News from ArtsJournal.com

"In fact, according to research by a couple of Australian linguists, 'yeah, no' (and its less popular sibling 'yes, no') has a hidden logic all its own and can be used in a number of discrete ways. Listen to Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo dissect a construction that appears to be contradictory but is actually quite useful."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"It has been described as both 'creepy' and 'cool'. But amid the publicity surrounding a provocative art project that creates 'facial reconstruction' sculptures based on the analysis of DNA on cigarette butts, chewing gum, and other detritus collected from the streets of New York City, one question has remained unasked: is it legal?"... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"A St. Petersburg LGBT film festival has been branded a 'foreign agent' and fined 500,000 rubles ($15,500) under a recently adopted law which is largely seen as a tool to crack down on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"[While he] conducted around the world, including in Rome, at London's Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires and, for many years, at the Maggio Musicale festival in Florence," he was best known for his 35 years as artistic director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, which he heped make into one of the world's top companies.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"It's a sign of his range that Descartes has made such a wide variety of enemies. Psychologists, feminists, biologists, animal rights activists, and Al Gore have all lined up to denounce him. ... Unloved, his arguments served up to undergraduates as target practice, Descartes has fallen on hard times."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"The news came out this week in English-language media, that Luo Li, the founder and former head of one of China's largest literary websites, Qidian, has been arrested, though there are still conflicting reports about what he's actually been accused of and the whole picture remains a bit murky."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"On 16 May, the NT Live broadcast of This House played to 45,000 people in cinemas around the UK. ... Another 20,000 watched overseas. More will follow with encore screenings. Since the first such broadcast in 2009 - when Helen Mirren's Phèdre was seen by 50,000 people worldwide - NT Live has achieved a total audience of 1.3 million."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"Christie's withdrew ten works by Brazilian artists from its auctions of Latin American art in New York last month ... 'pending additional research', says a spokeswoman for the auction house. All of the works came from the Rio de Janeiro-based Ralph Santos Oliveira collection."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"TL;DR" isn't just an obnoxious crack, we're afraid. Farhad Manjoo looks at some depressing statistics on how people read online - and how much they've actually read when they tweet or share a link.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"About 75 miles southwest of Shanghai is a beautifully restored, 1300-year-old 'water-town' called Wuzhen where Chinese tourists flock each year." Yet with a landmark new performing arts center and an equally new international theater festival that's both artistically challenging and a big box-office success, Wuzhen is making a bid to become a cultural destination along the lines of Avignon, Aix, and Edinburgh.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"With a wide-ranging programme that included the BBC Proms, Cirque du Soleil, concerts by Gary Barlow and Emeli Sande, boxing and tennis tournaments and the world premieres of Skyfall and Titanic in 3D, ... [the London venue] reported a record year for business in 2012 with operating income growing 4.3% to £16.8 million to produce an operating surplus of £4.5 million."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"With her beauty, sunny personality and background as a champion swimmer, Williams shot to stardom in the 1940s in the 'aqua musical,' an odd sub-genre of films that became an enormous hit with the moviegoing mainstream, fanned popular interest in synchronized swimming and turned Williams into Hollywood's Million Dollar Mermaid."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"At a time when many moms on television were paragons of domesticity, [Jean] Carroll's act lampooned that image. In this clip, she's dressed in a party dress, a choker, and heels. (She often wore fancy clothes to perform.)"... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"More than 2,000 people from around the world, including the heads of lighting at prominent venues such as the National Theatre in London and New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, have joined a campaign aimed at protecting the traditional tungsten light bulb in stage productions."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"The game aims to put players into that oversized starry blue hat of Mickey Mouse's, letting them conduct a virtual orchestra with their hands in front of the Xbox camera, changing the feel of the music to fit their whims."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"Every year, shows that might otherwise have had a chance to run end up folding early because they get lost in the shuffle; the downside of relying on Tony nominations as a primary marketing tool is that if a show doesn't get a few nods, it's time to pull the plug. But shows need time to develop an audience, and that comes -- sorry, critics -- primarily from good word of mouth."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"If anything could restore faith in the American theater it was Sunday's exuberant Tony Awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"Perhaps the world's biggest art factory, Mansudae employs roughly 4,000 North Koreans, including some 1,000 artists, handpicked from the country's best academies."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"The Library of Congress will announce on Monday that Natasha Trethewey is to be appointed to a second one-year term as the United States poet laureate."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical

"Google says that four weeks before a film is released, search volume for its trailer can predict its opening box office with 94 percent accuracy when factoring in its status and the time of year."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical