“Nizhny Novgorod’s old city is known as one of the world’s best examples of Russian Byzantine design, a distinctive style of brick and wood buildings popular in the 1830s. Why would authorities allow the country’s history to vanish without a trace? Nizhny Novgorod’s citizens know the answer: The kickbacks city planners receive [for approving new construction].”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Ian McEwan Says He Is Not A British Writer, But An English Writer
“I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as one, but I think really I’m an English novelist; there are Scottish poets and Scottish novelists.” (His surname notwithstanding, McEwan was born and educated in England.)
Independent Label New Albion Shuts Down
“According to the goodbye note … posted on the label’s website, ‘the actual infrastructure that New Albion was created in, one that resembled an independent record label, no longer exists and has yet to be replaced in the new order, so we are moving on’.”
Octopuses Have Consciousness, Declare Scientists
From the new Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness: “The weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness … [M]any other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.” (The octopus was the only invertebrate so honored.)
Wanna Learn Aerial Dance?
“First, an inversion. I held one silk with each hand and kicked my legs up and over my head. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror as I hung upside down by my arms, red-faced with my legs spread out like a gymnast’s. It was liberating.”
A Lesbian Romance Movie From Iran (Yes, It’s Very Controversial)
Maryam Keshavarz, director of Circcumstance: “There were screaming matches. One woman said: ‘This film is such bullshit – it doesn’t look like Iran, smell like Iran, taste like Iran.’ I didn’t even have a chance to reply when this woman in her 20s stood up and shouted at the older woman: ‘I just came from Iran and it’s people like you who are ruining our country because you deny the reality.'”
Just Like Jimmy Hoffa? King Richard III’s Remains May Be Under A Parking Lot
“Archaeologists are hoping to find the lost grave of King Richard III under a Leicester car park, which they believe was once the site of a church where the medieval monarch was buried more than 500 years ago.”
‘Save The World’s Worst Art Restoration!’ (Those Kids With Their Irony!)
“Ironic art fans have launched a petition to save the ‘world’s worst restoration’: a retouched, century-old church painting of Christ that has become an international joke.”
David Henry Hwang Wins Theater’s Richest Prize
“The $200,000 Steinberg award for playwriting, the most generous prize in theater, has been presented to Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang for 32 years of provocative satires and dramas (Chinglish, M. Butterfly) that brought more Asian and Asian-American characters to Broadway and other stages.”
Arts Center In Bogotá Helps Rehabilitate Former Child Soldiers
“Over the past 16 years, the center, run by a Colombian non-governmental organization, Taller de Vida, has worked with scores of former child soldiers from both sides of the war – leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries – to help them return to civilian life.”