Context & Continuity

Shakespeare in Love: The Sequel?!?!?!?!?!?

I know that someone, somewhere loves Shakespeare in Love more than I do ... probably.  But I feel confident letting you, dear reader, know that I've seen the movie more times than you have and, without fail, tears well up in my eyes Every ... Single ... Time. 

Really.

So, why do I feel so actively ambivelant, nay, discouraged, when I read late last year that the Weinstein company has announced it is planning a sequel.  I could make the jokes myself, but have the good sense to let the New York Times take the lead: 

Where does one go after “Shakespeare in Love,” which ends with its title character immersing himself in the writing of “Twelfth Night” while his sweetheart, Viola, is bound for the New World? What comes next? “Shakespeare in Tears”? “Shakespeare in Bed, Eating Bon-Bons”? “Shakespeare in a Disappointing Marriage With Anne Hathaway, Running Out the Clock While Thinking of Gwyneth Paltrow“?  [more]

Again...  Really?

Honestly, the only person who could possibly pull this off is the author of the original, Tom Stoppard.  Only the person who can build a play out of Rosencrantz and Guilderstern can possibly stand in that small, unpainted corner of the floor and find a way to the window. 

Amen.

Joyce Carol Oates: Fanning the Flame to Combustion with Her Wings.

The photo to the left explains the popularity of the Hipstamatic application for the iPhone.  But other than that, it's a photo of Joyce Carol Oates and her beloved husband Raymond Smith from outside their home in Windsor, Ontario in 1970, about nine years after they were married. 

The photograph is from Ms. Oates personal collection and was posted to The New Yorker's website to accompany the publication of Ms. Oates memoir of her husband's death -- and I highly recommend you read the article from the December 13, 2010 issue.

Ms. Oates has a special place in my heart for three reasons. 

1.  Most importantly, she is an amazing writer who has has proven she can write anything, froma Gothic Romance to a study on the sweet science of boxing.  Her writing is lovely and stories always capture my imagination.

2. & 3.  She's ... odd, prolific, and oddly prolific.  I was blessed with the opportunity to cross paths her a couple of times.   My first job in NYC was at E.P.Dutton, one of her publishers.  One publisher was not enough to keep up with her.  While I worked at Dutton, she published two sizable novels, Bellfleur and Angels of Light.  Inbetween, there were the short stories, criticism, novellas and her work on husband Smith's journal,  Actually there was so much work to published, she put two different pen names to work in addition to her own.  Oh, and the poetry.  Oh, and there was her own literary journal, The Ontario Review.  --Oh, and there was the full-time gig at Princeton.  Because she was so busy, and because her audience isn't really susceptible to media hype, Ms. Oates didn't do many interviews, but she did a radio interview while I was there that was organized by one of my bosses, Jean Rawitt.  Ms. Rawitt returned to the office following the interview and the legendary Lois Shapiro, the director of pulicity at Dutton (and latter The Free Press), asked Ms. Rawitt how it went.  Apparently, according to Jean, the interviewer asked Ms. Oates how it was she was able to produce such a prodigious volume of work.  Ms. Oates replied that it wasn't hard at all, she just typed up what the voices in her head had to say.  --And that was the end of the interviews for a while. 

And I admire someone who, in the course of their profession, transcends this grey, slumbering realm and enters into another world that is obviously more alive and vibrant and, of course, imaginative and vivid.  And this is how I usually select my favorite artists.  Can an ordinary human, scuffling around here in the shadows, create art on the order of Moby Dick? The Ring of the Nibelung? Bach's Cello Sonatas?  Leaves of Grass? The second side of Abby Road?  Obviously, I don't think so.  At the very least, these works result from -- at least -- a dialog between the artist and a higher power and, more likely, a visit to this other realm where, like this Prometheus, she steals some fire and, on return to here, some spark survives.  And the artist tends after the ember until she's able to fan it into flame. 

Ms. Oates is a wild and uncontrollable force whose gusts ignites all those tiny sparks she tends to with such loving care.  I've always worried about her because, she's so small, so thin-boned, those gust would snap her or that such flames would consume her.  But, just like the thin-boned bird, her wings carry her above us all.  Amen.

What Stoppard Read and Enjoyed This Year.

The Guardian ran a very interesting story this past week.  In the article, some forty or so writers are asked which book they read this year made the biggest impression on them.  And, of course, I'm writing this because Mr. Stoppard was queried.

Just based on what Mr. Stoppard writes, I've always assumed he focuses on classics and works that will, someday, end up in his plays.  Instead, I learned that Mr. Stoppard is up-to-date on his non-fiction and fiction.  Here's what he has to say:

I started the year by reading a dozen books on the Wall Street implosion. Even if you're bored with it all, The Big Short by Michael Lewis (Allen Lane) is unmissable: and if you're not, How Markets Fail by John Cassidy (Penguin) has the best, deepest backstory, and is as well written as you would expect from someone who covers economics for the New Yorker.

