“So, you have a term paper on Euripides due tomorrow and you haven’t even cracked Medea, The Trojan Women or any other of the ancient Greek writer’s tragedies. … The publishing house Smith & Kraus perhaps has the answer. It has recently launched a series titled ‘Playwrights in an Hour’ that consists of 27 slim volumes dedicated to different dramatists.”
Tag: 04.28.10
Cellist And Conductor Arthur Winograd, 90
The Juilliard String Quartet, which he helped start in 1946, “is widely considered the first American string quartet to attain major international status. … Winograd left the quartet in 1955 to pursue conducting. In 1964 he became the Hartford Symphony’s music director, a post he held until 1985. Under his leadership, the orchestra became known for more ambitious programming.”
Using Architecture To Calm MIT’s Crazy Media Lab
“As academic research goes, it doesn’t get more untidily free-form” than MIT’s busy, highly interdisciplinary Media Lab. In designing the lab’s new building, Fumihiko Maki “has taken MIT’s $90 million and methodically disciplined its sprawling idea factory while keeping all the experimentation on display.”
In Leeds, Ballet Company Becomes Football In Election Campaign
“The [temporary] Leeds home of the Northern Ballet Theatre has found itself at the centre of a political row. The Labour candidate for Leeds West, Rachel Reeves, has begun a campaign to protect the West Park Centre which she says is under threat from developers. The site’s suitability for housing is being considered by the [city] council. However, the Conservatives have called Ms Reeve’s claims ‘scaremongering’ and the Liberal Democrats said she was ‘electioneering’.”
Flying Off The Bookshelves In Britain: Political Manifestos
“Waterstone’s said that sales of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat manifestos have already overtaken the total achieved during the 2005 general election by 160%. … The Conservative manifesto has performed the best of the three, taking 38% of total sales, with the Lib Dems on 32% and Labour bottom on 30% at Waterstone’s.”
Tintin On Trial
A Congolese man who lives in Belgium, “Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, who has been campaigning for years to have the book [‘Tintin in the Congo’] removed from Belgian shops, says its depiction of native Africans … is ignorant and offensive, and he has applied to the Belgian courts to have it banned.”
The Trouble With Calif.’s Ban On Violent Video Games
The law “not only undermines several generations of legal progress toward making free speech a day-to-day reality in this country, but also threatens an emerging expressive industry in which California and the United States currently play a leading role. More important, it’s an unnecessary gesture toward child protection in an area millions of parents already are handling competently on their own.”
Jenny Holzer On Working In Public
“So what’s it like for an artist at this stage in her career to see her works — or words — everywhere? ‘It startles me sometimes,’ said Holzer, who winced at a few of her old sayings as they scrolled past at the Standard [Hotel]. ‘And it has funny side effects. When my daughter was young, she thought all electronic signs were mine.'”
LA Arts Supporters Face Off Vs. City Hall
One battle is over “Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to take away $415,000 in arts grants from groups that qualified under the standard competitive application process, in favor of four that he chose. The other is [over] preserving rent-free use of city buildings by nonprofit organizations, including leases on 245,000 square feet devoted to the arts.”
On TV, Teens’ BFFs Are Their Parents
“For decades, TV has depicted teens as angst-ridden and rebellious, and parents as out-of-touch and unhip.” Not anymore. “The new, more-sanguine shows still broach racy topics,” but “[p]arents typically have prominent roles and just as many tawdry story lines as the teens–and look almost like older siblings.”