“Whipping humanity’s ass at Fishing Derby may not seem like a particularly noteworthy achievement for artificial intelligence” – think of Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at chess and Watson walloping Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! – “but according to Zachary Mason, a novelist and computer scientist, it actually is.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why British Political Satire On TV Stops Being Satirical When It’s Adapted By Americans
“Failure is a wellspring of British comedy, but its American counterpart rewards ‘optimism [and] a refusal to see oneself in a bad light’.” Christopher Orr looks at how Game of Thrones changed from savage political parody to dramatic thriller as it crossed the Atlantic, and how The Thick of It morphed into the farce of Veep.
Is This The Banksy Of Iran? Or The Shepard Fairey?
“[Mehdi] Ghadyanloo has more in common with the metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico than he does with Banksy. Yet in terms of success as a street artist, he is undoubtedly the Banksy of Tehran. Astonishingly, there are over 100 walls in Iran’s capital decorated by Ghadyanloo. … His paintings are not illegal. On the contrary, he was commissioned by the city government to paint them.” (So he’s definitely not like Banksy.)
The Great Dissident Soviet Choreographer You’ve Never Heard Of
“How miraculous that amid all that suffocating tulle, a ballet flame-thrower named Leonid Yakobson emerged. … Dancers hungry for a challenge loved the odd body shapes, sexiness and wit of his choreography. Among his disciples were the young Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov” as well as Maya Plisetskaya. Even Richard Nixon was a fan.
New Website Monitors Ballet Dancers’ Pay And Conditions Worldwide
“Former dancer and ballet teacher Ian Knowles created the site – balletposition.com – which he claims is the first of its type, to compare useful data for dancers looking to join ballet companies in the UK, Western and Eastern Europe and the US.”
Who Should Decide How Students Learn About America’s Past?
“This school year, the fury is over the new U.S. History Advanced Placement course – in particular, whether its perspective is overly cynical about the country’s past. The controversy raises significant questions about the role of revisionism in education: How should students learn about oppression and exploitation alongside the great achievements of their country? And who decides which events become part of the national narrative as more information comes to light?”
A 21st-Century “Pictures At An Exhibition” (But This Exhibition Is One Of The World’s Greatest)
“Four contemporary classical composers walk into an art museum. No punch line. But after walking in, this quartet of composers eventually walked away having penned four new compositions, which Network for New Music will premiere Friday at the Barnes Foundation – amid the art and spaces that inspired them.”
Louis Jourdan, 93, Suave French Film Star
“Lithe, debonair and exceedingly handsome, with a tide of dark, wavy hair, Louis Jourdan became Hollywood’s ideal of Gallic charm and seduction in the late 1940s and 1950s. His peak came in the Oscar-winning musical Gigi (1958), which cemented him in the popular imagination as a debonair playboy.”
Richard Linklater Considering Sequel To “Boyhood”
“I wake up in the morning thinking, ‘The twenties are pretty formative, you know?’ That’s where you really become who you’re going to be. It’s one thing to grow up and go to college, but it’s another thing to … So, I will admit my mind has drifted towards [this sequel idea].”
Henry VIII’s Arguments For Divorcing Catherine Of Aragon Found In Old Mansion
“A book which helped changed the course of English history, part of the evidence Henry VIII and his lawyers gathered in the 1530s to help win an annulment from Catherine of Aragon and ultimately to break with Rome, has turned up on the shelves of the magnificent library at Lanhydrock, a National Trust mansion in Cornwall.”