This year, too, I enormously enjoyed the last 518 pages of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections (Fourth Estate), which I had put aside in 2001 to read when I had time. I am now on page 14 of Freedom. Highly recommended.

And here's a link to the entire article. 

Stoppard + Tolstoy = Keira Knightley in Anna Karenina

When last we checked in, Sir Tom Stoppard was penning a BBC TV version of Ford Maddox Ford's Parade's End.  the mamoth work that became a cornerstone for moderism.  This just in:  Stoppard is reportedly writing a sceenplay of Anna Karenina, also for the BBC and it will star Keira Knightley. 

Here's the report from the Indie Wire: 

Working Title has been developing a new adaptation, written by the great playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, and that a script’s due before Christmas. The studio’s favorite son, Joe Wright (”Pride & Prejudice,” “Atonement”) is attached to the new version, and in the spring, the director’s likely to make a decision as to whether to direct this, or the dark Abi Morgan-scripted take on “The Little Mermaid” announced earlier in the year. [more]

It warms my heart to find out that, at 73-years-old, Mr. Stoppard is not slowing down at all and that there's so much to anticipate. 

The New Yorker: Regarding Nick Denton.

I don't understand the world, just a little bit of my view from where I stand and one of the places I've stood is in the world of journalism.  There, i've met some very bright people and some people who would have put the children in the coal mines. 

I'm not sure what it is about being a publisher, but it can really bring out the worse in some people.  For example, a million years ago, i worked for someone who intentionally cultivated an image of cruelty.  This person once told me, appropos of nothing in particular, he would never intentionally hire a handicapped person.  Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the office one day and found a lovely lady in a wheelchair setting type.  Deciding to tease the publisher, i strolled into his office and reminded him what he told me.  His reply is forever etched into my memory because I never, to this day, decided if he was kidding me or not.  He said, "Yeah.  I reconsidered.  I thought about it and figured out if I ever needed to get any overtime out of her I could always grabber her wheels and put her up on blocks."  And I will never know.

The New Yorker has profiled Nick Denton and this is what his colleagues have to say about him:

“He’s not, like, a sociopath, but you kind of have to watch what you’re doing around him,” Ricky Van Veen, the C.E.O. of the Web site College Humor, told me.

“The villain public persona is not a hundred-per-cent true,” A. J. Daulerio, the editor-in-chief of Deadspin, Gawker Media’s sports blog, said. “It’s probably eighty-per-cent true.”

“I can’t lie to make him worse than he is, but he’s pretty bad,” Ian Spiegelman, a former Gawker writer, said.

“Other people’s emotions are alien to him,” Choire Sicha, another Gawker alumnus, said.

“He’s got a strong carapace of not really thinking other people’s opinions are that important,” John Gapper, a columnist at the Financial Times, said.

“He’s right,” Matt Welch, the editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, said. “He’s never right about me, of course. But people are lazy and not very good.”

“He almost sees people as Legos moving around,” Sheila McClear said.

“He’s not a fully human person,” Spiegelman said.

“I mean, maybe he thinks he’s the one truly advanced human,” Anna Holmes, the founding editor of Jezebel, a.k.a. Girlie Gawker, said.

“Does he have parents?” Daulerio asked.

“I always imagine that he came fully formed out of British finishing school,” Holmes said.

“What can you do with a person like that?” Spiegelman said. “He’s a character out of Dr. Seuss, frankly.”

“Nick is a bit of a sphinx on purpose,” Joel Johnson, the longest-serving Gizmodo writer, said. “He has some of the attributes of the dork who wraps his Asperger’s around him like a cloak.”

“There’s no point in writing about Nick if you can’t get to the fundamental problem of his nihilism,” Moe Tkacik, who has worked at both Gawker and Jezebel, said.

[more]

If you want to find out how the mind of a publisher works, there's precious few opportunities better than this. 

 

 

b|net: The 10 Worst Business Ideas of All Time

Schadenfreude:  delight in another person's misfortune. There's something about the failure of others that works like a magnet. 

b|net understands this as well as everyone else and posted a feature today, The 10 Worst Business Ideas of All Time. 

9. Set new strategy and expect employees to feel empowered to make it happen.

The fundamental problem here is that planned change and empowerment cancel each other out. Planned change relies on an external source of change: do this because I said so.  Empowerment says "find your passion and do that." So combining them in this way is just mumbo-jumbo.  [more]

This one hits home for me because I've worked at plenty of large companies where the executive leadership experienced some sort of revelation and then decided to turn the company on a dime in an entirely different direction proving that its far easier to do it right the first time than to get it wrong and then try to fix it. 

