In the 1970s and ’80s, the American photographer pioneered the use of fireworks and long exposure times to create patterns of light seared onto twilit cityscapes.
Author: Matthew Westphal
What Exactly Is Reality? (Or Should That Be ‘Reality’?)
“What do we actually mean by reality? A straightforward answer is that it means everything that appears to our five senses – everything that we can see, smell, touch and so forth. Yet this answer ignores such problematic entities as electrons, the recession and the number 5, which we cannot sense but which are very real. It also ignores phantom limbs and illusory smells.”
How Do We Know For Sure There Is Reality?
“Philosophers are not being rude when they describe the approach most of us take as naive realism. After all, when they cross the street on the way to work, they tend to accept implicitly – as we all do – that there is an external reality that exists independently of our observations of it. But at work, they have to ask: if there is, how can we know?”
Reality? Naah – We All Live In A Giant Computer
“Whatever kind of reality you think you’re living in, you’re probably wrong. The universe is a computer, and everything that goes on in it can be explained in terms of information processing.”
Former Hostage Says Homeland Is Appalling
John McCarthy, who was held in Lebanon for five years by Islamic Jihad, “has called the violent depiction of captivity in the award-winning drama Homeland ‘grotesque’ and accused the producers of using ‘titillation’ to manipulate viewers,” serving them torture as entertainment.
Günter Grass Gets Himself In The Headlines Again By Attacking Israel
“After drawing fire for criticizing Israel’s stance on Iran in a controversial poem earlier this year, prominent German writer Günter Grass confronts Israeli policy in a new poem, in which he lauds Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician imprisoned by Israel for years for revealing details of Israel’s nuclear program to the British media.
The Crucial Advantage Professional Book Reviews Have Over Blogs
“Such a review will usually run somewhere between 500 and 1,500 words. Before publication, it will be subjected to a prolonged and intense process of subediting. Crucially, it will be signed, and usually paid for. … None of this guarantees that such a review will not be savage, destructive, ad hominem or partisan, but it will be considered”.
The Troubled, Censored History Of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
Elia Kazan forced Tennessee Williams to provide a whole new, tamer last act for the Broadway premiere, and the Paul Newman-Elizabeth Taylor movie version was famously bowdlerized. The play’s early history in England was worse; its first London audiences had to pretend to join a private club.
Art From The Euro Crisis
First there was David Cerny’s notorious satirical map of the EU (Greece in flames, Bulgaria as a squat toilet, France closed for a strike, Britain not there at all). Now more artists are working in the same vein – for instance, Frank Buckley, who has completely covered an abandoned building in Dublin with shredded euro notes.
Minnesota Orchestra Management Threatens Lockout
“Minnesota Orchestra musicians will vote on Saturday whether to accept a contract proposal that management has characterized as its ‘final offer.’ If the musicians reject the deal and if talks on Sunday fail to produce an agreement, the board has indicated it will lock the musicians out.”