“While I never intended to become The Angriest Librarian, a lifelong inability to hold my tongue—and my frustration with the permeating stereotypes of 1950s-era public libraries—seems to have made it inevitable. So, when I was confronted with yet another blowhard who couldn’t see the value his tax dollars were placing right in front of his face, I had no choice. Over the next few days, I picked up 15,000 followers and found myself in a position to become a public face for my besieged profession.”
Blog
Should Conditions In Prison Really Be Worse Than On The Outside?
“Why are the carceral practices in the US so harsh? Part of the reason is the vestige of a Christian-inspired desire to reform the offender’s soul. Around the time of the Revolution, the penitentiary’s ‘unsocial manner of life’ based on order, obedience and silence could seem plausible only to those who thought that they could achieve a ‘new victory of mind over matter’. Today, prolonged solitary confinement is coming to be seen for what it is: torture.”
Twelve Great Libraries Reveal Their Oldest Treasures
“The New York Public Library, for instance, has not only cuneiform tablets and ninth-century gospels, but also a Gutenberg Bible and a copy of The Bay Psalm Book, one of the oldest books printed in America. In addition to its own cuneiform tablets and Gutenberg Bible, the Library of Congress holds one of the oldest examples of printing in the world, passages from a Buddhist sutra, printed in A.D. 770, as well as a medieval manuscript from 1150, delightfully titled Exposicio Mistica Super Exod.”
Why We’re Drawn To Doing Good After Emergencies
“When our survival is threatened, we are going to reach out and strengthen our connections with people around us. We show generosity. We show compassion. We show gratitude. These are all emotions that function to connect us with each other.”
Why Tyrants Seem To Love To Write Poetry
The Roman emperor Nero is the archetypal example of a despot who sees himself as a master of verse; his example was followed by no less than (among others) Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot (he loved the French Symbolists), Osama Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein. And these rulers tended to stick closely to classical forms. Benjamin Ramm explores the link between ruthlessness and versification.
Galleries Hit By A Wave Of Cyber-Scams
The fraud is relatively simple. Criminals hack into an art dealer’s email account and monitor incoming and outgoing correspondence. When the gallery sends a PDF invoice to a client via email following a sale, the conversation is hijacked. Posing as the gallery, hackers send a duplicate, fraudulent invoice from the same gallery email address, with an accompanying message instructing the client to disregard the first invoice and instead wire payment to the account listed in the fraudulent document.
British Museum’s Deal With Abu Dhabi Is Probably Dead
“Delays in the construction of the Norman Foster-designed Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi means that an agreement with British Museum – which was to help curate exhibitions and lend the new institution around 500 valuable artifacts – is unlikely to be realized.”
Charge: Paul Manafort Bought Art With His Laundered Money, Say Feds
The purchases include $31,900 at an art gallery in Florida and a whopping $623,910 at a New York antiques dealer. All that pales in comparison, however, beside the staggering $1 million spent at a rug dealer in Alexandria, Virginia. Wires were also made for $849,215 to a “Men’s Clothing Store in New York,” $520,440 to a “Clothing Store in Beverly Hills,” and $655,500 to a “Landscaper in the Hamptons.”
How Some Movies Ended Up – By Accident – In The Public Domain
“When horror movie icon George A. Romero died earlier this year, it should have started a copyright expiration timeline for his most famous and influential work, the 1968 classic and Halloween icon Night of the Living Dead. But something really scary happened to the film before it became a hit: Due to a last-second title change and a distributor error, the former Night of the Flesh Eaters fell into the public domain upon its release. What caused these types of problems – and how has copyright adapted since?”
‘Rosenkavalier’ Is Full Of Lies About Sex, Love, And Aging Women (A NY Times Op-Ed)
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who holds an endowed chair at the University of Chicago, identifies three lies (her word) at the heart of the Strauss-Hofmannsthal opera. (She makes fair points, but did she honestly expect that a Viennese comic opera written a century ago – and set 270 years ago – would seem realistic about such matters, or that audiences would take it as such, in 2017?)