The other thing we read in point nine is that it's difficult to get employees, who enlisted in one company, to re-enlist them in the new direction.  Remember, the new direction is either an opportunity that was overlooked on an attempt to recover from a mistake.  Either way, this isn't a confidence building experience.   

Fast Company: Why Bashing Millennials Is Wrong

I've been reading, and thinking, a lot about the generation gaps in the workforce today, especially out here in Silicon Valley where we are a little bit self-absorbed. 

I just found an interesting article in Fast Company that is a defense of Millenials, Why Bashing Millenials is Wrong.  The article is by Nancy Lublin, the CEO of Do Something and author of several book and many more magazine articles.  Here's a sample of what she has to say:

Millennials don't have traditional boundaries or an old-fashioned sense of privacy. They live out loud, sharing details of their lives with thousands of other people. Of course there are the obvious risks to this -- say, that unflattering, reputation-damaging photo that should have been deleted from Facebook -- but while you shake your cane at them for indulging in TMI, I see their openness as a great opportunity. For instance, when our summer intern @jimmyaungchen tweets and Facebooks about something he achieved at work, that's free marketing for Do Something to the 1,500 people in his immediate network. I now ask job applicants how many Facebook friends and Twitter followers they have.

</snip> 

Maybe the real problem isn't this generation -- maybe it's that the rest of us don't manage them for greatness, for maximum effect. What we often forget is that this generational clash is a timeworn tale. Whatever side of the divide you're on, it feels new. Yet it happens over and over -- say, once a generation. And in the end, the kids will always win. They're sort of like cats.  [more]

How It Works: The Facebook News Feed According to The Daily Beast.

It amazes me how much the Facebook newsfeed has redefined the meaning of "news" to me, especially now that I've added updates from the NYTimes, NPR and some of the radio stations I love.  --There's something odd but real about coming up-to-date on Obama's efforts to salvage the Democrats' chances in the upcoming election and news about the upcoming bat mitzvah at the synagogue. 

Behind this feed is an algorithm that pieces this feed together and this is what The Daily Beast thinks it has solved in this article called Cracking the Facebook Code. I highly recommend you taking a quick look at this article so you can better understand the Facebook experience. 

We're sure you consider all of your musings fascinating—but Facebook doesn't. At various points in our test, Phil switched between writing plain status updates and posting links to content elsewhere on the Web. Even before some of our friends began stalking Phil, for those who were seeing updates from him, links appeared more frequently than status updates—presumably because links are more effective at driving "user engagement," which translates into people spending more time on Facebook.

</snip>

After weeks of testing and trying everything from having Phil post videos to getting some of his friends to flood him with comments, by the end of our experiment, a few of our volunteers had still literally never seen Phil appear in their feeds, either Top News or Most Recent. These were the "popular kids"—users of Facebook with 600 or more friends. (Conversely, those with only 100 to 200 friends were among the first to spot Phil.) So the key, as you build your coterie of friends, is making sure to include some without huge networks. They'll see more of your feeds, interact in Facebook-approved ways, and up your visibility with all.

[more]

 

The Economist: Our Quarterly Update on Technology.

You read The Economist, don't you?  (Well then, you should fix that.)  For some of us who while away their time in the mines of Silicon Valley, we're treated to quarterly updates from The Economist on our little corner of the world and the new one finally reached my mailbox. 

Here's a link to the online edition that focuses on energy, medicine the the requistie IT issues.  I highly recommend the following selections:

• The interview with Jaron Lanier, author of one of my new favorite books, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. 
• Quantum cryptography and...
• Untangling the Social Web.  

Plese take a look. 

 

WSJ, 10.9.10: A Fierce Enthusiasm

The Wall Street Journal is doing a great job commemorating Mahler's 150th anniversary.  Most recently the newspaper reviewed what appears to be a marvelous study of why Mahler is important and popular, Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World.  One thing I learned was that Leonard Bernstein was the first to record all of Mahler's symphonies.  Of course, Bernstein recorded the symphonies twice. 

The difference is that Mr. Lebrecht knows not only Mahler's music but a great deal about the composer himself, having published a fine, annotated compilation of reminiscences and documents, "Mahler Remembered" (1987). In "Why Mahler?" readers will find a compelling biographical sketch of Mahler's life, from his seminal student years in Vienna through his burgeoning career as a conductor and, finally, his ever more consuming ambitions as a composer. Mr. Lebrecht stresses Mahler's psychological struggles—he was notably given to fits of despair and arrogant impatience—and his Jewishness, an identity that brought him ambivalent memories, notoriety and opposition, especially during his years as director of the Vienna Opera (1897–1907), when racialist political anti-Semitism was ubiquitous.

