“The Thompson/Shannons are the anti-Kardashians – an unprivileged and guileless family that gets along. … They’re not in denial of their problems, but they’re not defined by them, either. … Their antics offer a counterweight to the jealousy, striving, and backstabbing of the Housewives. And they defy the tropes assigned to their many female reality-show peers: the slut, the fame-seeker, the betrayer.”
Tag: (includes
Ai Weiwei Launches His Rock Star Career With ‘Dumbass’
“The Chinese artist … has always had something of the rock star about him. Now his hotly anticipated musical debut has finally emerged blinking into the glare of international attention: the self-proclaimed heavy metal single ‘Dumbass'” – complete with video by superstar cinematographer Christopher Doyle.
Analogies Aren’t Just SAT Questions; They’re Fundamental To The Way We Think
“Is analogy the core of cognition? Yes. Is analogy irrational, subjective and concrete? Yes indeed, but it is also the underpinning of rationality, objectivity and abstraction. Analogy is not a rare luxury of thought or an exotic, remote corner of cognition. Analogy is the entire transport system of thought, including motorways, roads and trails.”
Pilobolus Dances With Drones
Company executive director Itamar Kubovy: “The prevalence of drones made it more important to understand what the kinds of interactions between man and machine is like. We wanted to explore having a space that is occupied by both machines and people – this idea that a machine is watching and surveilling and a human is responding to that.”
How Cooper Union’s Endowment Failed The School’s Mission
“Since Peter Cooper’s heirs gave the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art the land under the Chrysler Building in 1902, the school’s endowment has enabled it to offer students a high-quality, tuition-free education through two world wars, the Great Depression and multiple stock market crashes and financial crises. So why does Cooper Union now find itself forced to charge tuition of an estimated $20,000 a year?”
‘I Got A Haircut From Ai Weiwei’
“On top of everything else, Ai Weiwei is a barber. A good one? Hm. Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start here: exactly what kind of haircuts does he give? ‘The kind that will make you want to cry,’ he said.”
Flash Mobs Go Corporate (At Least It’s More Paid Work For Dancers)
“The original flash mobs often had little obvious purpose and were decidedly noncommercial gatherings by amateurs, says Bill Wasik, who is widely credited with creating the first flash mob, in 2003.” No more. “Dance Mob Nation, based in Los Angeles, says it charges an average of $2,000 to $4,000 per event and as much as $10,000, depending on the presentation.”
A Ten-Breasted Whale In The Sky To Celebrate Canberra’s Centennial
“Skywhale, a 23m-high, 34m-wide hot air balloon resembling a whale-like creature, will be unveiled in Canberra tomorrow as the headline commission for the Centenary of Canberra celebrations.”
WTF Is Up With Marc Maron Anyway?
“Prior to starting his podcast, WTF, [the comedian] resembled no one so much as he did a Sam Lipsyte character. Like many Lipsyte protagonists, he was a middle-aged guy with artistic aspirations who, despite some notable successes, considered himself, on some level, a failure.”
Ray Harryhausen, 92, Master Of Stop-Motion Animation
With his Dynamation process, he became “the prime exponent of the [stop-motion] technique and its combination with live action” in fantasies such as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts. Current cinema titans Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, among others, credit Harryhausen with making their work possible.