“Is it really morally wrong to kill someone? That question, strange enough on its own, is downright bizarre when it’s asked in the Journal of Medical Ethics. In ‘What makes killing wrong?’, a paper in the Journal‘s January issue, [two scholars] argue that there isn’t, fundamentally, anything wrong with killing another person. Killing is only incidentally bad because of one of its consequences: ‘total disability’.”
Month: February 2012
Yuri Rasovsky, Who Rescued American Audio Drama, Dead At 67
“Radio drama was thought to be nearly extinct when Yuri Rasovsky launched the National Radio Theater of Chicago in the early 1970s, and he emerged as a major voice in its revival.” In the 1990s, Rasovsky – nicknamed “El Fiendo” for his exacting standards and sharp temper – moved to Los Angeles and produced a string of award-winning recorded audio dramas.
The Surprise About The Stage Version Of The King’s Speech
A cynic might assume that writer David Seidler wanted to adapt his screenplay for the stage just to cash in on the film’s enormous success. As it happens, Seidler wrote the piece for live theatre.
A Family Affair: Georgia’s National Folk Dance Troupe
“Founded nearly 70 years ago by the husband and wife team of Iliko Sukhishvili and Nino Ramishvili and initially named the Georgian State Dance Company, the troupe” – currently called the Georgian National Ballet and not to be confused with Nina Ananiashvili’s State Ballet of Georgia – “has travelled from the back offices of suspicious state and party officials in 1945 to some of the greatest stages in the world.”
Karma Bites: Mikhailovsky Ballet’s First Big Plans For Stars Poached From Bolshoi Get Blocked By ABT
“The Mikhailovsky Theater of St. Petersburg, Russia, scored a coup last fall by luring two of ballet’s biggest stars” – Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev – “from the Bolshoi, and it was to have brought them to the United States this summer for a run of shows at Lincoln Center. But those plans have been scrapped … because American Ballet Theater exercised a no-compete clause involving those very same dancers.”
James Joyce Children’s Story Published For First Time
“The Cats of Copenhagenis a ‘younger twin sister’ to his published children’s story The Cat and the Devil, which told of how the devil built a bridge over a French river in one night.” Both stories originated as letters from Joyce to his grandson.
‘Conservative’ Movies Sell More Tickets Than ‘Liberal’ Movies, Says Conservative Group
“Films that embody ‘conservative’ values such as capitalism and Christian belief are more likely to prove profitable than those which take a more ‘liberal’ standpoint, according to a US group called Movieguide, which promotes the former.”
Huntington’s New Director Of Art Collections Talks A Lot About Sex
Kevin Salatino, who has worked on the staffs of LACMA and the Getty and is currently director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Maine, will be the next director of art collections at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles. Among Salatino’s claims to fame: of all his (very popular) lectures and gallery talks, only one has not referred to sex in the title.
A Sundance For Facial Hair: The World’s First Moustache Film Festival
“Cannes will bristle. The bigwigs at Venice may twirl. There’s a major new cinema event on the scene: the inaugural moustache film festival, to be held in Portland, Maine on 30 March. The festival is an offshoot of the annual Stache Pag, a moustache pageant showcasing the best in east coast facial hair.”
Dismal Penn Station – Time To Rethink Public Space
“To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation. What is the value of architecture? It can be measured, culturally, humanely and historically, in the gulf between these two places.”