Mr. Lebrecht's "search for Mahler" includes a perceptive but devastating portrait of Mahler's widow, the notorious Alma, known for her many husbands (including the architect Walter Gropius and the writer Franz Werfel) and many infidelities. It includes as well an account of the author's conversations with the composer's surviving daughter, the sculptor Anna. Along the way we meet performers and friends of Mr. Lebrecht's, including Gilbert Kaplan, an avid Mahler enthusiast, amateur conductor and the founder of Institutional Investor magazine. Mr. Kaplan has put extensive resources into Mahler advocacy, helping to underwrite the publishing of books on the composer and facsimiles of his scores.  [more]

 

TechCrunch: Generation Whine, Our Generation Gap

I know someone who is very, very smart about how companies in Silicon Valley in particular, and high tech companies in general, staff projects and positions.  Her name is Rene Siegel and I'm very fortunate to count her as a friend. 

Recently, Rene explained to me a phenomena she's observed that there's a generation gap in the high tech workforce.  Baby Boomers have constently soldiered on.  Then along came generation X and the bursting of the dot.com bubble.  GenX hied it back to college to pick up the MBA and let the economy sort itself out. 

Then, the Millennial's showed up and if GenX was a bit different from the Baby Boomers, then let's put an medium-sized exponent next to the Millennial.  And what's fascinating is that Paul Carr, himself a millennial, has penned a scathing observation of his kin.  

 

Academics have studied this stuff. Research by Paul Harvey, assistant professor of management at the University of New Hampshire, found that Millennials as a whole “have unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback… managers are finding that younger employees are often very resistant to anything that doesn’t involve praise and rewards.”

</snip>

There was a time when society would react with horror at the prospect of an entire generation of such whiny, spoilt little brats. For some unfathomable reason, though, instead of condemning this army of latter-day Veruca Salts, we’ve decided to pander to them.

</snip>

Inevitably, this culture of entitlement has seeped through to product development. Last month at Disrupt, I had an on-stage argument with the creators of “Gripe”, an app which allowed (as I put it) “self entitled new media douchebags” to bully front-line employees of stores, bars, hotels and restaurants into acceding to their every entitled whim. If the employee refuses to comply with whatever demands the customer makes, the app allows them to be shamed – by name – across Twitter, Facebook and every other social network. The ultimate Millennial app.  [more]

Your Desk: What's Going On? Watch and Enjoy

Desk - Music and Sound Design from Aaron Trinder Film:Motion:Music on Vimeo.

NYTimes, 10/10/10: In Defense of Naïve Reading

I'm a reader.  Sometimes, I write somethings, but mostly, I'm a reader.  On good days, I'm a professional reader, so, I'm very interested in smart articles about reading and I found one today that I'm passing along to you. 

Professor Robert Pippin, University of Chicago, wrote a very fine article, In Defense of Naïve Reading.  Basically, the article compares and contrasts two very different types of reading experiences, that of the casual reader and the experience of the person who's reading very deeply, say, an English major such as myself.  Here are two particularly cogent paragraphs from the article: 

Finally, complicating the situation is the fact that literature study in a university education requires some method of evaluation of whether the student has done well or poorly. Students’ papers must be graded and no faculty member wants to face the inevitable “that’s just your opinion” unarmed, as it were. Learning how to use a research methodology, providing evidence that one has understood and can apply such a method, is understandably an appealing pedagogy.

</snip>

Literature and the arts have a dimension unique in the academy, not shared by the objects studied, or “researched” by our scientific brethren. They invite or invoke, at a kind of “first level,” an aesthetic experience that is by its nature resistant to restatement in more formalized, theoretical or generalizing language. This response can certainly be enriched by knowledge of context and history, but the objects express a first-person or subjective view of human concerns that is falsified if wholly transposed to a more “sideways on” or third person view. Indeed that is in a way the whole point of having the “arts.”  [more]

Of course, the casual reader and the deep reader aren't two different people as much as just two different states of reading a single person may move through depending on the time, material and other circumstances.  While I might "read" the television show, Firefly, differently than my thirteen-year-old daughter, I think we can both enjoy the material with equal measure.

 

 

 

 

 

Great News: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour Comes to National Theatre

In 1977, Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn delivered a multi-media production called Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.  Because the production requires an orchestar and cast of actors, it is rarely performed. 

Here's the synopsis from Wikipedia:

The play concerns a dissident, Alexander Ivanov, who is imprisoned in a Soviet mental hospital, from which he will not be released until he admits that his statements against the government were caused by a (non-existent) mental disorder.

