“What is sweeter than admiration? It is heavenly love; it is affection raised to adoration. We feel ourselves filled with gratitude for the divinity who thus extends the roots of our intelligence, who opens up new vistas for our soul to contemplate, who grants us a happiness so great and so pure that it is without any taint of fear or envy.”
François-René de Chateaubriand, Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800 (trans. Alex Andriesse, courtesy of Richard Brookhiser)
A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
~Benjamin Franklin
A scoop like no other Here's Bruce Springsteen's Legendary 1978 Show at the Agora, 40 years ago MEdia Dragon was still serving Communism at the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic Army ...
40 facts about Bruce Springsteen's famous 1978 Agora concert
Not for the first time, Boris Johnson has been the name on everyone's lips this week. Boris is not perfect, but perfect for stepping into Prime Minister's role ... Only in the Blogging world it is possible to exchange stories with Boris and his hard working staffers ;-) Even Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen thought that Boris has a common sense and humour ..,
Mr Bean Rowan Atkinson defends Boris Johnson in burqa row - The Loss of Sense of Irony and Humour
Boris Johnson burka row: Rowan Atkinson backs BoJo
Rowan Atkinson says Boris shouldn't have to apologise for 'good' burka joke
Leading imam backs Boris Johnson over burka row – saying it heightens security risks and is a 'toxic' way to control women
Glenquarry is a locality in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia, in Wingecarribee Shire. It is a scattered village on the banks of the Wingecarribee River. At the 2016 census, it had a population of 222
A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
~Benjamin Franklin
A scoop like no other Here's Bruce Springsteen's Legendary 1978 Show at the Agora, 40 years ago MEdia Dragon was still serving Communism at the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic Army ...
40 facts about Bruce Springsteen's famous 1978 Agora concert
Not for the first time, Boris Johnson has been the name on everyone's lips this week. Boris is not perfect, but perfect for stepping into Prime Minister's role ... Only in the Blogging world it is possible to exchange stories with Boris and his hard working staffers ;-) Even Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen thought that Boris has a common sense and humour ..,
Mr Bean Rowan Atkinson defends Boris Johnson in burqa row - The Loss of Sense of Irony and Humour
Boris Johnson burka row: Rowan Atkinson backs BoJo
Rowan Atkinson says Boris shouldn't have to apologise for 'good' burka joke
Glenquarry is a locality in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia, in Wingecarribee Shire. It is a scattered village on the banks of the Wingecarribee River. At the 2016 census, it had a population of 222
Top 10 Nightlife in der Nähe von Sheepwash Rd, Glenquarry New South Wales 2576, Australien - YelpPicturesque setting, gently undulating fertile soils, with established trees, good fencing and water, including bore
Eero Saarinen, creator of some of the most inspiring structures in American architecture – the Gateway Arch in St Louis, the TWA Flight Centre at New York's JFK International Airport – was, at 10, a fat little dyslexic boy in Finland who was teased when his parents finally sent him to school.
America stung by Soviet smarts
In the US in the 1950s, the perplexing matter of creativity had national importance. The country had become as fixated on creativity as nations are today on innovation.
What was it? Who had it? Could it be spotted in someone before their talents appeared? How could it be nurtured? What made someone creative?
"Creativity may well be the most popular subject of our time," wrote one mid-century advertising guru.
In October, 1957, the Russians – deep into the Cold War with the US – had successfully launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik (Russian for traveller), into outer space. They celebrated mightily with vodka. Muscovites rushed to Red Square to cheer.
In the months before I moved to Virginia to begin an MFA, a collection of essays was published that weaponised that question, combatively titled MFA vs NYC: The two cultures of American fiction (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014). The book was a nuanced and pragmatic account of America's vaguely bifurcated culture of literary funding (universities and New York publishing), but its boxing-ring title demanded that teams be taken: team life experience (NYC) versus team ivory tower (MFA); garret versus classroom; caution-to-the-wind versus caution; original talent versus cookie-cutter clone. It wasn't hard to work out which team you were meant to be on. I heard you could buy 'Fuck Your MFA' tote bags in some of the scrappier New York City bookshops.
The MFA has questions to answer: the conscionability of miring students in college debt for a degree with woeful employment prospects (less than 1.5 per cent of the US workforce is employed in the arts); and the degree's inclusion (both in enrolment and pedagogy) of minority and under-represented literary voices. The late D.G. Myers famously described the program as an "elephant machine" – a machine for making other machines: "The academically certified creative writer goes out to teach creative writing, and produces other creative writers who are not writers, but who produce still other creative writers who are not writers." A pedagogical Ponzi scheme.
