Tag: 08.11.14

Curators Trash-Talking At The Smithsonian Summer Showdown

A bracket-style competition by public vote to choose the Smithsonian Institution’s “most iconic” object has led to a barrage of competitive tweeting and Photoshopping, as a Pullman train car races against the original “Star-Spangled Banner” flag, and a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton battles the National Zoo’s young panda (“Bao Bao may be small, but at least she’s not extinct.”) and the space shuttle Discovery (“What is black and white AND has been to space? Not Bao Bao.”).

Publisher Of Harper’s Stands Firm In Defense Of Online Paywall And Dead-Tree Magazine

When a group of young people demanded that John R. MacArthur make Harper’s available for free online, “what he told them was ‘essentially, forget it.’ The web, to him, ‘wasn’t much more than a gigantic Xerox machine’ designed to rob publishers and writers. He was mocked as neo-Luddite. But the fight only hardened his convictions, which are reflected monthly in his magazine.”

Robin Williams Dead At 63 In Apparent Suicide

“The Juilliard-trained actor and uncontainably exhibitionist comic who became one of the most dazzling all-around talents in show business … was found dead Aug. 11 at his home in Tiburon, Calif. He was 63 … The cause of death was [apparently] suicide due to asphyxia … His media agent said he had been battling depression.” (includes slide show and video clips)

The Tragedy Of Robin Williams’s Career

David Edelstein: “He never found a form that would capture the genius of his stand-up act or his early appearances on The Tonight Show, when his mind worked faster than anyone alive and very possibly dead, when he seemed to be channeling a fleet of circling UFOs containing the galaxy’s best comedy writers.”

Seeing The One Thing That Made Robin Williams Happy (Remembering A Day In The Recording Studio)

Dahlia Lithwick: “I was aware that I was in the presence of a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime talent who could not even for a moment settle down enough to breathe himself in. For the few minutes that he was himself, talking to me, he was this sweet gentle, big-hearted guy. But he was happiest doing the voices. And you see this quality in everything he ever did, including an interview about his history of addiction where he only really seems happy when he is doing the British, the French, and the Italians.”

What Does Anna Karenina Look Like? How We Visualize What We Read

“Most authors wittingly or unwittingly provide their fictional characters with more behavior than physical description. Even if an author excels at physical description, we are left with shambling concoctions of stray body parts and random detail. We fill in gaps. We shade them in. We gloss over them. We elide. Our mental sketches of characters are worse than police composites.”

Amazon Exhorts Readers To Write Hachette CEO – And Misuses George Orwell in The Process

“Just to make sure the letter writers stayed on message, Amazon offered a list of talking points. The first one … was, ‘We have noted your illegal collusion,’ always an icebreaker in these circumstances.” Amazon’s post went on to say, citing a truncated quote, “Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion.” That just isn’t so.

Opera Lovers Are Divided Over Met’s Labor Issues – And Some Just Don’t Wanna Hear About It

“Several expressed dismay that opera, which at its best offers not just escapism but also catharsis, is becoming mired in a polarizing, all-too-real postdownturn conflict.” Said one Pittsburgh fan, “When people go to the opera, those of us that love opera want to be transported. … This is really like taking away the magic. We just want to go and love it.”