In the hospital he shares a cell with a genuinely disturbed schizophrenic, also called Ivanov, who believes himself to have a symphony orchestra under his command. Alexander receives visits from the Doctor and from a Colonel in the KGB.

Meanwhile, his son, Sacha, is seen in a school classroom with a teacher who attempts to convince him of the genuineness of his father's illness.

Great news:  The National Theatre (London) is mounting a production that's scheduled to hit the boards next year.  Here's the story that tipped me off [link].

 

 

Call me Ishmael. Writing in Translation.

Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, wrote an absolutely wonderful article on the Op-Ed page of this past Sunday's New York Times.  It's all about the business of translation, of text and of the idea for a book into the book itself. 

Although the words “Call me Ishmael” have force and confidence, force and confidence alone aren’t enough. “Idiot, read this” has force and confidence too, but is less likely to produce the desired effect. What else do Melville’s words possess that “Idiot, read this” lack?

They have music. Here’s where the job of translation gets more difficult. Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear. Ideally, a sentence read aloud, in a foreign language, should still sound like something, even if the listener has no idea what it is he or she is being told.

and this...

A translator is also translating a work in progress, one that has a beginning, middle and end but is not exactly finished, even though it’s being published. A novel, any novel, if it’s any good, is not only a slightly disappointing translation of the novelist’s grandest intentions, it is also the most finished draft he could come up with before he collapsed from exhaustion. It’s all I can do not to go from bookstore to bookstore with a pen, grabbing my books from the shelves, crossing out certain lines I’ve come to regret and inserting better ones. For many of us, there is not what you could call a “definitive text.”

and...

And still. We, as a species, are always looking for cathedrals made of fire, and part of the thrill of reading a great book is the promise of another yet to come, a book that may move us even more deeply, raise us even higher. One of the consolations of writing books is the seemingly unquenchable conviction that the next book will be better, will be bigger and bolder and more comprehensive and truer to the lives we live. We exist in a condition of hope, we love the beauty and truth that come to us, and we do our best to tamp down our doubts and disappointments.  [/more...]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Malcolm Gladwell's Living Hell.

Honestly, it must be a living hell to be Malcolm Gladwell.  Coiffing the extravagant hair every morning.  Constantly interrupted by the hoi polloi expressing their un-dieing gratitude.  Besieged by book authors.  Gladwell gives readers of The Wall Street Journal a glimpse into one aspect of his wretched life:  Trying to write in coffee houses around the world. 

What of Paris? There are, famously, Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore on the Left Bank. Very early on, while my café philosophy was still a work in progress, I will admit to have written there—amidst the sea of Vassar girls with their Gitane cigarettes and their Thomas Mann. Then I came to my senses and moved on to the much more congenial Chez Prune, just off the Canal Saint Martin in the 10th Arrondisement—only to find a sea of Vassar girls with their Gitane cigarettes and their Thomas Mann. How many Vassar girls are there, anyway? My advice: write in your hotel room.  [link to story]Publish

Yes.  Back to your rooms, ladies.  Those of you from Smith and Barnard can remain.  By the way, where did you get those Gitanes?  They haven't been available in Paris since 2005.  Gladwell's list of cafes includes entries from New York, Zurich, London, the aforementioned Paris and Toronto. 

Terry Teachout Mourns the Popularization of High Culture.

Terry Teachout continues to get my attention and then do the darndest things with it.  In this week's Saturday edition of the Wall Street Journal, he seems to mourn the passing of high culture stepping into popular culture. 

In reviewing the recent New York premiere of "Me, Myself & I," Edward Albee's latest play, I remarked that "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is "the only one of Mr. Albee's 30 plays to have made an enduring impression on the general public—indeed, it's possible that 'Virginia Woolf' could be the last American play of any kind to have made such an impression." A number of readers wrote to me about that observation, and their reactions can be boiled down into a one-word reply: Really? So I gave it some additional thought, and the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that I'd inadvertently put my finger on something that is of relevance not just to Mr. Albee's career, but to the increasingly shaky standing of high culture in postmodern America.

<snip>

On the other hand, I'm sure that it can't be good for high culture when none of its practitioners are known outside a tight little circle of connoisseurs. How many Americans discovered live theater a half-century ago because they happened to read about Edward Albee in Life or see him on "The Tonight Show"? And how many of their grandchildren will fail to make such life-changing discoveries because those opportunities have dried up?  [link to article]

On many points, I think Mr. Teachout is right.  (And for those who are following me following Mr. Teachout, this is the exception, not the rule.  Five hundred channels of home improvement and Real Housewives of Wherever has relocated what passes for high culture into a ghetto where Charlie Rose is mayor and presides over a population of just a few.  Honestly, I can remember when A&E was a high-minded concept.  Obviously that was before Dogg and Cris Angel made their debut.  And Bravo too.  And it isn't just television, of course.  Magazine and newspapers and radio keep a very tight focus of celebrities who are celebrities because they are celebrities rather than serve as a contrivance for the delivering the latest titillation jolting our dopamine receptors.  --Yes, it's a pity.  Yes we will endure. 

