“The alleged carjacker is strapped to a chair as the video stream goes live and a distorted voice is heard describing his crimes. Footage is then shown of an attack before the words ‘Guilty or Not Guilty? You Decide …’ flash up on screen alongside a website address. The verdict is overwhelmingly guilty and the man is killed by lethal injection while the camera is running.”
Tag: 09.05.16
Seven Stars Remember Their Mid-Dance Disasters
“Darcey Bussell was very friendly with the floor in rehearsals. Kevin Clifton’s Thriller-style tango tanked on live TV. And Thomas Whitehead got trapped in his ballerina’s underwear.” (And that ballerina was – uh-oh – Sylvie Guillem.)
Reason Won’t Make Life Meaningful, Argues Neuroscientist
Robert A. Burton: “Any philosophical approach to values and purpose must acknowledge this fundamental neurological reality: a visceral sense of meaning in one’s life is an involuntary mental state that, like joy or disgust, is independent from and resistant to the best of arguments. If philosophy is to guide us to a better life, it must somehow bridge this gap between feeling and thought.”
Master’s Program In Critical Theory Canceled By College Six Days Before Classes Start
“Six days before the start of the fall semester at Pacific Northwest College of Art [in Portland], a group of Master’s candidates and professors received an email from the dean of students informing them that their program was suspended and they would not be teaching or studying as planned.”
NYT Theatre Critic Charles Isherwood On The Art Of Being A Critic
In this podcast he discusses: Why we’ll never go back to making reviewers review the opening night performance.
What he thinks when he sees a quote from one of his reviews splashed on a marquee. Why Writers should NOT read his reviews. What he’s looking forward to this season. How he responds to “hate mail.”
This Linguist *Loves* What’s Happened To ‘Literally’
John McWhorter, as part of an interview with Renee Montagne on the ways English has always been changing: “[The word literally has become] something called a contronym. Contronyms, let’s face it, are neat. We should rejoice that our language has interesting little wrinkles as long as they don’t interfere with comprehension.”
We Owe Almost Everything About The Ways We Communicate Today To This Man
“Like today’s tech moguls, Guglielmo Marconi was heavily contested by some of his rivals. Like them, he rose above the fray by sheer determination, as well as talent, luck and vision. But more than any of today’s icons – more than Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and the rest – Marconi was uniquely at the center of the communication revolution of his time.”
Everyone’s Talking About Virtual Reality. So When Will It Really Be A Mainstream Thing?
“With VR, it feels like early days. It’s powerful, but it still requires standardization. Everyone needs to commit to a format. And there has to be one or two killer pieces of content that people who don’t yet own a device will be so interested in that they feel compelled to get one in order to get engaged. We haven’t seen that yet.”
Michel Butor, 89, Experimental French Novelist
“Mr. Butor objected to being characterized as a member of the nouveau roman movement, although he shared a publisher … [with] leading figures in the school. His novels shared certain characteristics with theirs – a cameralike detachment, an indifference to psychology, a preoccupation with physical details and the instability of human perception – but he took a more philosophical and political approach.”
Charge: Costs Of Arts Administration Have Gotten Out Of Hand
“The managerialism class in the arts have become somewhat like a self-serving class – a mafia, perhaps, in some people’s views – so they will fight tooth and nail to sustain their positions and their incomes.” An Arts Council England spokeswoman said it took fair pay for artists “very seriously”, and stressed that portfolio organisations who failed to pay them properly could lose their funding.