subjects ranging from pop culture to mass media to the ways in which technology would affect our ways of communication, decades before cellphones or the Internet. He was an avatar of the future, ironic considering his own, pessimistic view of things”