John Bell who used to perform at NSW Parliamentary Theatre
How Poetry Came to Matter Again
A young generation of artists is winning prizes, acclaim, and legions of readers while exploring identity in new ways
We can’t help making presumptions about their bank accounts, as if acting is less a career than a ticket to dreamland. Perhaps it’s time to stop differentiating what kind of work we think is “real”—whether it’s acting, bagging groceries, writing (hi!), governing a state, or tilling the fields—and start valuing hard work in whatever form it comes. … [Read More]
Children of Saturn | Gabbie and Melbourne Fringe
A moment of rest. The boulder rolls back down and the journey begins again. Children of Saturn is inspired by The Myth of Sisyphus and Goya's Black paintings.Melbourne Cosmopolitan Walks
Unique Spots in Melbourne
The Cognitive Biases Tricking Your Brain
Science suggests we’re hardwired to delude ourselves. Can we do anything about it?
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Is It Exploitive To Use Real-Life Terrorist Attacks As Subjects For Feature Films?
"This year sees the release of two films which centre on the 2011 attack in Norway by rightwing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, which left 77 people dead. ... Questions arise around the ethics of this particular docudrama style of film-making – what can a film based on real events tell us that documentary footage or eyewitness testimony cannot?" … [Read More]
Saturn’s moon is the mysterious one
Among the globes of gas and crusty orbs
That meander about our unfixed sun.
The elements earth has and will absorb
In infinite (call them) hours, from the lab
Of the solar system, have been stored up
In planets and moons, each drop in its cup,
No two the same, each its own unique tab.
Titan, though, would seem an alternate birth,
With oceans and sand, with mountains and rain,
(Even if what falls is only methane),
A negative of our radiant earth.
What swims in water seas under a sky
Of nitrogen? And, if something does — why?
Australia’s Arts Funding Is Inadequate And Unfairly Given Out, Say Critics
The economy of "the Lucky Country" has been growing for 26 years without a recession or other break, and Australia is now second only to Switzerland in wealth per adult in the world. "Yet arts funding has not kept pace, ... [and] worse in many ways, experts say, [it's] running the same way it has for years — as an insiders' game." … Read More
Two of Britain's art superstars are heading to Australia for the first time
They're headlining a blockbuster
exhibition of rarely seen art from the Tate, featuring more than 40 of
Britain's national treasures.
While computing pioneer Alan Turing was breaking Nazi communication in England, eleven thousand women, unbeknownst to their contemporaries and to most of us who constitute their posterity, were breaking enemy code in America — unsung heroines who helped defeat the Nazis and win WWII.
Among them was American cryptography pioneer Elizebeth Friedman (August 26, 1892–October 31, 1980). The subject of Jason Fagone’s excellent biography The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies (public library), Friedman triumphed over at least three Enigma machines and cracked dozens of different radio circuits to decipher more than four thousand Nazi messages that saved innumerable lives, only to have J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI take credit for her invisible, instrumental work.
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200 naked women needed on opera stage for #MeToo take on Mozart
Opera Queensland is hoping 200 women will volunteer to appear naked on stage at the end of a performance of Don Giovanni next month.
Romance novelist Nancy Crampton-Brophy arrested in murder of her chef husband. “Daniel Brophy was fatally shot in June; his wife, whose books include one titled ‘The Wrong Husband,’ was arrested this week
The Soviets had a string of leaders who were well-suited to play movie villains. Stalin murdered millions and radiated evil. Khrushchev was more moderate in terms of domestic policy, but in New York he banged his shoe on the table and shouted “We will bury you!” He also moved Soviet nuclear weapons into Cuba. Brezhnev came across as a crusty, malevolent stiff.Chinese president Xi Jinping, in contrast, looks and acts not much different than many other world leaders. The standing joke in China, though often banned on Chinese social media, is to compare him to Winnie the Pooh because of his posture, his walk and what sometimes appears to be a kind of ambling geniality. As for earlier Chinese leaders, post-Mao, most didn’t have much of a profile in the U.S. at all
William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. Winner of a Pulitzer, this remains one of the essential takes on mid-20th century Soviet history and is highly readable as well.
Why Are We Shaming Actors For How Much They Earn?
