Sunday, October 28, 2018

Even As Its Economy Was Melting Down, Greece Still Invested In The Arts. Why?

Reader, listen: though I do not know you, I love you so much that if I could hold you in my hands, I would open up your breast and in your heart’s core I would make a wound and into it I would rub vinegar and salt, so that you might never again know peace but would live in continual anguish and endless longing.  If I have not succeeded in disquieting you with this Quixote of mine it is because of my heavy-handedness, believe me, and because the dead paper on which I write neither shrieks, nor cries out, nor sighs, nor laments, and because language was not made for you and me to understand each other.  (305)
What atrocious ideas! - Miguel de Unamuno's Our Lord Don Quixote - Grant me the gift of your madness, our eternal Don Quixote

Revenge and ruin: plastic surgeons beware these 'red-flag' patients

They’re the patients who need a psychologist, not a face lift, and will seek revenge on the plastic surgeon who fails to fix their nonexistent physical flaws.

Bookselling is the most over-romanticised job in the world

Sian Cain
This Bookshop Day, think of the booksellers who are dealing with bodily fluids, insufferable know-it-alls and shoplifters – and doing it all for the joy of reading
Joy of bookselling

“You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, 

and smarter than you think.”  

“I peered over the rock…I did not know what I was supposed to see: beyond the rock the river formed a small waterfall and a shadowy pool, probably knee-deep. The surface of the water was unsettled, agitated by the churning fall. At the edges floated a finger’s depth of foam, and a large trapped branch sticking out diagonally had collected grass and sodden leaves around itself. It wasn’t much of a spectacle, only water that had run there from the mountain. And yet it was spellbinding: I don’t know why.”


“You must admit we are different from other creatures. Can you name another that would stand as we do, one before the other, willing to kill – or be killed – for something that is not food or property or even temporary dominance? For ideas as inconstant as principle or justice or love? Is this what makes us so wretchedly human? Dare we call it a soul?
– Mikhail Bulgakov



Artwork Worth $1 Million Sets Itself On Fire (No, This Is Not Banksy’s Doing)


A blaze broke out last Saturday at the Dia:Beacon museum in upstate New York. The cause: overheating of an electrical element in a newly-acquired work by artist Mary Corse, reportedly worth $1 million. (The artwork was unnamed but was likely Untitled (Electric Light).) … [Read More]

Published in Artnet on 

Dawn Of An Era? The First AI-Produced Musical Album



Our passion's purpose
is to illuminate 
the world,
silently,
invisibly,
like stars in daytime.








The Evolution Of Police Training Simulators (Annals Of Unusual Media)


Ernie Smith offers a brief history of these law-enforcement teaching tools - "where they came from, how they inspired technology's evolution, and their impact on fighting crime." … Read More

Published in Tedium on 
Kyle Rozema (Chicago), The Unrecognized Relationship Between Tax Law and Public Assistance:
Lawmakers enact tax laws to raise revenue, redistribute resources, and change behavior. The ability of a tax law to serve its goals depends on how individuals respond to the tax law, and how individuals respond to the tax law can depend on how it interacts with other laws. This article unearths unrecognized connections between the operations of tax law on the one hand and the voluntary nature of public assistance programs on the other.

  

Sculpture by the Sea festival brings artworks to Sydney's shores

 

Rap Is A Russian Art, Just Like Ballet, Says Russia’s Culture Minister


Vladimir Medinsky told a room full of worthies at an Aspen/Davos-type gathering in Sochi, "Soon we'll be saying that rap is Russian art. Of course, it was born somewhere in America, but its flourishing occurred with us, of course." Just like ballet. Then Medinsky pronounced that the very first rapper was, in fact, early Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. …Read More


  Published in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on


When the New York Times exposed decades of tax cheating and “outright fraud” by the sitting president, it prompted people to ask important questions about the corrupt practices of the Trump family. The answers are central to the future of America.
Where was the Internal Revenue Service? How did the Trumps get away with decades of schemes the Times said allowed them to evade close to a half-billion dollars of income and gift taxes? Is Donald Trump continuing these practices? Is that why he refuses to make his own tax returns public? Can anything be done about it?
I’m in a unique position to answer those questions. I am the Times’ former tax reporter, the journalist who has covered Trump longer than anyone else, more than 30 years. ...
Congress, which makes tax law, has never properly supported the IRS, which I like calling the Tax Police Department. 

Even As Its Economy Was Melting Down, Greece Still Invested In The Arts. Why?


The principal belief is that supporting the arts and culture is not a luxury but an investment in human progress. It is the necessary scaffolding for building and sustaining civil society. It is the cornerstone for human growth and development. … Read More

Published in The Conversation on 

Report: Broadway Theatre Audience Is Getting Younger


The 21st publication is just out and reports the lowest age attendance since 2000, a significant bit of hope for Broadway’s long-term health. During the 2017–2018 season, the average age of Broadway theater-goers was 40.6, the lowest since 2000. For a second year in a row, there was a record total number of kids and teens under 18 attending a Broadway show. At 2.1 million, it represents the highest total ever (it was 1.65 million the season prior). Additionally, since the 2010-2011 season, Hispanic/Latino attendance has grown by 61%, or 430,000 admissions (from 710,000 to 1.14 million). … Read More 
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