“The ballet world took notice on Monday when Estée Lauder announced that the public face of one of its fragrances would be Misty Copeland, the American Ballet Theater star. … [And] just last week Tiffany & Co. announced that it would feature another Ballet Theater star, David Hallberg, in its fall advertising campaign.”
Blog
68-Year-Old Writer Files Age Discrimination Complaint Against Iowa Writers’ Workshop
Workshop officials deny that age is used as a factor in the consideration of any application, according to the university’s emailed responses to Thomson. All applicants, instead, are evaluated based on their writing samples. Dan Thomson, however, maintains that application statistics collected by the university show that, over the past five years, none of the 105 applicants age 51 or older were accepted into the workshop’s fiction program. Nearly half of the 135 fiction students accepted from 2013 to 2017 were between the ages of 18 and 25.
The Music Business Is Now Controlled By Concert Promoters (As Opposed To Record Producers)
As the traditional win-win equilibrium between act, management, record company and promoter falls to the wayside, just like the music industry itself, the balance appears to favour the profit-oriented large promoters.
A Philosopher Argues Why No One Has The Right To Refuse Services To LGBT People
Mark Reiff: “[The wedding-cake case] brings this supposed conflict between marriage equality and religious liberty to the fore. In my view, however, characterizing what is going on here as presenting a conflict between marriage equality and religious liberty is incorrect. To see why, it will be helpful to get familiar with some of the terms that political philosophers like myself use when we talk about liberties and rights.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.31.17
Kurt Weill in 2017
“Wherever I found decency and humanity in the world, it reminded me of America.” That this observation – recorded by Kurt Weill in 1947 – rings hollow in 2017 does not diminish the fascination … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2017-07-30
The NYC Influence
Over time, various cities emerge as strongholds of finance: Venice, Zurich, Edinburgh, Singapore, Hong Kong. These cities, though they have many other characteristics, have been known for taking a leadership role at some point in … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-07-31
Not too long, please
Back when I lived in a snug one-bedroom apartment not far from Central Park, I used to get my hair cut at Antonio’s, an unpretentious three-chair neighborhood barbershop with a Spanish-speaking staff and clientele. I … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2017-07-31
Netflix Is Hugely Successful But $20 Billion In Debt. How Long Can This Go On?
Netflix has accumulated a hefty $20.54 billion in long- and short-term debt in its effort to produce more original content. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company hopes more new shows will capture more subscribers, its primary revenue driver. It’s also under pressure to keep spending on new shows as streaming rivals such as Amazon and Hulu expand their own slates of original programming.
Data: Online Ticket-Buyers Are More Likely To Donate
The average percentage of online ticketing transactions that included donations was 15% last year, while only 3% who booked tickets over the counter or on the phone added a donation to their transactions. Of these, concert hall attenders were the most likely to donate online (19%) but among the least likely to donate by phone or in person (1%).
Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler On Net Neutrality, Monopolies And The Need For Regulation
“If the reality is that somewhere between 50% and 75% of all households in America have one or fewer choices for high-speed broadband–defined as 25 megabits per second–and 95% of all households in America have one or fewer choices for 100-mbps service, there is no competition. And when there is no competition, who makes the rules? The rules are made by the monopolists. So the job of the FCC should be to stand up and protect consumers and promote competition and innovation in a non-competitive market.”
The Poet-Scientist Who Laid The Foundation For The Information Age
In 1937, at the age of 21, Claude Shannon showed how binary circuits could do logic, could even appear to “think”—the discovery behind all of our digital computers today. In 1948, at the age of 32, he published “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” a paper that has been called “the Magna Carta of the Information Age”—in other words, a founding document that inaugurated an era.
Facial Recognition Software Eliminates Anonymity. Now The Battles For Privacy Regulations
“Facial recognition’s use is increasing. Retailers employ it to identify shoplifters, and bankers want to use it to secure bank accounts at ATMs. The Internet of things—connecting thousands of everyday personal objects from light bulbs to cars—may use an individual’s face to allow access to household devices. Churches already use facial recognition to track attendance at services.”