“Brian Lauritzen, a broadcaster with the Los Angeles classical radio station KUSC, has been tracking the gender breakdown of the composers represented on the upcoming season schedules of American orchestras and opera companies. The picture his numbers paint isn’t a pretty one. There are organizations, including major orchestras in St. Louis, Houston and Dallas, that are contentedly planning all-male seasons for the coming year. The New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra join San Francisco in the one-woman-is-plenty club.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
How Disabilities Are Portrayed On TV
On TV, disability is played for laughs, for horror (such as with the “evil cripple” trope), or ignored even by shows otherwise committed to diversity. While critics have coined the phrase “crip up” to refer to the many able-bodied actors who have played disabled characters, often to widespread acclaim, a study by the Ruderman Family Foundation found that 95 percent of all disabled characters are played by abled actors (full disclosure, I have worked for the Ruderman Family Foundation on other projects).
Does Learning Other Languages Make You More Empathetic?
Even though it’s largely accepted that our spoken languages don’t completely determine what we think, they do influence how we think (and feel and behave) in subtler ways–including how and when we experience empathy.
Who Stole This Rare Strad Violin While Its Owner Was In The Hospital?
“What is known is that on October 18, 1995, a friend dropped by to check on the apartment while 91-year-old Morini was in the hospital. The door to the apartment was locked and everything seemed to be in its place. So, the friend, Erica Bradford, along with her daughter Valerie, went to check on the violin as was her habit. She retrieved the key from a box where it was hidden in the bedroom, opened the china closet door, and found a different case sitting in the place the Strad’s had occupied for so many years. She opened the imposter and discovered that it was empty. The violin was gone.”
Our Changing Relationship With The Things Around Us
“When did our world become quite so full of stuff? But acquisition and waste are both logical byproducts of basic human capacities for shaping and making, for decoration and manipulation: part of being human. Our linked capacities for manufacture and trade have long shaped our world, it’s just that both have developed exponentially in recent history and we are still unsure of where that is leading us. The things we are drawn to acquire reflect and express our personalities and more: our ideas about ourselves, our aspirations and perhaps our limitations and delusions.”
Jon M Chu Promised To Cast His New Movie With An All-Asian Cast. Turns Out It Hasn’t Been So Easy
The move to bust the audition process wide open is one way Chu hopes to make good on his promise: that Crazy Rich Asians would comprise “amazing Asian actors cast in EVERY SINGLE ROLE.” His pronouncement followed a particularly egregious season of Hollywood “whitewashing” and now, nearly a year since he set that goal, the Step Up director intends to deliver, but finding a “cream-of-the-crop Asian cast” has proven to take some time.
Frank McCourt Talks About The Perils Of Popular Success For Your Work
“The sheer volume of sales substantiates that readers respond powerfully to memoirs. McCourt’s work has been dismissed all too glibly as misery memoir, and deemed to be commercially driven or aesthetically and politically naïve by his detractors. Meanwhile, his supporters have responded to the emotional impact of the texts rather than discussing the complex set of diverse materials upon which McCourt has formed his narrative: namely Ireland itself, the status of the memoir genre, and Irish-American identity.”
UC Berkeley Will Remove Access To 20,000 Educational Videos From YouTube
The University of California, Berkeley, will cut off public access to tens of thousands of video lectures and podcasts in response to a U.S. Justice Department order that it make the educational content accessible to people with disabilities.
The New Yorker Creates A Poetry Bot
Starting today, the poetry bot, available on Twitter and Facebook Messenger, will send out a poetry excerpt at random every day for the next ninety-two days.
Finding: Dancers Can Deliver Effective Healthcare
“Dance to Health is capable of generating better outcomes and being associated with lower overall costs of managing falls compared to the primary prevention programme or no intervention,” the report finds. It describes the classes as faithful to their healthcare objectives and an “enjoyable challenge” for the dancers.