08.24.15 – Page 2 – ArtsJournal Wayback

Leftist Literary Journals Funded By The CIA, Ranked

Oh yes, it’s true. After all, “in much of Europe in the 1950s, socialists, people who called themselves ‘left’ – the very people whom many Americans thought no better than Communists – were about the only people who gave a damn about fighting Communism.” Consequently, “the CIA became a major player in intellectual life during the Cold War.”

Ever Wanted To Spend Your Vacation Running A Bookstore? Now’s Your Chance

The Open Book shop in Scotland’s ‘national book town’ of Wigtown has been listed on room-letting website AirBnB offering wordy holidaymakers the chance to work a 40-hour week selling books and customising the store with their ‘own stamp’.”

Reporter Wants More Impact For His Blockbuster Story, So He Turns To Theatre

“Assassination Theater, now in a run at the Museum of Broadcast Communications, is a provocative multimedia history lesson dressed up as a docudrama. An engrossing, rapid-fire exposé of “Chicago’s role in the crime of the century,” with tourist-attraction aspirations, it seeks to build on the dicey thing our city’s best known for but usually tries to ditch—its legendary status as a hub of organized crime.”

The NYT Says Data Shows The Creative Class Economy Is Thriving? Not So Fast…

“Steven Johnson’s article “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t” frames itself as a data-driven response to concerns about the plight of creative workers in the digital age. But Johnson’s grasp of the limitations of the data he cites seems tenuous, and he ends up relying on some very dubious and all-too-familiar assumptions. In its sweeping dismissal of artists’ various concerns, the article reads as an exercise in gaslighting.”

The New Creative Economy? Don’t Believe The Hype!

“One thing you find if you talk to people who work in culture is that those lacking family money, tenure, or celebrity status are pushing up against very serious limits in the entrepreneurial, tech-mad, post-recession world. The Times story mocks these struggles rather than trying to understand them. Don’t believe the hype.”

Seven Tips For People Seeing Their First Ballet, Opera, Or Theater Performance

The Arizona Republic‘s suggestions range from the actually useful (genuinely practical advice on what to wear) to the worryingly obvious (“Don’t sing along”).

Mario Vargas Llosa Slams NYT Book Review For ‘Slanderous And Perfidious’ ‘Gossip’

At the end of his review of Notes on the Death of Culture, Joshua Cohen wrote that the Nobel laureate had announced his new romantic relationship on Twitter and sold an exclusive about it to a Spanish gossip magazine. Vargas Llosa has never had a Twitter account. Cohen says he got the info from The Daily Mail. Oops.

Are The Social Sciences Ultimately Futile? The Problem With P-Values

“In research, the p-value represents the odds that your finding is a fluke, a coincidence, nothing more than a chance occurrence. In p-values, as in golf, lower is better. … And yet it says almost nothing about the size or strength of a result.” If the results of research can always be a fluke, why bother? The problem lies in what we expect from science.

When Wildfire Smoke Pours Into Town, The Shakespeare Festival Has A Problem

“Each evening, a couple hours before shows begin, the smoke team gathers in the Festival’s outdoor theater, armed with a weather forecast and other pertinent information about the air quality. The team uses the old standard ‘Can we see the mountains across the valley?’ trick, in addition to objective data from Oregon’s color-coded smoke reports, an air quality station on top of one of the theaters, and a handheld monitor that gives real-time measures backstage.”

Tag: 08.24.15