In a major shake-up, the MPAA announced April 25 that Dodd, 73, will be leaving at the end of the year, five months before his contract is up. He’ll be replaced by Charles Rivkin, 55, former assistant Secretary of State for economic and business affairs under President Barack Obama. Studio insiders say they want a fresh approach at the MPAA after a sometimes-bumpy ride for Dodd. “We needed someone who has relationships with everyone,” says one executive.
Author: Douglas McLennan
Trying To Understand Populism? Take Another Look At William Gladstone
Interest has surged in an institution that houses Gladstone’s books and papers and that sees itself as a temple of liberal values, delighting its director, Peter Francis, who believes the trend is a reaction to the rise of populism in Britain.
Translation Programs Have Suddenly Got WAY Better (Here’s Why)
The new system still makes mistakes, but these are now relatively rare, where once they were ubiquitous. It uses an artificial neural network, linking digital “neurons” in several layers, each one feeding its output to the next layer, in an approach that is loosely modelled on the human brain. Neural-translation systems, like the phrase-based systems before them, are first “trained” by huge volumes of text translated by humans. But the neural version takes each word, and uses the surrounding context to turn it into a kind of abstract digital representation. It then tries to find the closest matching representation in the target language, based on what it has learned before. Neural translation handles long sentences much better than previous versions did.
Turkey Has Blocked Access To Wikipedia
Turkey did not say why it chose to block Wikipedia, other than it had taken “an administrative measure” after “technical analysis and legal consideration … .” But the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted an official from the ministry of transport who said the government blocked the site because it was part of a “coordinated smear campaign.” The article went on to say a Wikipedia entry claimed Turkey was aligned with various terrorist organizations.
What People Pay Attention To (Not Necessarily What You Think)
“Because we’re fixated on our coffee stain (or whatever we happen to be self-conscious about), we assume others must be, too. But when nothing in particular draws our attention to ourselves, we neglect the fact that we may nevertheless be an object of other people’s interest. In short, we pay too much attention to what we’re paying attention to.”
Accordion Superstar Dick Contino, 87
For a time, Mr. Contino was a show business rarity: a heartthrob accordionist who earned up to $4,000 a week in nightclubs. “Dick Contino is one of the few men in musical history who have ever squeezed big money out of an accordion,” Time magazine wrote in 1951.
How The Hirshhorn Museum Has Been Reborn
It was a dark time for a proud institution. The Hirshhorn opened in 1974 after philanthropist and financier Joseph H. Hirshhorn donated his renowned collection to the Smithsonian. The Gordon Bunshaft-designed building has hosted many internationally celebrated exhibitions, including shows focused on Ai Weiwei, Doug Aitken, Louise Bourgeois and Clyfford Still. But as it came upon its 40th anniversary in 2014, it had hit a “low ebb.”
Why Are Classical Musicians Wasting Their Time Trying To Be Relevant? (A Screed)
“To listen to and to play or sing Western art music is now a counter-cultural act. It is an act of profound rebellion against our politically correct Cultural Marxist zeitgeist as well as being a source of pleasure, moral and spiritual improvement, and enhanced appreciation of the connection between the human and the divine. Let us not be afraid to relegate pop music to its proper place, to embrace our Western art music heritage and to resolve to make it a central part of our lives as educated men and women.”
Peter Marks: Are Americans Too Lazy To Appreciate Shakespeare?
“In our age, the canon of classical works to which audiences are exposed shrinks by the year. Oh, the old favorites aren’t going anywhere. Romeos and Hamlets will continue to wax poetic before our eyes — although, methinks, in smaller and smaller venues — and costume shops will be backed up into the future with orders for Macbeth’s tunics and Desdemona’s nightgowns. Yet the fact that many theater companies seem to believe they can fulfill their classical mandates with only the most widely known plays, or worse, sacrifice more challenging plays to the popular-entertainment demands of the box office, makes me wonder whether these are signs of a deeper problem.”
Judi Dench Decries “Laziness” Of Young Actors
She suggested that younger actors were not curious. “It is not laziness, it is just non-curiosity. I think it is terribly important to know that whole history of theatre we have, why you’re in it, what people did before, the lives of actors.”