Happiness studies and positive psychology, which started seriously taking off in the 1990s, are “scholarly fields that combine Eastern religions, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and behavioral economics – but above all represent a shift of focus among some psychologists from mental illness to mental health, from depression and anxiety to subjective well-being.”
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Unhappiness Isn’t Just Inevitable, It’s Indispensable
“Because the brain grades on a curve, endlessly comparing the present with what came just before, the secret to happiness may be unhappiness. Not unmitigated unhappiness, of course, but the transient chill that lets us feel warmth, the sensation of hunger that makes satiety so welcome, the period of near-despair that catapults us into the astonishing experience of triumph.” Neurobiologist Indira M. Raman explains why the brain requires that contrast.
Robert Grossman, Illustrator With Sharp Eye And Pen For Political Satire, Dead At 78
“On magazine covers and in newspaper pages, Mr. Grossman chronicled and caricatured a half-century’s worth of politicians, pop-culture figures and social issues. He had a knack for causing a stir with his colorful images, whether they be one-shot covers for magazines like Rolling Stone and Time or serial comic strips for The New York Observer or New York magazine.” One of his most famous images was a National Lampoon cover showing Richard Nixon with a breathtakingly long Pinocchio nose; another was on the poster for the greatest film comedy of all time.
Spanish Booksellers Get Around Ban On Book About Drug Mafia – With Help From Cervantes
“Kicking against what they consider outdated censorship, a booksellers’ association has reacted to the seizure of the non-fiction book Fariña by launching a website [which] includes a digital tool that searches for and locates the 80,000 words that make up the forbidden manuscript from within the text of Don Quixote, extracting them one by one to recompose the banned book. On Friday after two days online, the website had racked up over 30,000 hits, according to the Booksellers Guild of Madrid.”
Watching Stephen Petronio’s Dancers Learn Merce Cunningham’s Steps
“The F-word isn’t usually used to describe a dance by Merce Cunningham. But after Rashaun Mitchell watched members of the Stephen Petronio Company rehearse the sextet from Signals, a rarely performed Cunningham dance from 1970, he went there.”
2,000-Year-Old Mosaics Turn Up Under Lawn Of Florida Museum
No, they’re not previously unknown Native American art, we’re afraid. They’re first- and second-century Greco-Roman works from Antioch, and five of them were among the first pieces acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. “One was embedded in a fountain in the sculpture garden. One went on display in the Membership Garden. One was stowed under the stage of the Marly Room. Someone – it’s unclear who – buried the remaining two in the lawn outside the gates of the sculpture garden sometime in 1989.” It seems no one knows why.
Five Veteran Theater Critics Form Their Own Review Website
“Launching March 20, just in time to catch the spring wave of big Broadway openings that began last week with Escape to Margaritaville and continues this week with Frozen and Angels in America, New York Stage Review comes online with some 20 pieces of criticism about recent spring openings. … For most productions, New York Stage Review will have more than one critic weigh in. That’s taken from the playbook of The New York Times” – way back when, in the days of Walter Kerr.
Picasso’s Largest-Ever Work, Never Completed, To Be Realized Via Virtual Reality
“For almost 50 years, the artist Pablo Picasso’s wild vision for a massive 102ft high public monument” – titles Bust of a Woman – “which was to have been the world’s tallest concrete sculpture, has remained unrealised. Now, however, scholars at the University of South Florida, Tampa, are venturing to make it a reality – that is to say, a virtual reality.”
Beirut’s Male Belly Dancer
“Alexandre Paulikevitch is one of the few male baladi dancers in the Middle East. He learned how to dance from watching Egypt’s black and white movies and now performs as a soloist, challenging his audiences to think differently about baladi – not only as a post-colonial dance that’s distant from ‘belly-dancing’ or ‘danse orientale’ but as a dance that men and women alike can perform. … We went to his class in Beirut to find out what he’s doing to revolutionise this Eastern dance.” (video)”
Saudi Arabia Starts Building An Entertainment Industry From Scratch
“Saudi Arabia has long been known as one of the world’s most conservative places … Concerts and theater were largely banned, and even the notion of fun was often frowned upon as un-Islamic. Now the kingdom is lightening up with comic book festivals, dance performances, concerts and monster truck rallies. … [The kingdom] needs to build an ‘entire ecosystem’ for arts, tourism and entertainment, [and] has budgeted $64 billion for it over the next decade.”