“Over the next week, four New York Times critics – Roberta Smith, Ben Brantley, A. O. Scott and Alastair Macaulay – will chat about the role of shock in art: how it works, how it has changed and why it’s still necessary. Jennifer Schuessler moderates.”
Tag: 09.19.12
When Grown-Ups Have Separation Anxiety (This, Too, Is A Brain Issue)
“When we are scanning for signs of danger in a relationship – such as abandonment – our brain often can’t distinguish between a real or imagined risk … The way we learn to respond to the threat of abandonment as young children actually changes the wiring of our brains.”
London’s Menier Chocolate Factory Gives Dynamic Ticket Pricing A Try
The theatre “has introduced a pricing system offering tickets that are cheaper the earlier they are bought. Under what the Southwark venue is calling its ‘dynamic pricing structure’, the theatre is also offering higher priced ‘premier seats’ located in the centre of the auditorium.”
The Emoticon Turns Twenty
“Twenty years ago today, Scott E. Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, posted an electronic message on a university bulletin board system suggesting that a colon, a minus sign and a parenthesis be used to convey a joking tone.”
Why Architects Shouldn’t Decide What Our Cities Look Like
“Architecture, the most public of endeavours, is practised by people who inhabit a smugly hermetic milieu which is cultish.”
Nostalgia For The Video Store
“Like trawling between shelves at a bookshop, there was something about cruising down to the video store — the inevitable bickering about which movie to get (“We’ll never watch five movies in three days!”), the sniggering over the hilariously bad triple-X titles, and the secret longing that all five copies of Batman Begins weren’t already out.”
European E-Book Prices Should Drop After EU Edict
Ebook prices in the UK are set to plummet after the European Commission said that four major publishers and Apple “engaged in a concerted practice” to raise the price of ebooks, and required them to stop.
Bin Laden Book “No Easy Day” Bumps “Shades Of Grey” From Atop Bestseller List (After 20 Weeks)
“It bumped Fifty Shades of Grey from the top spot. USA Today also reports that the print run, which was originally set at 300,000 copies, was increased to 575,000. Interestingly, e-books of the memoir are not selling as well as hardcover copies.”
Papyrus Fragment Suggests Jesus Of Nazareth Had A Wife
“A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: ‘Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’.”
Dominique Hervieu Starts Transforming The Lyon Dance Biennial
The veteran choreographer, directing her first festival, “decided to increase spending on new works and on education programs, and compensate by reducing the number of shows (35 compared with 40 in 2010). She has also extended the biennial beyond Lyon to neighboring towns, which, she said, cuts costs and reaches new audiences.”