“In what began as a one-year experiment last summer, the New York pubcaster [WNET] carved out regular time slots for fundraising programs on its flagship channel, ending the campaign-style drives that go on for weeks. With pledge confined to a limited number of slots – including Thursday primetime and weekends – the station also changed how it communicated with viewers and members about fundraising.”
Tag: 08.22.17
‘The Red Wheel’, Solzhenitsyn’s Eight-Volume Epic Of The Russian Revolution, To Be Published In English For First Time
“While Solzhenitsyn came up with the idea of The Red Wheel in the 1930s, he did not begin the first part, August 1914, until 1969. While the first and second – November 1916 – have previously been translated into English, the following six volumes have never been released in English before.”
BBC Names The 100 Greatest Movie Comedies Of All Time
“We asked 253 film critics – 118 women and 135 men – from 52 countries and six continents a simple: ‘What do you think are the 10 best comedies of all time?’ Films from any country made since cinema was invented were eligible, and BBC Culture did nothing to define in advance what a comedy is; we left that to each of the critics to decide.” (And by the way, Airplane! wuz robbed.)
Do Male And Female Critics Find Different Films Funny?
Not really, indicates an analysis of the votes in the BBC’s critics’ poll of the 100 greatest movie comedies: while ranking may have differed a bit, the titles were largely similar (with a few unsurprising exceptions, such as Clueless versus Animal House).
Different Countries Definitely Disagree On Which Films Are Funniest
In the BBC’s list of the 100 greatest movie comedies, the French would not go for Woody Allen, the Americas pulled for Airplane!, Eastern Europe liked Dr. Strangelove as much as the U.S. did, East Asia preferred silent movies, and Bollywood comedy didn’t translate beyond the Subcontinent.
The Personal Essay – Inelegant Language As A Badge Of… Well, Something
“For a certain breed of personal essayist at work today, there exists a necessary and desirable trade-off between aesthetic clarity and moral complexity; a bargain premised on the depressing notion that words are always insufficient to the task at hand and so we may as well stop trying to choose the clearest or most precise ones. The adjective that best captures the conditions of this bargain is messy.”
Study: People Pay More Attention To High-Volume Of Reviews Rather Than To Quality Reviews
“Across various combinations of average rating and number of reviews, participants routinely chose the option with more reviews. This bias was so strong that they often favored the more-reviewed phone case even when both of the options had low ratings, effectively choosing the product that was, in statistical terms, more likely to be low quality.”
Brain-Damaged Former Violin Star Makes Music Again Through Brain Waves Linked To Computer
“In a groundbreaking project led by Plymouth University and the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in London, her brain was linked to a computer using Brain Computer Music Interfacing software, allowing her to compose and play music again. This month, for the first time she was able to perform with her best friend Alison Balfour, with whom she last played when they were both violinists in the Welsh National Opera Orchestra in the 1980s.”
Man Sold £30,000 In Fake Artworks. Not Very Good Fakes As It Turns Out…
“Richard Pearson, 56, from Sunderland, was jailed in January for selling 14 faked drawings and pictures to a gallery in Northumberland. He admitted fraud and forgery charges and was sentenced to three years and seven months. Suspicions were aroused when a restorer noticed that one of the canvases Pearson used was too new. A price on a receipt he claimed was from the 1960s was also spotted to be in decimal pounds and pence, rather than pounds and shillings, and a telephone number he used was too long.”
No, Essays Right Now Are Too Self-Revelatory And Might Even Be Just Bad
One way is “all rhyme and no reason,” mannered and polished, filled with self-revelation; the other is “so circumspect in … claims to self-knowledge that a reader grown used to the personal essay’s relentless flash of exposure might wonder what kind of shy, self-effacing creature produced [it].”