(Prize to the first one who knows who I'm riffing on in the previous line.)

Arthur Penn, ז״ל

Arthur Penn.  In all the flash obituaries I've read and listened to so far, his claim to fame is pegged to Bonnie and Clyde.  There's no doubt in my mind that Bonnie and Clyde is a Very Important American film and I understand why.  However, I want to make a case for a few of his other movies.

For example:  The Miracle Worker.  Penn was responsible for putting The Miracle Worker on television, Broadway and film.  On Broadway and on film, he was smart enough to go with Anne Bancroft and Patti Duke and, from what we can see in the movie and read about the Broadway production, he made those two ladies work very hard.  The New York Times described the Broadway production as a vicious fist fight between the two actresses. 

For example:  The Missouri Breaks.  Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton, Frederic Forrest, ... anyone smart enough to put those good people in a movie together deserves recognition, even if the movie is rather ... loose jointed.  Furthermore, any movie with the line, "Honey, pull down Tristram Shandy for me," will forever live in my heart.

For example:  Alice's Restaurant.  Okay?  'nuff said about that one.

For example:  Little Big Man.  This one didn't do well in the box office, but goodness gracious, wasn't Dustin Hoffman brilliant?  Wasn't Chief Dan George brilliant?  Wasn't Faye Dunaway brilliant?  Wasn't Richard Mulligan brilliant?  What a great shaggy dog story.  

it's clear to me that Arthur Penn had a very particular vision of what he wanted to accomplish and, I believe, he realized that vision.  It's also clear to me he worked with a cadre of actors, was loyal to them and they returned that loyalty to him.  Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty, Anne Bancroft, ... these are important people and reinforce the fact Arthur Penn was one too. 

Why Multi-Tasking Makes You Dumb.

In other places, I've posted about Clifford Nass and his new book, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop.   Turns out, Nass also has some well-developed, well-researched opinions about multitasking and why it's so evil.  Watch the video below and enjoy.  Please. 

Because It's an Obession...

There is a rumor that Billy Crudup will appear in a revival of Arcadia that might open in New York early next year.  Crudup appeared in the original Lincoln Center production in 1993 playing Septimus and completely stole my heart as Belinsky in Coast of Utopia. 

Now you know.  We can make a weekend of it and see both Arcadia and the Julie Taymor production of Tempest.  It would be grand I'm sure.  Who's in? 

As If We're Surprised... Opinons on Stuxnet

Let's get this straight:  I'm an English Major.  Yes, I dabbled in Journalism too, but these are the things I'm not:

1.  Computer Scientist
2.  Electronic / Electrical Engineer
3.  Software Developer
4.  ... basically, anything hard to do.

I consume more media than is healthy for a normal person and I tell stories.  That's it. 

However, it turns out I'm able to tell the future and could have saved Iran's nuclear program from the Stuxnet virus attack.  Really. Here's how it works:

Back in July, I read a story in the Wall Street Journal all about how equipment from Siemens.  I blogged about that as well as a couple of other cyber-security topics.  (I like to group all my geeky stuff together so as to get it out-of-the-way all at once.)  I called out the fact that it's Siemens gear that is responsible for large-scale automation, such as the centrifuges spinning out refined uranium for Iran's nuclear program.

Today, Mr. John Markoff reported the story in today's NYTimes.  (Usually, the lag time between computer security reporting in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times is measured in weeks rather than months.) 

So, this is the scenerio: 

• Two months passed between the WSJ story and the reports of the "attack" on the Iranian facility. 
• There's nothing to believe the Iranian facility was singled out in spite of the sensational reporting by Mr. Markoff.
• It is insanely obvious that the most basic, layer 1, protections aren't being applied at the Iranian facility.  (Layer 1 is the physical layer in the OSI networking model.  Implementing layer 1 protection is this:  If you don't want your computer infected by viruses from the internet then you don't connect the computer to the internet.)  So, this isn't being done. 
• There is nothing, repeat nothing, to believe that Iran's facility was singled out.  It was abundantly clear from the WSJ story, and even the NYTimes story, that the virus really doesn't discriminate about the Siemens equipment, such as where it's located. 

This is what's going to get my goat:  My family and I fall off the grid because a PG&E substation bricks because of Stuxnet.  That's 's going to bug me.  Really.  Or, I'm going to become a computer security consultant with a really bad attitude.  Really. 