But the 'good or bad' debate is tedious, bordering on the farcical. In 2016 The Atlantic deployed a team of computational researchers to try and pin down the differences between MFA and non-MFA authors with an arsenal of linguistic algorithms. They compared published works that had been reviewed by the New York Times, and – shockingly – found no differences. It seems that market pressures and gatekeepers might matter more than the insidious brainwashing of a few university writing classes. "What's interesting about the MFA debate," Michael explains, "[is that] it tends to completely ignore the groups that actually determine what gets published in favour of an MFA-centric theory of the literary universe where all other players orbit around the MFA, propelled by its workshopped gravity."
The neuroscientist Barbara Lipska spent her career mapping the line between sanity and insanity. Then her own mind began to go wrong... Strangest Mind via Dangerous NV
Annotated examples of the worst expensive real estate in Texas.↩︎ McMansion Hell
Christopher at al:
"I like to park a few blocks from the house of my hosts
And walk with my bottle of wine the tree-lined streets,
Anticipating the dinner with friends that awaits me.
A bottle of wine showing not only that I’m grateful
To be included but that I’m eager to do my part,
To offer a gift that won’t survive the evening,
That says I’ve set aside the need for transcendence
And made my peace at last with living in time.
Soon we’ll welcome the evening with a toast.
Soon we’ll be toasting it in farewell
As it starts on its journey into the near past
And then the far. Do the houses I’m passing
Regard me as a creature about to vanish
Into the realm of shadow while they have resolved
To hold their ground? But the bottle I’m carrying
Shows how the past can enhance the present.
The grapes it was made from were plucked and pressed
Seven years ago in a vineyard in Burgundy
According to customs already in place for generations
By the time these houses moved from the realm
Of blueprints and estimates into brick and wood.
The bottle will testify that traditions once honored
Are being adhered to still, with patience, with pride.
And if the past is present this evening, isn’t the future
Present as well in the thought that the ritual
I’m helping to pass along will prove enduring,
That however much the world around it may alter,
Guests will still perform it in eras to come?
I hope I feel their presence in spirit
Under these trees later this evening
As I walk back to my car with empty hands.
And walk with my bottle of wine the tree-lined streets,
Anticipating the dinner with friends that awaits me.
A bottle of wine showing not only that I’m grateful
To be included but that I’m eager to do my part,
To offer a gift that won’t survive the evening,
That says I’ve set aside the need for transcendence
And made my peace at last with living in time.
Soon we’ll welcome the evening with a toast.
Soon we’ll be toasting it in farewell
As it starts on its journey into the near past
And then the far. Do the houses I’m passing
Regard me as a creature about to vanish
Into the realm of shadow while they have resolved
To hold their ground? But the bottle I’m carrying
Shows how the past can enhance the present.
The grapes it was made from were plucked and pressed
Seven years ago in a vineyard in Burgundy
According to customs already in place for generations
By the time these houses moved from the realm
Of blueprints and estimates into brick and wood.
The bottle will testify that traditions once honored
Are being adhered to still, with patience, with pride.
And if the past is present this evening, isn’t the future
Present as well in the thought that the ritual
I’m helping to pass along will prove enduring,
That however much the world around it may alter,
Guests will still perform it in eras to come?
I hope I feel their presence in spirit
Under these trees later this evening
As I walk back to my car with empty hands.
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Will The Success Of “Waitress” Lead To More Women-Led Theatre On Broadway?
Nicole Eisenman Wins $200K (Or Is It $800K?) Booth/FLAG Art Prize
Casting Directors Share Secrets Of The Trade
“As a new award seeks to give casting directors overdue recognition for their key role in shaping productions – not to mention actors’ careers – leading practitioners in the job tell Nick Clark what they believe makes a good casting director, how they started their careers, and what actors can do at auditions to impress them.”
Rick Jacobsen’s wife embezzled nearly $500,000.
After
her conviction, the Internal Revenue Service asked him to pay more than
$100,000 of taxes due on her theft. Yes, embezzled funds are taxable,
and Mr. Jacobsen and his wife had filed joint tax returns.
But
Mr. Jacobsen fought back, arguing his own case before a Tax Court
judge. He said he didn’t know about the embezzlement and shouldn’t be
forced to pay because he was an “innocent spouse.” In an opinion
released last month, he won relief from about $150,000 of tax, interest
and penalties [Jacobsen v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2018-115 (July 25, 2018)]
