Reihan Salam: “No, I’m not saying that it’s OK for Standard Oil to come along and gouge its customers because we don’t want to discourage future robber barons. I’m saying that having the government step in and squash Amazon before it actually uses its (supposed) pricing power to screw consumers will likely yield less innovative entrepreneurship. The only people who will win in this scenario are the mostly wealthy people who own shares in lazily managed companies.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
“High Times” At 40: Can An Outlaw Magazine Survive The Mainstreaming Of Marijuana?
“It had always been the place where dopers gathered to gaze at photos of 9-foot-tall plants and truncheon-sized joints; to advertise their homemade pipeware; and, not least, to flip their collective bird at the man. … But lately weed doesn’t feel all that countercultural. And fewer weed smokers self-identify as outlaws. … Does the world still need High Times when square-ass Slate is running vape reviews?” Totally, say the editors.
World-Religions-Barbie Exhibition Cancelled By Buenos Aires Gallery
“Emiliano Paolini and Marianela Perelli’s Barbie: The Plastic Religion would have featured 33 Barbies” – and a few Kens – “as sacred figures from Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Argentine folk religion.” (Conspicuously missing: Islam.)
Beethoven Changed *Everything* About Classical Music, And Not All For The Better
Alex Ross: “He not only left his mark on all subsequent composers but also molded entire institutions. … How did Beethoven become ‘BEETHOVEN’? What prompted the ‘great transformation of musical taste,’ … the shift on the concert stage from a living culture to a necrophiliac one?”
“Equal Parts Genius, Charlatan, And Kinkster”: The Man Who Invented Both The Lie Detector And Wonder Woman
“Devising the lie detector was the high point of [his] rather erratic pre-comics career. He seems to have lost every job he held. His venture into business ended in an indictment for fraud; his brief stint as a lawyer saw the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reject lie-detector tests as evidence.” Yet he ended up as creator of the first great comics superheroine – even as he kept his wife and mistress (and their children) all in the same house and his passion for women’s rights “somehow got all mixed up with bondage and spanking.”
Edward Snowden’s Filmmaker
“You asked why I chose you,” Snowden wrote to her. “I didn’t. You chose yourself.” George Packer profiles documentarian Laura Poitras.
What, Everybody Can Be Queer Now? LGBT Themes And Images Meet The Ever-Vexed Issue Of “Appropriation”
“In theatre, television and pop music, being gay has become ever more mainstream, while in the traditionally avant-garde art world, queer art (or art that draws on the codes and cultures of homosexuality) is no longer only made by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) artists. … Who has the right to use this imagery and can anyone claim ownership of queer culture?”
Hanging A Tapestry In The Met Museum Is A Lot More Complicated Than You Think
“The tapestries are epic, intricate pieces, spanning up to thirty feet in length and weighing an average of 100 pounds – which begs the question of how, exactly, the museum hangs them. Luckily, the Met released a video illustrating the surprisingly arduous procedure of mounting van Aelst’s work.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.15.14
Outreach
AJBlog: Engaging Matters
Five Questions For Leonard Lauder As The Met Reveals His Cubist Collection
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts
Birgit Nilsson’s Legacy
AJBlog: OperaSleuth
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Why A Street Criminal Stole A Strad
“It isn’t every day that a street criminal – a high-school dropout with two felony convictions – is accused of stealing a centuries-old violin worth as much as $6 million. But nothing about the heist of the Lipinski Stradivarius, which galvanized the music world last winter, was normal, or even logical.”