It would seem odd enough that the photographer was on Stanley Kubrick’s set at that point in his career. (Weegee had been working on three “Z-grade” movies just before.) But it turns out the two camera wizards knew each other from the beginning of Kubrick’s career. Not only did Weegee take still photos of the ‘Strangelove’ film shoot, he had a huge effect on Peter Sellers’s portrayal of the title character. (He also shot images of Kubrick’s absolutely ridiculous original ending of the movie.)
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What If Our First Encounter With Alien Life Was With Artificial Intelligence?
Encountering an alien AI would not only point to our own possible future, but also prompt a curious shift in our worldview. When Nicolaus Copernicus proposed in the 1500s that the Earth was not central in any way to the Universe, he set in motion the development of a critical scientific idea: that there is nothing cosmically special or significant about us. But meeting an ET-AI could turn that realisation on its head: if the only intelligence we meet is machine in nature, then we would be special, after all.
Jerry Maren, Last Surviving Munchkin From ‘The Wizard Of Oz’, Dead At 98
“The green-clad tough guy of the Lollipop Guild who famously handed Dorothy (Judy Garland) a giant lollipop … Maren moved beyond society’s stereotypes of shortness to make a successful living as an actor and spokesman. He racked up nearly 100 film and TV credits and starred in several commercials. He also played McDonald’s Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese, as well as Buster Brown and Little Oscar in Oscar Mayer’s 1950s ad campaigns.”
If Our Machines Become Self-Aware, Do They Need To Have Rights?
If a computer is sentient, then it can feel pain. If it is conscious, then it is self-awareness. Just as we have human rights and animal rights, as we explore building conscious computers, must we also consider the concept of robot rights?
How ‘The Band’s Visit’, Broadway’s Little-Show-That-Could, Got Its Big Song
“Vulture sat down with director David Cromer, book writer Itamar Moses, and composer-lyricist David Yazbek, and Lenk — are all nominated for Tony awards in their respective categories, added with another seven for the show’s total 11 nods — to talk about the process of translating scene into song and creating a number that is unlike anything most people, the creative team included, traditionally believe Broadway is supposed to be.”
In An Increasingly Extremist World, A Pitch For Extreme Moderation
“Wherever you look, whatever you do, performance has gone extreme, often policed by a tracking app or a competitive peer (sometimes masquerading as a friend). Moderation, in any form, is seen as nothing but amateurism, the habit of a slacker who won’t commit 10,000 hours of practice to master something. I long ago decided to invest in extreme moderation.”
At Age 99, Lawrence Ferlinghetti Has A New Novel Coming Out
“The novel, titled Little Boy, fuses elements of autobiography, literary criticism, poetry and philosophy, in a headlong, often stream-of-consciousness style. ‘It’s not a memoir, it’s an imaginary me,’ Mr. Ferlinghetti said in a phone interview. ‘It’s an experimental novel, let’s put it that way.'”
SF’s American Conservatory Theatre Names A New Executive Director
Jennifer Bielstein has been named the new executive director of American Conservatory Theater (ACT). She is currently the managing director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. AT ACT, she will take over for Peter Pastreich, who will depart the theatre at the end of the 2017-18 season.
What Exactly Is An ‘Outsider Artist’?
Sanford Schwartz: “Put roughly, an outsider artist is a figure who makes a body of work while operating in relative isolation, unaware of, or indifferent to, developments in the work of professional artists … An outsider artist might be someone who resolutely, and perhaps eccentrically, wants to live and work only on her or his terms. An outsider artist might be someone who has been institutionalized, or who suffers some physical impairment, which keeps the person at a remove from others. But an outsider artist, as the term has evolved, might as easily be someone whose daily experience — as, say, a black person in the South — has kept that person from having any real contact with the larger culture beyond his or her immediate community.”
DC’s Forum Theatre Shuts Down
“Forum Theatre, the little company in Silver Spring that on a modest scale championed some of the most advanced ideas in modern playgoing, announced Wednesday that it would be closing shop for good on July 31, after 14 years of putting on adventurous shows. … Factors includ[ed] the crowded theater landscape in the region and [artistic director Michael] Dove’s desire to explore more esoteric kinds of theater than could be sustained by the company.”