A Q&A with Hammad Khan, director of Slackistan, a cinematic portrait – complete with a Muslim punk soundtrack – of the young, rich and aimless in the Pakistani capital, which Khan describes as “the city that always sleeps.”
Tag: 02.01.11
Is Anthropomorphizing Hard-Wired Into Humans? Is Religion?
“The scientific jury is still out on whether our species is unique among social mammals in being able to conceptualize mental states … But there’s absolutely no question that we’re much better at it than the rest of the animal kingdom.” Is that ability the reason we assign feelings and motives to inanimate objects? (My computer is cranky today.) Is it why we believe in god(s)?
Why It’s Stupid To Buy E-Books In The Apple Store
“The sorry exception to e-book universality is, as usual, Apple. Books you buy from the company’s iBookstore will only work on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. If you’ve got one of those devices, you’re actually better off buying books from Google and Amazon; those books, after all, can be read on your Apple devices and everywhere else. That makes Apple’s iBookstore pretty much useless.”
A New Plan To Fight Music Piracy: Release It Earlier
“A new campaign, pioneered by Universal and Sony, will mean songs are available to buy digitally at the same time as they debut on television or radio. DJ Nelson said record labels can lose more than 50% of potential sales due to the lag time between a track’s radio debut and its release date, as those wanting to buy the track download illegally instead.”
Official: Egyptian Young People Organized Themselves To Protect Treasures From Looters
“The young people organised themselves into groups that directed traffic, protected neighborhoods and guarded public buildings of value such as the Egyptian Museum and the Library of Alexandria. They are collaborating with the army. This makeshift arrangement is in place until full public order returns.”
Google Opens A Major Online Museum For The World’s Art
“Aiming to open the world’s art collections to online viewers, Google today unveiled the Google Art Project, a website that allows visitors to see more than 1,000 works by 486 artists, take virtual 360-degree tours of galleries, and zoom in for extreme close-up views to inspect a great artist’s brushwork.”
Pasadena Playhouse Evicts Furious Theatre Company From Its Second Stage
“The Pasadena Playhouse will take over the programming of its 75-seat second stage, the Carrie Hamilton Theatre, after parting ways with the Furious Theatre Company, which had been the upstairs room’s resident company since 2004.”
EMI Defaults on Debt, Gets Repossessed
“U.S. bank Citigroup (C.N) seized control of troubled music company EMI from its private equity owner Guy Hands on Tuesday … Citigroup took control of the firm – and wrote off most of its debt – after Hands’ company Terra Firma defaulted on its loans.”
Dance: Lines All Over
Line in dance has many meanings. A show at the Museum of Modern Art approaches lines and dance in the narrowest terms. A pity.
Alain de Botton: We Need A New Vision For Museums
What if they gave up on the neutral, bland captions they tend to use and put beneath each picture a really directive set of commands telling us, for example, “look at this image and remember to be patient”. Or “use this sculpture to meditate on what you too could do to bring about a fairer world”.