Author: Douglas McLennan

A Tale Of Two Languages

“To us French people, American English has this beautiful casualness about it that translates into the way we picture Americans themselves—a cliché of self-possession and comfortable-in-their-own-shoesness. A jealous French person would say “cockiness.” I for one like this ability Americans have to say big things very casually. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find that some things in French just have too much weight, and that the American way is enviable. Example: “love” and “amour” are two very different words, even though any English-to-French dictionary will try to convince you they mean exactly the same thing.”

A Rejuvenated Salzburg Festival?

“In recent years, this most sumptuous of classical-music gatherings has reverted to its default identity as a parade of musical celebrities with no clear artistic destination in sight. Last year, though, the progressive-minded Austrian pianist and impresario Markus Hinterhäuser took over as Salzburg’s artistic director, and he is stirring memories of the festival’s most vital period—that of the nineteen-nineties, when Gerard Mortier presided over a superb array of provocations.”

Shonda Rhimes Departure From ABC Illustrates Bleak Prospects For Traditional Network TV

Shonda Rhimes’s just-announced decision to sign with Netflix and leave ABC/Disney points to a bleak new reality for old-school broadcasters trying to hold on to big names. For some Hollywood creatives, particularly those at the peak of their careers, offers of big bucks and promises of creative autonomy aren’t enough to overcome the view that network television is now the least attractive medium in which to work. Rhimes didn’t leave just leave ABC. She left network TV.

Vietnamese Art Market Is Booming, But Full Of Fakes

“Vietnamese art remains a niche market globally but is surging in popularity at international auctions. In April, a late 1930s painting by one artist, Le Pho, sold for nearly $1.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong, breaking the $844,000 record set by another of his paintings in 2014. But artists and dealers complain that the proliferation of fakes is dragging down the value of Vietnamese art.”

How Artificial Intelligence Is Learning To Make Art And Music

There is “a growing effort to generate art through a set of A.I. techniques that have only recently come of age. Called deep neural networks, these complex mathematical systems allow machines to learn specific behavior by analyzing vast amounts of data. By looking for common patterns in millions of bicycle photos, for instance, a neural network can learn to recognize a bike. This is how Facebook identifies faces in online photos, how Android phones recognize commands spoken into phones, and how Microsoft Skype translates one language into another. But these complex systems can also create art. By analyzing a set of songs, for instance, they can learn to build similar sounds.”

Here’s A Surprise – For The First Time In Forever, Print Magazine Sales Are Up

Magazine sales have generally been falling since the day the inventor of the internet said: “Hey, why don’t I invent the internet?” But the latest ABC figures, released this week, show that sales of certain titles are actually going up. News and current affairs magazines are becoming more popular – but celebrity, gossip and fashion publications are still struggling.