“Peake then has each student create a grid marking everyone’s name and guessing the motives of potential perpetrators. The students start to interrogate one another, flexing their past-tense prowess as they pick over alibis. Portuguese is banned from the classroom; if anyone veers into speaking in their native tongue, Peake employs the element of surprise, sneaking up on students to tell them their English sounds somewhat suspect.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘They Don’t Quite Take Place On Planet Earth’: Wallace Shawn On His Plays
“I don’t really write about the real world. Or let me put it in a different way. Pretty much everything I’ve written doesn’t take place in any real country. It’s always a made-up country. My plays are more like dreams that are dreamed by someone from planet Earth but they don’t quite take place on planet Earth.”
Ethical Dispute Or Cultural Difference? Figuring Out ‘Moral Relativism’
“Because the term ‘moral relativism’ is closely associated with this subjectivist picture of morality, it elicits understandable hostility. How can we earnestly hold our moral commitments if we give up on the aspiration to objectivity regarding morals, to getting them right rather than wrong? I think there is another way to understand what moral relativism involves, which does not require us to give up our aspiration to objectivity. Let me use an example.”
Choreographer And MacArthur Genius Kyle Abraham In Near-Perpetual Motion
“Does the 38-year-old choreographer thrive on chaos? ‘No,’ he said emphatically. ‘If you catch the light right, you’ll see my hives coming in.'”
If Internet Addiction Is Real, Why Don’t We Regulate The Web The Way We Do Gambling?
“So should individuals be blamed for having poor self-control? To a point, yes. Personal responsibility matters. But it’s important to realise that many websites and other digital tools have been engineered specifically to elicit compulsive behaviour.”
The Man Whose Bad Handwriting Gave Us The Dollar Sign
He was, it turns out, a wealthy Irish businessman in New Orleans who went broke financing the American Revolution.
The Seuss Effect: Why Nonsense Words Make People Laugh
While administering a language-based experiment, psychology researcher Chris Westbury “noticed that people always laughed when they saw the non-word ‘snunkoople.’ That got them wondering – was there something in particular about nonsense words that made them funny? If so, could it be measured? Turns out there is and it can.”
HBO’s Documentary ‘Bolshoi Babylon’ Says Sergei Filin Wasn’t Simply Blameless Victim Of Acid Attack
The film “avoids presenting Filin as a martyr. Instead it gives voice to dancers who describe him as biased and imperious, and highlights Filin’s tense rapport with the Bolshoi’s general director Vladimir Urin, appointed by the Kremlin in September 2013 to put the house in order.
Balanchine Is Getting A Hollywood Biopic
“David K. Israel is adapting Elizabeth Kendall’s acclaimed book Balanchine & the Lost Muse: Revolution & the Making of a Choreographer [for] Gulfstream Pictures … Set against the backdrop of the Russian revolution, the film tells the coming-of-age story of Balanchine, during his tenure at Mariinsky Theater and school where he met his muse, Leda Ivanova.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.24.15
Making Lulu musical
How to tell if a Lulu performance is going to be musical: Listen carefully to the orchestra in the prologue, the scene with the animal trainer that begins the opera. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2015-11-24
Leaked Release: National Academy’s Feel-Good Statement on Carmine Branagan’s Departure
The chaotic, unprofessional rollout of the National Academy’s leadership transition (which I chronicled in the above-linked posts) continues with today’s anonymous leak to me of the very overdue, nearly finalized press release, … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-24
Other Matters: The Gingko Drops
In front of Rifftides world headquarters is a magnificent gingko tree. The previous owner of the house was a medical missionary in China. When he returned to the United States, he and his family brought the gingko as a sapling. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-24
Lookback: Thanksgiving service
From 2004: To be sure, the one thing a new friend can never do for you is say I knew you when, and I find it rather sad that there are so few people in my life who can speak those words. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-11-24
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