 

 

Where in the World is Walter Benjamin?

Sometimes when I read a book review, it leaves me baffled.  I can't figure out if I don't like the review or I don't like the book.  And this was exactly the case yesterday when i read a lengthy review of What Ever Happened to Modernism? (Gabriel Josipovici) in the Wall Street Journal.  

One of the upsides of this whole economic recession thing is that it's given me the opportunity to fill in some of the blanks of my so-called education.  Modernism is one of these areas I've only recently checked off my list.  (Watch out, Symbolism, you're next!)  I've developed an appreciation and respect.  So, when I spied the review in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, I thought it would be a great way to test myself. 

Then there was the matter of the author.  Josipovici is the author of the excellent Goldberg Variations, a "modern" novel that springs from Josipovici's textual interpretation of Bach's famous composition.  Anyhoo...

So I can't tell if it was Josipovici or the reviewer, Eric Ormsby, but someone neglected to mention Walter Benjamin, the fellow who coined the term Modernism.  This was hard fought intellectual ground for me, so i want to defend it. 

What is clear from the review is that Josipovici take a broad view of Modernism and dives into Cervantes and Rabelais.  The way Mr. Ormsby explains Mr. Josipovici's argument, this can make sense, but I wouldn't want to defend it myself.  My puny understanding of the material, however, shouldn't dissuade you from at least reading the review.  Myself? I'll be reading more source material before I climb up to (or is that descend unto) the criticism. 

Banned Books: What You Need to Know.

View Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2010 in a larger map.  The map is drawn from cases documented by ALA and the Kids' Right to Read Project.

September 25 through October 2, 2010 is Banned Book Week.  I'm going to resist posting a list of books that have been banned for various, sundry and ridiculous reasons because it's too easy and much overdone.  Hey, some of the books I wouldn't have in my library or buy for my two kids, but that's no reason for censorship. 

Instead, I submit for your approval a lovely map charting which books were banned where.  I was disappointed to see geographical clusters on both the Left and Right Coasts, but then I realized, book banning isn't a function of metropolitan life or rural life.  Instead, we see that, where there are people, there are people willing to ban books. --C'est dommage.  C'est tres dommage. 

 

Big Day for Jane Austin Fan Club.

It's probably a fatal admission of English major geek-a-tude, but my pulse quickened when I discovered Oxford's Bodleian Library and King's College London have collaborated to post some of Jane Austin's original manuscripts.  For me, it is tantamount to resting my fingertips on the keys of Hunter S. Thompson's IBM Selectric typewriter, if he hadn't blasted it with a twelve-gauge. 

No, really.

It's a fascinating collection and well produced.  If one wants to see a writer hard at work, then no better example can be found than taking a look at the opening of chapter ten of Persuasion.  Ms. Austin scarsely left a single word on that page untouched. 

Included in the collection is an especially delicious item:  the outlines for Mansfield Park and Emma. 

So, in these small years of the twenty-first century, I'm rather inured by the hustle and bustle of the internets but, every now and then, I can just about make out some measure of merit there.  Today is one of those days. 

The Plot Escapes Me: Adventures in Reading.

Thought you might enjoy this essay from last Sunday's NYTBR.  So much of the essay resonates with my own experience. 

One answer is that we read for the aesthetic and literary pleasure we experience while reading. The pleasure — or intended pleasure — of novels is obvious, but it is no less true that we read nonfiction for the immediate satisfaction it provides. The acquisition of knowledge, while you are acquiring it, can be intensely engrossing and stimulating, and a well-constructed argument is a beautiful thing. But that kind of pleasure is transient. When we read a serious book, we want to learn something, we want it to change us, and it hardly seems possible for that to happen if its fugitive content passes through us like light through glass. ...

Still, reading is different from life, and writing is different from those other art forms. Indeed, reading’s great distinction may be that it is not an experience to be experienced only as an experience (otherwise, poets wouldn’t have to sweat so hard to make their poems a performance rather than discourse). A book, even a novel, contains information, in the strictest sense, and the most obvious purpose of reading a book is to acquire that information for oneself. And unlike a catch-and-release fisherman, when I acquire that information, I want to keep it.  [more]

...

 

Godard: Putting His Shoulder to the Wheel.

Don't know about you, but I believe Jean-Luc Godard is a living legend.  When I was in school, a million years ago, His movies were an essential to the core curriculum.  One couldn't graduate with a film studies major without being conversant in French New Wave or understanding why À bout de souffle is a classic. Everytime I read news items about Godard, I get the feeling an old master, such as Rembrandt still walks among us, and that's the nature of film studies overall when the entire canon goes back just over one hundred years. 

