A very cool, multicontinental tale of artistic culture-keeping: an Italian town run by artists steps in to save, relocate, and reimagine a Netflix-imperiled New York video rental institution.

europe, gardens and cities, horizons of the possible, italy, movies, new york

Nate

:

“Kim’s was the cutting-edge; that was always the business concept,” Mr. Kim said the other day in one of a series of conversations about the fate of his video collection. “But ironically, I didn’t prepare.”

Last September, in a move that swept through the Internet at viral speed, he issued a public challenge. In a notice pasted on a wall inside the front door, he wrote, “We hope to find a sponsor who can make this collection available to those who have loved Kim’s over the past two decades.” He promised to donate all the films without charge to anyone who would meet three conditions: Keep the collection intact, continue to update it and make it accessible to Kim’s members and others.

Offers poured in. Every one failed on one count or another. Every offer, that is, except one.

The latest installment from the Department of Counterintuitive But Encouraging Trends, or maybe it's more evidence that "Cat's in the Cradle" really did change the world.

children, family, parents, time

Andy

:

Parents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago. The sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie report that married mothers in 2000 spent 20 percent more time with their children than in 1965. Married fathers spent more than twice as much time.

A study by John Sandberg and Sandra Hofferth at the University of Michigan showed that by 1997 children in two-parent families were getting six more hours a week with Mom and four more hours with Dad than in 1981. And these increases occurred even as more mothers entered the labor force.

I believe in generously rewarding people who can create billions of dollars in lasting value for stakeholders. But I don't believe in rewarding people who create billions of dollars in ephemeral fakery. Here's a simple solution.

business, economics, finance

Andy

:

The holding period [for equity-based compensation] should be the longer of age 65 or two years after retirement. That will ensure that key executives make decisions that truly are in the long-term best interests of the company (as opposed to decisions aimed at a shorter period — after which an executive could depart, taking all his marbles with him). Note that holding-through-retirement also addresses the major concern about top executives’ unnecessary risk-taking.

Holding equity compensation through retirement is perhaps the single most important — and fundamental — fix to getting executive compensation back on track because it also addresses all the past outstanding excessive option and restricted stock grants. And, by requiring chief executives to keep their skin in the game for the long term, it will go a long way to restoring public trust in our companies and our market, which is so important to restoring stability to the markets.

From a long reflection on what it means for a single writer, artist, president, to speak with multiple voices, accents, allegiances.

england, horizons of the possible, language, literature, performing arts, race

Nate

:

For reasons that are obscure to me, those qualities we cherish in our artists we condemn in our politicians. In our artists we look for the many-colored voice, the multiple sensibility. The apogee of this is, of course, Shakespeare: even more than for his wordplay we cherish him for his lack of allegiance. Our Shakespeare sees always both sides of a thing, he is black and white, male and female—he is everyman. The giant lacunae in his biography are merely a convenience; if any new facts of religious or political affiliation were ever to arise we would dismiss them in our hearts anyway.

I've gone through three stages with the prerecorded inaugural quartet. First, during the event, awe at what I thought was a live performance in frigid conditions. Second, the next day, a shrugged "of course" when I learned it was a recording. Third, ever since, a growing sense that however understandable the desire to ensure a pitch-perfect performance, it was a huge mistake. This terrific commentary by Eric Felten helps to explain why. The lip- (and bow- and key-) synched world is a gnostic world of false perfections. We must resist it, because it perpetuates one of the world's oldest lies: that we would be better off without bodies.

failure, music, performing arts, technology

Andy

:

“There’s too many variables to go live. I would never recommend any artist go live because the slightest glitch would devastate the performance,” [explained Jennifer Hudson’s producer regarding her prerecorded Super Bowl anthem.] His justification echoed Itzhak Perlman explaining why the all-star classical quartet at the inauguration was prerecorded. “It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way,” Mr. Perlman told the New York Times. “This occasion’s got to be perfect. You can’t have any slip-ups.”

My, what a standard of perfection is now demanded. No longer is a good or even a great performance good enough. Now we must have performances free from the “slightest glitch.” And since no one—not even a singer of Ms. Hudson’s manifest talent nor a violinist of Mr. Perlman’s virtuosity—can guarantee that a live performance will be 100% glitch-free, the solution has been to eliminate the live part. Once, synching to a recorded track was the refuge of the mediocre and inept; now it’s a practice taken up by even the best artists.

I'd love to see the same study done with movies, which are narratively stitched together so that they'll work well uninterrupted. In that case the commercials might feel jarring, rather than palate-cleansing as they are between those tasty sitcom morsels. In any case, this would appear to be the same effect that allows fresh fruit in February (see this week's Five Questions) to get in the way of our enjoyment of fresh fruit in season.

advertising, horizons of the possible, tv

Nate

:

In a plot twist worthy of Lost, it turns out that TV commercials aren’t obnoxious interruptions after all. They’re helpful interruptions, which increase your enjoyment of TV by periodically reminding you how much you’d rather be watching your favorite show.

That’s according to a new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, which found that commercials restore a sense of novelty to TV programming by breaking up the cycle which we become bored with following what’s on the screen.

In one of several experiments, the study’s authors screened the sitcom Taxi for two groups. One group saw an episode with commercial interruptions, and the other saw an episode with no interruptions. Those who saw Taxi with commercial breaks enjoyed it more, by a decisive margin.

Woolf argues that a good reader needs to approach a text as a co-creator rather than a simple consumer or even a critic (though keep reading her essay ... eventually the time arrives to mount the judge's bench).

critique, cultivation and creation, england, horizons of the possible, literature, reading, writing

Nate

:

Reading is a very complex art - the hastiest examination of our sensations as a reader will show us that much. And our duties as readers are many and various. But perhaps it may be said that our first duty to a book is that one should read it for the first time as if one were writing it.

One should begin by sitting in the dock with the criminal, not by mounting the bench to sit among the Judges. One should be an accomplice with the writer in his act, whether good or bad, of creation. For each of these books, however it may differ in kind and quality, is an attempt to make something. And our first duty as readers is to try and understand what the writer is making from the first word with which he builds his first sentence to the last with which he ends his book. We must not impose our design upon him; we must not try to make him conform his will to ours. We must allow Defoe to be Defoe and Jane Austen to be Jane Austen as freely as we allow the tiger to have his fur and the tortoise to have his shell. And this is very difficult. For it is one of the qualities of greatness that it brings Heaven and earth and human nature into conformity with its own vision.