Topics
Arts & Culture
The Magic of Comedy
Talk Show Host & New York Times Blogger
Both Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett started out as young magicians and maintained the craft throughout their careers. So which late-night legend was better?
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How Globalization Is Changing Architecture
As the world's new tallest building debuts in Dubai, Robert A.M. Stern, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, discusses the impact of modernity on the Middle East. Watch
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Novelist and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is married to cognitive scientist Steven Pinker. What have they learned about love, from study and experience? Watch
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Imagine a performance where the furniture were characters. It’s called “Death and the Powers.” Watch
Related Blogs
Resurgence
March 21, 2010 — 11:37 AM
We were in the middle of a conversation around the table at a restaurant when our first year art student made a comment about her classes. "You might be a better artist than you know," I said. "You’ve just got to put the time in. They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something." She looked at me with the kind of skepticism only a teenager could muster, her eyes widening in disbelief. Read more
Picture This
March 20, 2010 — 11:05 PM
Artistic Vision: EyeWriter Technology Allows Paralyzed Artist to Draw
FutureEverything last week awarded their first FutureEverything Award to The EyeWriter, a new eye-tracking technology (pictured) that allows artists to “draw” with their eyes when unable to do so with their hands. “Art is a tool of empowerment and social change, and I consider myself blessed to be able to create and use my work to promote health reform, bring awareness about ALS and help others,” says artist Tony Quan, also know as “Tempt 1,” who uses The EyeWriter to continue to create art after Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, left him unable to use his hands. This technology allows artists to create even after their bodies are unable to realize what they see in their heads and gives hope to anyone limited by some physical condition. Read more
Latest Ideas
Finding a Voice When Liberals Had None
How the legendary cartoonist got started at the Village Voice, and why his work struck a nerve in a decade when “liberals didn’t understand that they had First Amendment rights.” Read More
March 22, 2010
Back when MLK Jr. was caricatured as a violent radical and the U.S. was plunging into Vietnam, cartoonist Jules Feiffer vented his anger with an editorial freedom that few publications would permit today. Read More
March 22, 2010
How to Draw Cartoons With a Pointed Stick
Forget fancy pens: in his early career, the award-winning cartoonist used sharpened dowels from the local meat market. Read More
March 22, 2010
Anarchist! Sexual Rebel! Children’s Book Artist?
How did a cartoonist “trying to overthrow the government” end up creating both the sex drama “Carnal Knowledge” and the illustrations for kid-lit classic “The Phantom Tollbooth”? Read More
March 22, 2010
“Another Golden Age of Comics”
Comics now are every bit as vibrant as they were in their Depression heyday. And yet for the artists, cartooning still “ain’t a living.” Read More
March 22, 2010
Satire in a “Scary, Wonderful Country”
The role of political cartoonists has largely been usurped by Stewart and Colbert. But what should satirists of any stripe target these days? Read More
March 22, 2010
That “Crazy, Anarchic Spirit”? New York’s Still Got It
Whatever NYC loses to gentrification, the cartoonist argues, it maintains the same vitality it had throughout the whole 20th century. Read More
March 22, 2010
You Don't Need a Fancy Pen to Be a Great Cartoonist
All you need, if you're Jules Feiffer, is a sharp stick and an even sharper satirical eye. Before he became a Putlizer Prize winner, an Academy Award winner, and one of America's most beloved children's book illustrators, Feiffer was a very young, very angry political cartoonist who found his style by drawing with pointed wooden dowels from the local meat market. Read More
March 22, 2010
Irish author and actor Malachy McCourt's memories of St. Patrick's Day are gloomy, rainy and awful. That's how it was in Limerick, Ireland, where he was raised. In the U.S., there became spirited parades coupled with solid beer-drinking. And then what happened? Ireland copied the fun. The only difference? Crowds in the U.S. are homophobic, whereas, in Ireland, "the home of the whole bloody thing," as McCourt says, gay people get prizes and awards for being the most colorful group in the parades. Read More
March 16, 2010
Daily Ideafeed
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March Madness
Diploma Sadness -
The Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page wants to see at least a minimum graduation rate of 40 percent before college basketball teams are allowed to compete in post-season play.
March 21, 2010
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Playwright and Actor
Sam Shepard -
A man for all seasons, Sam Shepard opens up about Patti Smith, his plays, his problems with alcohol and the role of love in American society in a recent interview with The Guardian.
March 21, 2010
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Broadway
Hollywood Comes Home -
The economic depression has proven a serious crisis for major film studios and in its wake Hollywood stars are flocking to Broadway to renew their acting careers.
March 20, 2010
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Spotify
(More) Free Music -
The free music streaming service that has a library containing over ten millions songs already enjoyed by Europeans is still in negotiations with record companies but hopes to break into America in 2010.
