NewsTrust - Arts - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

“Making Art In America Is A Political Statement In Itself”: Grammy Award-winning Singer Steve Earle On Music, Writing and Acting

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 13 (Interview) - Singer-songwriter, actor and author Steve Earle joins us in the studio to talk about his art and perform two songs from his new album, "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive." He is being awarded an honorary degree today from the City University of New York School of Law. Last year, he was honored by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty for his years of involvement with the anti-death penalty movement. “Making art in America is a political statement in itself,” Earle says. “I am maybe not so much a political songwriter as I am a political person.”

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JR's TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside out

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TED - Mar. 04 (Speech) - JR, a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting photos of the human face across massive canvases. At TED2011, he makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out.

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The Conversion of David Mamet

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Commentary Magazine - By Terry Teachout - Aug. 06 (Review) - American theater is a one-party town, a community of like-minded folk who are all but unanimous in their strict adherence to the left-liberal line. Though dissenters do exist, they are almost never heard from in public, and it is highly unusual for new plays that deviate from the social gospel of progressivism to reach the stage, whether in New York or anywhere else.

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PBS: Can you say "unlevel playing field?"

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Writing Corner - By Beth Wellington - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - In reading Alessandra Stanley's July 12 column, "Mr. Secretary, This Is Your Life (in Plenty of Detail) I thought of the PBS handling of the film Coal Country v.s. that of the tribute to George Schultz. At the time that PBS pulled the plug on airing Coal Country, citing its Sierra Club funding, I wondered whether Board member Sharon Rockefeller (wife of the big coal lovin' WV Senator) had played any role.

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Value Engineering Energy Efficiency--The Kerry Lieberman Bill

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Green Building Law Blog - By Shari Shapiro - Jun. 11 (Opinion) - Essentially, Kerry Lieberman took the best, easiest and cheapest means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions—through energy efficiency—and gave them the very short end of the stick, meanwhile allocating the vast majority of federal resources to cap and trade. Is this a good compromise?

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"Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is not a good idea.

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Althouse - By Ann Althouse - Apr. 24 (Opinion) - I have endless contempt for the threats/warnings against various cartoonists who draw Muhammad (or a man in a bear suit who might be Muhammad, but is actually Santa Claus). But depictions of Muhammad offend millions of Muslims who are no part of the violent threats. In pushing back some people, you also hurt a lot of people who aren't doing anything (other than protecting their own interests by declining to pressure the extremists who are hurting the reputation of their religion).

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World's biggest scrap-metal sculpture is a steampunk wonderland

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Boing Boing - Apr. 05 (Opinion) -

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Meet Cartoonist Steve Brodner

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Nikki Gloudeman - Apr. 04 (Interview) - For over 30 years, satirical illustrator Steve Brodner has lampooned politicians such as George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich. His colorful caricatures have won numerous awards and been featured in Mother Jones, The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and The Village Voice.

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The Air Up There : Green roofs

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Good Magazine - By Malcolm Gladwell - Oct. 19 (Interview) - Writer Malcolm Gladwell sits down with environmentalist Amy Norquist to discuss one of the most unsung and low-tech green solutions out there: green roofs.

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Patricia Amaya: Traveling Green From Now On

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Patricia Amaya - Jul. 27 (Opinion) - The Eco Cottages are consciously and meticulously restored integrating organic earth-friendly and re-purposed materials. While at the Eco Cottages you'll discover no stone was left unturned in making your stay memorable as well as educational. The Eco Cottages make a perfect family surf vacation affordable and eco-friendly.

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Damascus: The Destruction of The Old City

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Yazan Badran - Apr. 20 (Opinion) - Damascus prides itself on being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. The history of Damascus goes back well into 8000 BC. In every corner of its ancient alleys there's a taste of every historical era there was to be found. The city that had withstood everything from earthquakes to invasions for nearly 10 millennia, is now crumbling under the threat of... "Modernism"!

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Exploring Faces

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

6seconds - Mar. 23 (Opinion) - The photographer-activist, JR , converts his pictures into posters and transforms streets into universal open-air galleries. From Los Angeles to Berlin, he keeps his independence and illegal exhibits in the streets, which he considers to be his very own gallery. With a 28 millimetre lens, portraits of people pulling faces, huge posters and anonymity, JR changes some basic rules. As people are asked not to smile but to make faces for the portrait, they are not subjects, but actors. JR aim is to shift thinking habits and reframe our stereotypes and prejudices. T

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At Creativity's Heart: Balancing Chaotic and Ordered Thinking

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PsyBlog - Mar. 20 (Review) - For some people creativity and chaotic thinking naturally go hand-in-hand, but for others it doesn't. Finke and Bettle (1996) pick up on this continuum between two types of creative thinkers: * Chaotic thinkers: reactive, spontaneous, playful, metaphorical. * Ordered thinkers: proactive, organised, literal and serious.

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Aesthetic appreciation on the line

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

British Psychological Society - Mar. 17 (Review) - Seeking to understand aesthetics from the perspective of brain processes is all the rage these days, and has given birth to the nascent field of neuroaesthetics. Now Valeria Drago and co-workers have shown that people who are able to more accurately bisect a line, also tend to be more emotionally sensitive to paintings. -- The researchers tested the ability of 17 right-handed participants to accurately bisect 100mm horizontal lines - that is, to mark the midpoint of the lines. The participants also looked at 10 paintings by the relatively unknown abstract artist Stephen Duren, before indicating how moved they were by each picture.

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Learning, Arts, and the Brain

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Dana Press Blog - By Michael S. Gazzaniga - Mar. 12 (Opinion) - Learning, Arts, and the Brain, a study three years in the making, is the result of research by cognitive neuroscientists from seven leading universities across the United States. In the Dana Consortium study, released in March 2008, researchers grappled with a fundamental question: Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter? [Download a PDF version of the full report (2MB)]

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Process or Symbol?

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 08:20:53 -0700

Commentary Magazine - By Michael J. Lewis - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - What exactly is a memorial? If you are someone who thrives on the sneers of the cognoscenti, try saying that it is the physical manifestation of an abstract idea (such as grief, triumph, or resolution), presented in symbolic terms. You will be told in no uncertain terms that a memorial is not an object but "a process," an open-ended and indeterminate series of negotiations that can never be brought to resolution. So I learned last year when participating in a panel discussion hosted by WNYC-FM on monuments and memorials in the wake of 9/11 (which you can hear here). The champion of the "process" concept of memorial was James Young, whose views enjoy great prestige in academic circles. (He was a juror on the panels that chose the designs for both the World Trade Center Memorial and Berlin's Holocaust Memorial.) His views might be paraphrased thus: In our postmodern age, we no longer possess the collective certainty to make bombastic civic monuments like the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials; we should recognize that there are multiple constituencies and multiple claims on the truth, and that each of these should be given voice in a memorial. The notion that a memorial can effectively symbolize a single abstract concept is the discredited vestige of a simplistic age.

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Uber-Eco-Towers: The Top Ten Green Skyscrapers

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:01:29 -0700

ecogeek - By Jon Schroeder - Jun. 07 (Opinion) - Green skyscrapers offer so much for the average EcoGeek to drool over. Each one can contain hundreds of innovations that make the world a cleaner place, they build up, rather than out, and many of them are frikkin gorgeous. Lucky for us, more and more eco-towers are popping up all the time. In fact, a symposium about greenscrapers called Mixed Greens: An International Survey of State-of-the-Art Sustainable Skyscraper Design just wrapped up last month in NYC. Lucky for us, Jon Schroeder is on the case, and is bringing us the top ten green skyscrapers.

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