Category: issues

“Following the endless turbulent commentary on Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen, and the commentary on the commentary, you could be forgiven for feeling that literary art, as Trilling defined it, has been largely displaced by life—or, at least, by the pictures of life ceaselessly produced by the all-powerful media—as the realm in which we lose ourselves in a moral problem.”

“We’ve done away with the ridiculous Outsider Saint. But we’ve replaced him with a Servant whose primary task is to make us feel good about ourselves, either through the work itself, or through the way the work (or the artist’s personal life) allows us to grandstand.”

“Inspired by the ABC series “Shark Tank,” the agency last week hosted four Art Tank events, in Peoria, Chandler, Prescott and Tucson, where applicants were given six minutes to pitch a project or idea. A panel of experts picked the winners on the spot, handing out more than $120,000 in “seed money” to encourage innovation by non-profit groups.”

“The Obama era, one that has coincided with greater-than-ever atomization of entertainment such that no one can be assured that anyone is watching the same stuff, has not lent itself very well to artwork that gets at the national mood.”

“My advice to Kristof is to think again about what academia is, and what the goal of public thought is. Academia is more than research universities. And public thought can be far more inclusive, tentative, and humanistic than our current politics will allow.”

“Once we have enough women doing it, it just becomes normal. Then if we see an all-male show, we’ll just say ‘how sweet, look at all the boys together’ instead of going ‘oh, not again.’”

“As their ranks have swelled, interns are beginning to see themselves as part of a special class, albeit one with few privileges and perks. They share their own brand of gallows humor, their own pride of purpose and their own battle-hardened worldview tinged with a risk-taker’s optimism.”

“Claimants faced daunting obstacles, including property laws that gave no special consideration to things the Nazis had stolen. In some nations, families that had been forced to sell art to Nazi agents for a pittance were out of luck because the legal codes said a sale was a sale, never mind the circumstances.”

They often show all of the traits of the “Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).”

“The survey of 2,200 people in the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on Friday at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.”