March 20, 2010
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Public Art
Skyline Interruption -
From next Friday until August 31 slightly different sculptures of naked men will interrupt New York’s skyline as artist Anthony Gormley kicks off his first every New York-based installation.
March 19, 2010
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Beating Bacon
Hamming it Up -
Bacon has been relegated to old-hat status, despite being the “apple of food nerds’ eye for so long.” Meanwhile, America’s old-time cured country ham tantalizes taste buds and is beating bacon.
March 19, 2010
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Brothel Laws
Maison de Tolérance -
Frenchmen would love looser laws to bring back brothels more than 60 years after Paris shut its famed “maisons closes,” according to a campaign stepping up to legalize them.
March 19, 2010
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Obama TV
Foxing ‘Em? -
Fox News has been criticized by the White House for its perceived right-wing bias. It was surprising therefore that President Barack Obama yesterday gave an interview to the channel.
March 19, 2010
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Fairy Tale
Invisibility Cloak -
A German team has turned tales of invisibility cloaks, made famous by Grimm’s fairy tales and Harry Potter, into a potential – albeit a small – reality. About 0.00005 inches in fact.
March 19, 2010
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Etymological Gift
Pragmatic Philosophy -
“Pragmatic” is often seen as a complimentary term. But, says New York Times’ commentator Stanley Fish, it is also related to the philosophy of “pragmatism,” which is an unhopeful ideal.
March 16, 2010
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“No Hoax”
Lost Shakespeare -
After 10 years of literary detective work, new evidence has come to light of a lost play by William Shakespeare, called Cardenio, which had masqueraded as an 18th-century work.
March 16, 2010
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Seinfeld
Unfunny Comeback -
Even Jerry Seinfeld’s former writing partner Larry David has failed to see the funny side of his recent television comeback, appearing to echo critics who have branded the show “pointless.”
March 15, 2010
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“Exploitive Polemic”
“Green Zone” Truth? -
A top military adviser on the newly released war thriller “Green Zone” has written an editorial slamming the film’s assertion that a massive conspiracy led us into the Iraq war.
March 15, 2010
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Race and Sleep
Sleep Well? -
The National Sleep Foundation finds that our busy American culture homogenizes sleeping tendencies across cultures, resulting in all ethnicities sacrificing some of their Z's.
March 14, 2010
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Daylight Saving Time
Spring Forward -
The Christian Science Monitor traces the origins of Daylight Savings Time to WWI Germany, where an extra hour of work was desired before nighttime air raids; the tradition continues for tradition's sake.
March 14, 2010
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Love and Marriage
Pillow Talk -
A Japanese man has fallen in love with and married his large body pillow with a female anime character drawn on it; the Japanese word 'otaku' means 'obsessive' or 'nerd'.
March 14, 2010
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Ulysses' Legacy
Reagan on the $50? -
The Chicago Tribune disavows Illinois' own Ulysses S. Grant in an editorial arguing to replace the Civil War general and President's image on the fifty dollar bill with Ronald Reagan's.
March 13, 2010
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Dorothy Makeover
Which Wizard? -
"The Wizard of Oz," which starred Judy Garland, has a place in cinematic history. But with three rival studios preparing new versions of the classic musical, which Wizard is which?
March 12, 2010
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Ukulele Peace
Don’t Fight, Play -
Talented ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro says the traditional Hawaiian instrument, which he learned to play at just 4 years of age, could make the world a less violent place to live in.
March 12, 2010
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Firenze, Firenze
What Dolce Vita? -
The New York Times’ Earl Wilson ponders the disorganisation and chaos of beautiful Italy as he attempts to board an airplane from an airport that looks the same as it did in 1944.
March 12, 2010
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Living On
Ungrateful Dead? -
Two new exhibitions about band the Grateful Dead have just opened at the New York Historical Society and the University of California, proving the dead live on.
March 11, 2010
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Pivoting
Parent’s Buildings -
Claude Parent’s new Paris-based exhibition re-establishes him as a pivotal force in European architecture after decades of neglect, writes The New York Times.
March 10, 2010
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If Only…
Financial Funnies -
If only financial reform was as funny as the comedy sketches being played out on popular comedy website funnyordie.com sighs The Washington Post’s Katrina vanden Heuvel.
March 10, 2010
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The Oscars
Acting Up -
For once the Oscars is acting “sanely” in awarding Best Picture to a low budget indie film “Hurt Locker” over “Avatar.” Why, then, is The New Republic still frustrated by it?
March 9, 2010
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Giotto
Enlightening -
Ultra-violet rays have been used by restoration experts in Florence, Italy to shine new light on the work of Giotto di Bondone, one of the West’s most important painters.
March 9, 2010