“Ernie Barnes, whose drawings and paintings of athletes, dancers and other figures in motion reflected his first career as a professional football player, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 70. . . . “Mr. Barnes was an offensive lineman in the old American Football League, playing four seasons in the 1960s for the [...]
Archive for April, 2009
R.I.P. – Ernie Barnes (1938-2009)
Posted in Art & Artists, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Race, Sports on April 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Great Britain to Name 1st Woman, 1st Openly Gay Poet Laureate
Posted in Europe, Literature, Poets & Poetry, Sex & Gender, Writers & Writing on April 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Few positions in public life, apart, perhaps, from Pope or manager of the England football team, have proved quite so unattainable to women over the years as that of Britain’s Poet Laureate. For centuries, from Ben Jonson onwards, the prestigious honour with its peppercorn salary and liquid remuneration of a ‘butt of sack’ has been [...]
Food for Thought: Fatty Foods May Boost Memory
Posted in Food & Wine, Health & Medicine, Science & Technology on April 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“A hormone released during the digestion of certain fats triggers long-term memory formation in rats, a new study says. “Researchers found that administering a compound produced in the small intestine called oleoylethanolamide (OEA) to rats improved memory retention during two different tasks. “When cell receptors activated by OEA were blocked, the animals’ performance decreased. “Though [...]
Dead Poets Society: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Cervantes Share April “Death Day”
Posted in Books, Literature, Poets & Poetry, Writers & Writing on April 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“The 23rd of April is a bad, bad day to be a poet. It’s the cruellest day in the cruellest month, as TS Eliot almost said. “Lots of people know that today is the day William Shakespeare, the greatest poet in the language, was born in 1564 and that it’s the day he died in 1616. [...]
When She Was Good: Has the Culture Caught Up with Mary Gaitskill?
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Literature, Sex & Gender, Writers & Writing on April 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Good writers show us new places. Great writers give us new ways of looking at the old one. Just as Ruskin enabled a generation of Europeans to see the landscape that was actually in front of them rather than the conventionalized approximations they carried around in their heads, so is Gaitskill one of those rare [...]
Happy 445th Birthday, William Shakespeare! . . . or Not?
Posted in Birthdays, Books, Europe, Literature, Plays & Playwrights, Poets & Poetry, Writers & Writing on April 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Baptized on April 26, 1564, William Shakespeare‘s actual birthday is unknown but is traditionally observed on April 23rd, St. George’s Day. But how likely is it that today is the Bard of Avon’s real birthday? “There is no evidence, alas, to support the popular belief that William Shakespeare was born — as fifty-two years later he was to [...]
Today’s Sign of the Apocalypse: Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” Sells as Self-Help Guide in India
Posted in Asia, Books, Business, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Jewish Life, Sign of the Apocalypse on April 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“While it is regarded in most countries as a ‘Nazi Bible’, in India it is considered a management guide . . . “Sales of [Mein Kampf] over the last six months topped 10,000 in New Delhi alone, according to leading stores, who said it appeared to be becoming more popular with every year. “‘Students are [...]
DUMBO Dock Street Project Update – City Planning Commission OKs Smaller Building
Posted in Architecture, Brooklyn, DUMBO, New York City, Urban Affairs on April 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“The City Planning Commission voted overwhelmingly to support a controversial tower next to the Brooklyn Bridge — though the building’s 18-story wing will be shaved by one story. “In addition, Jed Walentas’s 325-unit Dock Street proposal — which features a ‘green’ design, plus 65 below-market-rate rentals and a public middle school — would lose two [...]
Andrew Sullivan to Dick Cheney: “Let Us See It All”
Posted in American History, Bush, Cheney, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Current Events, International Affairs, Obama, Politics on April 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Andrew Sullivan wonders, “Is Cheney Panicking?”: “The one thing you saw most plainly in the Plame affair is how obsessed Dick Cheney is with public image, the chattering classes and spinning stories that might reflect poorly on him. The act is the elder statesman, authoritatively reviewing the world scene, soberly making judgments, calmly explaining it later [...]
Earliest Known Book Dust Jacket Found at University of Oxford Library
Posted in Antiques & Folk Art, Books, Collectors & Collecting on April 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“A librarian digging through the archives at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford has found the earliest known example of a publisher’s dust jacket. The dust jacket, which had been separated from the book it was created for, was found bound with other booktrade ephemera. (Click image to enlarge) “It belonged to: Friendship’s Offering for 1830. London: Smith, [...]
