Thanks to an emir with two humanities PhDs and, notably, his educated and energetic daughter, Sharjah actively encourages both traditional and contemporary art – and makes a point of making the art accessible citizens, visitors, and even Pakistani and Filipino migrant workers.
Month: April 2012
Ballet Dancer, Temporarily Paralyzed After Assault, Is Dancing Again
“A teenage ballet dancer who feared he would never walk again after sustaining a serious neck injury in an alleged street attack is not only back on his feet but has resumed his training. Jack Widdowson, one of the youngest apprentices to be taken on by the Swiss company Bern:Ballett, spent a week in intensive care and six weeks in a spinal unit after the incident in Cardiff.”
Filmmakers Look To Change Italy’s Treatment Of Migrants
In a series of documentaries – most recently, a film recounting the 2009 rescue of Eritrean boat people by the Italian navy, which promptly dumped them in Libya – documentarian Andrea Segre and journalist Stefano Liberti are hoping to change their country’s harsh treatment of African refugees.
Jewish Composer’s Magnum Opus, A Casualty Of Nazism, Revived At Last
“With the Nazis’ rise to power, composer Paul Ben Haim shelved his most important work, the oratorio Joram. This piece is now receiving its due in a special performance by the Israel Philharmonic.”
Novelist Harry Crews, 76
“A Georgia-born Rabelais, Mr. Crews was renowned for darkly comic, bitingly satirical, grotesquely populated and almost preternaturally violent novels. … [His] novels out-Gothic Southern Gothic by conjuring a world of hard-drinking, punch-throwing, snake-oil-selling characters whose physical, mental, social and sexual deviations render them somehow entirely normal and eminently sympathetic.”
What You Have To Go Through To Buy A Foreign Book In Argentina
“In Argentina, a new and bizarre piece of red tape means that imported books and magazines are being held at customs at Ezeiza airport, some 25 miles outside of Buenos Aires. Rather than receive their reading material through the letterbox as intended, readers of foreign material currently have to travel to Ezeiza” and pay a set of fees for the privilege of picking them up.
Miss Mark Rylance In Jerusalem? You Can Still Catch It (And A Bunch Of Other Great Performances)
“In fact there is a recording, shot for the National Video Archive of Performance (NVAP) during 2009, while the play was still at the Royal Court, and it’s available for anyone who wishes to view it. Home to over 200 recordings of performances from across the UK, NVAP is now in its 20th year and housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum.”
Nuns From Kathmandu Help Restore 400-Year-Old Tibetan Paintings
“Conservators from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston called upon the services of nuns from Kathmandu, as well as Tibetan and Taiwanese specialists in silk brocades and Japanese fabricators of gilt-bronze decorative ornaments for an ambitious, two-year project to restore a series of 400-year-old thangkas or Tibetan paintings.”
Remains Of Western Europe’s Oldest String Instrument Found In Scotland
“The small burnt and broken piece of carved piece of wood was found during an excavation in a cave on [the isle of] Skye. Archaeologists said it was likely to be part of the bridge of a lyre dating to more than 2,300 years ago.”
We Have Proof! Caffeine Really Does Make You Think More Clearly
The news comes from a study titled “Caffeine Enhances Real-World Language Processing: Evidence From a Proofreading Task.”