“Without a written constitution in place, statutes are the U.K.’s highest form of law, and its unwritten constitution is a combination of legislation, conventions, parliamentary procedure, and common law. To some this setup may be odd or confusing, but my book’s conclusion is that unwritten constitutions can perform just as well as written ones, and that Britain’s unwritten constitution may be just as good as America’s esteemed document.” – The Atlantic
Tag: 10.09.20
Publishing Insider Joins A Books-To-Prisons Pipeline
“When he isn’t promoting books for W.W. Norton, Peter Miller, publicity director of Norton’s Liveright imprint, moonlights as the owner of Freebird Books, a small used bookstore he operates in Brooklyn. … A year after buying the store, Miller heard that Books Through Bars, which donates books to prison inmates around the country, needed a space for its collection operations.” – Publishers Weekly
The Man Who’s Saving India’s Rural Folk Music And The People Who Perform It
“Live and festival-centric performances, which is all these musicians have known through generations, barely bring in money, and an online presence has become mandatory for creative mileage. Many music traditions are dying out, with practitioners taking up menial labor to make ends meet.” Enter Abhinav Agrawal. – Ozy
Henry Golding On The Classic Actor Narrative Of Playing A Role And Finding Yourself
The actor who found fame in 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians talks about making indie movies before he hit it big. “It was magical as an actor to be able to sit in a character’s feelings and confusion and history. I’ve been trying to find great material to work from like this, much more independent styles of movie making.” – The New York Times
U.S. Supreme Court Says Developer Who Painted Over New York’s Graffiti Mecca Must Pay Artists
“The real estate company that whitewashed graffiti works at 5Pointz in Queens will still have to pay millions in damages to the affected artists, the United States Supreme Court decided on Monday, October 5. … The [justices] declined G&M Realty’s petition to review the case, upholding a 2018 federal court ruling that awarded $6.7 million in damages to 21 artists at the site.” – Hyperallergic
A Veteran Broadway Dancer Laments What May Be The End Of His Career
“I wondered, but didn’t ask, if, like mine, my castmates’ bodies had already grown thicker and felt shorter and moved slower. I wondered if, like me, they didn’t recognize themselves without choreography to move through and other people to move with; if, like me, they were hoping this wasn’t the moment they’d always known would come: the moment they would have to redefine who they are and who they’re going to be.” – Dance Magazine
Soprano Erin Wall Dead At 44
A finalist at the 2003 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, she went on to perform with symphony orchestras and major opera houses throughout Europe and North America. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2018. – CBC
Why People Believe In The Unbelievable
“You don’t have to be a big believer in the power of survey data to see that behind the monster stands meaning. Belief in the existence of monsters rarely starts with a chance observation in the woods. It requires psychological preparation. Often, a sinuous neck, a flipper, is just the tip of something that sits much deeper in the waters of culture and history.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
How Much John Steinbeck Hated Criticism (Of Any Kind)
“Over the course of a long writing life, Steinbeck had won many prizes, among them the Pulitzer and then, remarkably enough, the Nobel, but no matter how many hundreds of critics and millions of readers declared him a national treasure, he not only raged at those who refused to extend him the accolades he hungered for, he scorned those very accolades when they came his way.” – The New Republic
Why Science Didn’t Become A Thing Until The 17th Century
“Science has produced some extraordinary elements of modern life that we take for granted: imaging devices that can peer inside the body without so much as a cut; planes that hurtle through the air at hundreds of miles an hour. But human civilization has existed for millenniums, and modern science — as distinct from ancient and medieval science, or so-called natural philosophy — has only been around for a few hundred years. What took so long?” – The New York Times