Spoiling Eaters, Not the Food: Why New York Food is So Good
Posted in Business, Food & Wine, New York City, U.S. Travel, Urban Affairs on April 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Joseph Epstein on why New York food is so good: “Manhattan must have 300, perhaps 400, splendid restaurants. I estimate that Chicago has, at the outside, 30, and San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., respectively probably not more than that. Why is this? How to account for this plentitude of good restaurant food in [...]
British Art Publisher “Thames & Hudson” Celebrates 60th Anniversary
Posted in Architecture, Art & Artists, Books, Business, Europe, Jewish Life, Photography on April 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“During the late Thirties, some of Britain’s most distinguished architects, artists, musicians, film-makers and others, many of them Jewish, arrived on our shores with their meagre belongings having escaped from the Nazi threat in continental Europe. Many of them made their homes here and went on to leave a lasting mark on our intellectual and [...]
The Real Things: Major League Baseball’s All-Star Authenticators
Posted in Baseball, Collectors & Collecting, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Popular Culture, Sports, Sports Memorabilia on April 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Nearly a decade ago, embarrassed about reports of widespread fraud in the $1-billion-per-year sports memorabilia industry — dominated by baseball and filled mostly with fakes and forgeries, according to an F.B.I. investigation — Major League Baseball did something about it. “Now every game has at least one authenticator, watching from a dugout or near one. The authenticators [...]
Digital Tea Leaves: On eBooks & the Future of Reading & Writing
Posted in Books, Business, Science & Technology, Writers & Writing on April 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Whatever the future holds for printed books, this much is certain: there is no shortage of ink being spilled presently by writers offering their visions of the digital future – In “How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write,” author Steven Johnson points to two key developments, “the breakthrough success of Amazon’s [...]
The Creativity Stimulus: Prospects for a “New Deal” for American Culture
Posted in Art & Artists, Obama, Plays & Playwrights, Poets & Poetry, Politics, Popular Culture, Writers & Writing on April 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“On inauguration day, Tom Brokaw was moved to compare Barack Obama’s election to Czechoslovakia’s 1989 Velvet Revolution. At the eye of each storm, of course, was an icon who merged the political and the aesthetic–Václav Havel, the rock-star poet and prophet, and Barack Obama, the post-soul master of his own story. Both struck down eras [...]
“The Untold Stories”: New Research on Holocaust Killing Fields in the Former Soviet Union Available Online
Posted in Crimes & Misdemeanors, Europe, International Affairs, Jewish Life, Museums & Exhibitions, Religion on April 20, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“Holocaust deniers aside, the world is not ignorant of the systematic Nazi slaughter of some six million Jews in World War II. People know of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; many have heard of the tens of thousands shot dead in the Ukrainian ravine of Babi Yar. But little has been known about [...]
Smart Jews: Can Genetic Theory Explain the High IQ of Ashkenazi Jews?
Posted in Anthropology, Books, Health & Medicine, Human Behavior, Jewish Life, Religion, Science & Technology on April 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The presence of many lethal genetic diseases affecting the brain among Ashkenazi Jews may also increase their intelligence – so say Gregory Cochran (bottom), a physicist and genetics buff, and geneticist Henry Harpending (top), authors of the recently published, The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. From the Los Angeles Times: “The biological basis for intelligence can [...]
Touching All the Bases: William Safire on Baseball Lingo
Posted in Baseball, Language, Popular Culture, Writers & Writing on April 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Where would pols, pundits and morose mucky-mucks be without the language of baseball? “Here’s the pitch: Despite distractions, you have to keep your eye on the ball. You have to be aware of something unexpected coming out of left field, and only if your ad-libbed response is not off base will your home team go to bat for you. You can’t be born [...]
Obscene: Maverick Publisher Barney Rosset Completes Autobiography
Posted in Books, Business, Counter Culture, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Literature, Magazines & Newspapers, Plays & Playwrights, Popular Culture, Writers & Writing on April 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
From NPR, a profile of publisher Barney Rosset, former owner of Grove Press and The Evergreen Review, in advance of the publication of his autobiography, The Subject Is Left Handed, which takes its name from his FBI file. The article includes a clip from “Obscene,” a film biography (2007) of Rosset, in which Rosset discusses acquiring Samuel [...]
“Lolita” Redux?: Penguin to Publish Nabokov’s “The Original of Laura”
Posted in Books, Business, Literature, Writers & Writing on April 17, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“Penguin is to publish Vladimir Nabokov‘s unfinished final novel, The Original of Laura. Penguin Classics editor Alexis Kirschbaum bought the book, together with continuing rights to the Nabokov backlist, in a six-figure deal through Andrew Wylie. The Original of Laura will be published as a Penguin Classics hardback at £25 on 3rd November, and simultaneously by Knopf in [...]