Today, the NYTimes reminds us Godard is still alive, full of opinions and energetically working to realize his beliefs.  Specifically, Godard is supporting a compatriot accused of misappropirating intellectual property. 

Mr. Godard this month donated 1,000 euros to his fund, helping him get him more than halfway toward the 5,000 euros he needs for legal fees and other costs of taking his case to the European Court.

While Mr. Godard’s views on intellectual property are widely shared on the libertarian fringes of the Internet, they might seem surprising coming from a director who, under French law, retains editorial control over his work and derives financial benefit from it.

...

Mr. Godard has yet to comment publicly on Mr. Climent’s case, but he laid out the rationale for his opposition to French copyright rules in a recent interview with the cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles, in which he declared, “There is no such thing as intellectual property.”

“Copyright really isn’t feasible,” Mr. Godard said. “An author has no rights. I have no rights. I have only duties.”  [more]

 

 

Having a Great Client is a Great Thing...

... Especially If She's Super Smart ... And Your Beloved Wife.

The Huffington Post just published an insightful story about how children are exposed to the news and if that's a good thing.  The story is insightful because the reporter was smart enough to contact Abby Johnson. Herewith:

"Unfortunately, in some households, the television is a babysitter," notes elementary school counselor Abby Johnson, who works in Pleasanton, California. "In many cases, the children are exposed to the types of sensational news that sometimes interrupts regular programming. In my job as counselor, we do a fair amount of work trying to reduce the trauma to young children of having seen upsetting images."  [more]

There Are Really Good Reasons Some People Are Entrepreneurs...

... Because Some People Can Never Work For Others.

I hope you read this story from the Sunday Business section of the NY Times because, if you did, you may feel grateful that you have better work / life balance than Some People featured on the first page above the fold.  Observe:

If you give him $750,000, he says, you can have a stake in what he believes will be a $1-billion-a-year company.

Interested? Before you answer, consider that the man displays many of the symptoms of a person having what psychologists call a hypomanic episode. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — the occupation’s bible of mental disorders — these symptoms include grandiosity, an elevated and expansive mood, racing thoughts and little need for sleep.

“Elevated” hardly describes this guy. To keep the pace of his thoughts and conversation at manageable levels, he runs on a track every morning until he literally collapses. He can work 96 hours in a row. He plans to live in his office, crashing in a sleeping bag. He describes anything that distracts him and his future colleagues, even for minutes, as “evil.”

He is 21 years old.   [the rest of the story]

I think I worked for someone like this, once.  As I recall, it didn't end well, for him. 

First Monday: A Manifesto for Modeling and Measurement in Social Media

Sometimes I feel like a broken record because I keep pointing you back to some of the same sources time and again.  Today, more of the same. 

First Monday is a peer-reviewed online journal the covers some important topics for those of us who try to make a living from this internet media stuff and today's edition includes a very important article regarding how we might want to think about measuring social media.  Observe:

Online social network (OSN) research to date has been dominated by a tendency to abstract a given OSN as a static graph. The appeal of modeling all OSNs uniformly with nodes to represent generic users and links to connect those that are “acquaintances” (covering a range of meanings from real–world friendship to mere interest in their comments and links) is understandable. However, not all OSNs are equal — indeed, not all networks studied under the guise of OSNs are truly “social networks” — and ignoring the full array of features of real–world OSNs is detrimental to understanding these systems.

The allure of a “one size fits all” model is that it brings the study of OSNs squarely into the realm of graph theory, with ready access to a rich set of available techniques and models. It also makes OSNs a prime application for the popular new field of network science, which encourages comparisons of networks from very different domains via well–known metrics such as node degree distribution, clustering coefficient, network diameter, etc. Observed similarities in these metrics across different networks are used to argue for the existence of universal features of networks.  [more]

Please take a look.  This is good stuff. 

Stoppard: Rushing Beneath a Falling Bookcase.

I came across thi story in the online version of the Telegraph.  Actually, it's a short notice based on an article Mr. Stoppard has penned for the October Tattler.  As the Tattler is a Conde Nast publication, we probably won't be seeing an online version of the Tattler's story but I'll try to locate the dead tree edition and pass it along to you here. 

The Oscar winner appears to be having intimations of mortality. "I have a spasm of envy for the person that was killed by a falling bookcase, as long as it doesn't happen prematurely," the president of the London Library says in the October edition of Tatler magazine.

"[It] would be a good way to go. You went when you were in a good frame of mind and you were doing something pleasant and interesting.

"A lot of people would say, 'I would rather have a heart attack at the height of sexual passion.' On the whole, I would prefer to be killed by a bookcase."  [more]