Einstein never desired to become a t-shirt, an action figure, or a friendly greeting card. (Full disclosure: I own all of the above.) “As punishment for my contempt for authority,” he said, wearily, “fate has made me an authority myself.” If we want to pay proper tribute to Einstein, we must find inspiration in what he actually stood for: no holds barred intellectual rebellion.
Tag: 03.14.10
The New Writing – Twitter’s Language Makes For Variety
“The ethos of 50 years ago was that there was one kind of English that was right and everything else was wrong; one kind of access that was right and everything else was inferior. Then nobody touched language for two generations. When it gradually came back in, we didn’t want to go back to what we did in the 1950s. There’s a new kind of ethos now.”
Do Big Vocabularies Make You Smarter? (Maybe Not)
“It should be noted that while people have been trying to puff up their vocabulary for hundreds of years, for just as long there has been a small number of dissenters complaining about the practice. Few people, it seems, are thought to be content with learning new words merely to have something pleasant to think about.”
Museums – The New Hip Concert Venue
“At the forefront of a growing number of bands that [yoke] together artistic and musical practices, the Lucky Dragons have performed at several museums, including the Whitney in New York and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Like kindred local spirits Los Elegantes and My Barbarian, or Yacht from Portland, Ore., they view performance, visual art and music as one seamless expression.”
Samuel Barber – A Flop Opera Becomes A Hit
“Certainly, perception of Barber’s music has changed since his death in 1981, when he was considered borderline irrelevant. He’s now one of “the three Bs” of the 20th century (with Britten and Bernstein).”
Philadelphia Museum Sues Over Art Swindle
A pair of lawsuits filed this week detail a swindle that appears to have cost the Philadelphia Museum of Art $1.5 million.
Could Boston Be America’s New Center For Art?
“The city isn’t exactly known for its boisterous and vital art scene, but Boston’s big cultural secret is that it has all the elements to build something genuinely important in the art world, and genuinely different. Boston could become the place where America’s most exciting young artists converge.”
Citizens Protest Closing Of Boston Libraries, Propose Alternative Funding
“Libraries are infrastructure for families to help themselves. This is infrastructure for self-help in our community.”
Yo Yo Ma, Icon
“In every generation, a few musicians reach a level of fame that takes them into an orbit beyond their art. They become iconic, like Pavarotti; they become spokesmen, like Bono; they come, at the very least, to represent their field to a wider public. Ma, 54, has certainly reached this level. He’s one of the most recognizable classical musicians on the planet.”
Theatre – The New Interactive
“These days, technology has introduced new ways to make theatre interactive. While the standard scripted play, performed without interruption before a silent, seated audience, is still the most common theatre experience, sound and video technologies have put powerful tools into the theatremaker’s hands. Working out how to use these tools requires a fair amount of trial and error, as the young and inexperienced producers of Apollo 13: Mission Control are the first to admit.”