“It’s not that Russians don’t smile, [cross-sultural studies professor Maria] Arapova explains. They do smile, and a lot. ‘We’re not such gloomy, sad, or aggressive people,’ she tells me. But smiling, for Russians — to paint with a broad brush — is an optional component of a commercial or social exchange and not a requirement of politeness. It means something different to smile — in fact, smiling can be dangerous.”
Blog
Would-Be Rock Star Involved In Trump-Russia Scandal Trolls Us All With New Music Video
“The video, for a song called ‘Got Me Good,’ begins with a man sitting in front of a wall of computer monitors — a hacker in Russia, it seems — and on those monitors we see real footage of the singer, Emin Agalarov, talking to the real Donald Trump. … Then the video shifts to a scene in which Emin walks through a hotel hallway with a Trump impersonator. They exchange a briefcase implied to be full of cash, as Emin sings to the Trump actor, ‘I wish you at least could be honest. I wish that you told me the truth.’ Soon, they are frolicking in a bed with several women. What makes this more than a silly spoof is that Emin Agalarov is one of the only people in the world who might have firsthand knowledge of what Trump did or didn’t do during his brief trip to Moscow in 2013.”
How Subatomic Physics Is Helping To Read The Ancient Scrolls Carbonized By Mount Vesuvius
“The scrolls [from Herculaneum] represent the only intact library known from the classical world, an unprecedented cache of ancient knowledge. … Yet the tremendous volcanic heat and gases spewed by Vesuvius carbonized the scrolls, turning them black and hard like lumps of coal. Over the years, various attempts to open some of them created a mess of fragile flakes that yielded only brief snippets of text. Hundreds of the papyri were therefore left unopened, with no realistic prospect that their contents would ever be revealed. And it probably would have remained that way except for an American computer scientist named Brent Seales, director of the Center for Visualization & Virtual Environments at the University of Kentucky.”
How St. Louis Has Reworked And Rethought The Gateway Arch: Philip Kennicott
50 years after Eero Saarinen’s landmark was dedicated, it has a new museum, a new promenade connecting it to the city, and a new concept. “The arch … has always been beloved because it binds together two feel-good ideas that are essential to American identity: a heroic past of grit and conquest, and a triumphant future of innovation. Now, well into the 21st century, the challenge is how to disentangle and even dismantle those ideas while salvaging the arch as a cultural object. The solution, mostly effective, has been to think in terms of connection, both to the city which hosts it, and to the deeper currents of history that led to its creation.”
Philly’s Barrymore Awards Make Acting Categories Gender-Neutral
“On Tuesday, Theatre Philadelphia, which administers the Barrymores, announced it was switching to gender-neutral awards. Instead of a best actor and best actress, there will now be awards for best performance in categories that used to be gender specific, and two awards will be given.”
Why We Made The Barrymore Awards Gender-Neutral: Theatre Philadelphia’s Director
Leigh Goldenberg: “Theatre Philadelphia now recognizes a change like this one is more than just about nomenclature, and is certainly more than a question about language or even about a shiny statue handed to a select few. It’s about who we lift up and who we leave out in the process.”
What It’s Like To Play Violin In Simon Rattle’s Amateur Orchestra
“Simon Rattle is looking straight at me, eyes flaring, fist shaking. I am straining with every fibre of my being to give him what he wants. I would die for this man right now. I’m desperate to shape the phrase just as he’s showing, sustaining the long note and getting louder over the arpeggio. But I over-push the sound, my notes crack, I lose my focus and have to break eye contact to look at the music, ashamed of myself. I’m reminded why I decided not to become a professional musician.”
David Goldblatt, 87, Penetrating Photojournalist Of South African Apartheid
“[He] spent his entire career in his native South Africa, portraying black and white citizens in some of their most intimate and vulnerable moments. He ventured underground to photograph workers in the country’s gold mines, entered dusty black shantytowns and the segregated white churches and towns of Afrikaner hardliners.”
40-Foot Keith Haring Mural Uncovered In Amsterdam After Three Decades
“A mural by Keith Haring was revealed in Amsterdam last week, some 30 years after the US artist completed the commission, which was his gift to the Dutch city. The 40-foot-tall mural was painted by Haring in 1986 while he was in town for his exhibition at [the Stedelijk Museum]. It was covered a few years later when the entire facade of the brick building, which was then the Stedelijk’s art storage depot, had weatherboarding added to improve its climate controls.”
‘Beast Jesus’ Redux: Second Spanish Church Suffers Art Restoration Fail
“Five hundred years in an alcove of a Spanish church is likely to leave any statue looking a bit cracked and faded, and the 16th-century wooden figure of St. George at St. Michael’s Church in Estella, a town in northern Spain, was no exception. But after the church asked a local workshop to give the statue a makeover, the results horrified the town’s authorities, scandalized professional restorers and set social media alight with indignation.”