NJ Performing Arts Center Beefs Up Programming

“The venue wasn’t programming its nearly 3,000-seat main stage during the better part of the week. So simply adding more shows to the lineup was one of the first items on the to-do list of president and CEO John Schreiber, who took over in July 2011. ‘There was a canard out there that people didn’t want to come to Newark during the week. That’s not true,’ he said.”

Why Internet Trolls Troll (And Precisely What Is Trolling, Anyway?)

“Given … the push for legislation to combat such behaviors (despite the fact that no one can seem to agree on exactly which behaviors the category of ‘trolling’ subsumes), it is critical to interrogate where the term comes from and the ways in which discussions of trolling butt up against questions of anonymity, safety, and aggression online.”

Dan Stevens – Proof That Life Isn’t Fair

The Downton Abbey heartthrob “is good-looking, intellectually gifted, charming, witty, adept at being unassuming, and doesn’t look ridiculous in his newsboy cap. While at Cambridge University, which he attended on scholarship, he got the first break of his career – playing Macbeth opposite Rebecca Hall, the daughter of celebrated stage director Sir Peter Hall.”

Explaining Hilary Mantel

“What sort of person writes fiction about the past? It is helpful to be acquainted with violence, because the past is violent. It is necessary to know that the people who live there are not the same as people now. It is necessary to understand that the dead are real, and have power over the living. It is helpful to have encountered the dead firsthand, in the form of ghosts.” (Mantel is all these things and more.)