A high court judge in Abuja ordered that Olusegun Obasanjo’s three-volume My Watch be withheld from the market due to a rather strange libel suit brought against Obasanjo by a Nigerian who figures in a very different memoir: Piper Kerman’s Orange Is the New Black.
Author: Matthew Westphal
How the Arts Drove Pittsburgh’s Revitalization
“But in looking at Pittsburgh’s impressive revival, it’s important to take note of the key role played over the last 30 years by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, an organization that has managed one of the city’s most vivid transformations, turning a large part of downtown that had been overtaken by porn shops, strip joints, massage parlors, and sleazy bars into a lively, safe, and attractive district for cultural arts and entertainment.”
Google News Is Pulling Out Of Spain Due To New Law
“Starting Jan. 1, recently enacted Spanish legislation will require the search giant to pay the publications it links to. For previewing their articles. In addition to the article title, Google News offers a small content snippet, beckoning users to click on the link visit the news site. For that, the Spanish government believes, they should pay the publisher. You can furrow your brow and scratch your head now.”
Talking Ballet History With Jennifer Homans And Kevin McKenzie
Homans, author of the survey of ballet through the ages Apollo’s Angels and director of NYU’s new Center for Ballet and the Arts, and McKenzie, former star and current artistic director of American Ballet Theatre, discuss the long Paris-to-Vienna-to-St. Petersburg-to-America trajectory of the art form with host Leonard Lopate. (audio)
What “Serial”, The Rolling Stone Rape Story, And Michael Brown’s Death In Ferguson Can Teach Us About Memory
“Our expectation that memory is consistent and reliable is ubiquitous. It is taken for granted in day-to-day interactions and determines countless decisions. We do not acknowledge often enough how unstable our memories are, how susceptible they are to change, and how serious the implications of those changes are when we rely on memory to determine the fates of real human beings.”
Why Not Bring Back The Movie Serial? (Hey, It’s Working For Cable TV And Public Radio Podcasts)
“Imagine if True Detective, which aired as eight one-hour episodes’ worth of cinema-quality entertainment, had instead been packaged as four two-hour installments of cinema-quality entertainment and released in theaters on the first Friday of every month. And imagine if, for the first three weeks after each release, the only place you could see the new installment was in a movie theater.” The answer to cinema owners’ prayers?
Shonda Rhimes: “I Haven’t Broken Through Any Glass Ceilings”
“If I had broken through any glass ceilings, I would know. If I had broken through a glass ceiling, I would have felt some cuts, I would have some bruises. There’d be shards of glass in my hair. I’d be bleeding. … So how come I don’t remember the moment? When me with my woman-ness and my brown skin went running full speed, gravity be damned, into that thick layer of glass and smashed right through it?”
American Museum Of Natural History To Add New Science Center
“[The] sprawling hodgepodge of a complex occupying nearly four city blocks [in Manhattan] is planning another major transformation … a $325 million, six-story addition designed to foster the institution’s expanding role as a center for scientific research and education.”
Staging A Performance Piece With – Or On – The NYPD
“It became clear, over the course of listening to a variety of experiences, that the exercise worked not so much to disarm cops against us, but to disarm us against cops.”
The Greatest Animated Film That Never Got Finished
“Now in his 80s, the animator, director, and designer [Richard Williams] has created thousands of animated film titles and commercials and even written a book on the art of animation.” (Not to mention doing the Toons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) “All this despite the fact that for three decades he was sacrificing other work to direct one immense film that never made it to screen, the Fantasia-esque Arabian tale called The Thief and the Cobbler.”