Name: Ken Lyen
Weblog: kenlyen.bravejournal.com
Articles: 35
First Published: Wednesday, September 1, 2004
Last Published: Monday, November 13, 2006
Currently listing articles 35-1:
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The Story of Chess: The Musical— This strong musical with an iffy book has been in development for so long that the Cold War world it's set in has changed completely.
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Pluto the Underdog— Billions of students who learned there are nine planets will have to be re-educated.
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Jukebox Musicals— The fundamental problem of jukebox musicals is the relative poverty of original musical ideas by the creators of this genre.
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Flop Musicals— Flops are to theater critics, as diseases are to doctors. Like some doctors, critics may also like to play god.
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Musical Dissonance— The battle between LaChiusa and Shaiman is the clash between high and low art, between arty farty and philistines.
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Best of the Best— Are we thrusting too much greatness onto too many blogs? And how do we rank the rankers?
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Library in Cyberspace— Google's plan to digitize library books will allow literature to be freely available and it will enrich our lives.
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Mummy, Why Did They Close My School?— What an avalanche of closures. To say that British universities are in crisis, is an understatement!
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The Rise of the Creative Class— When Richard Florida’s book was published, it touched a receptive nerve, and became an instant bestseller. Now we can reassess it more critically.
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Loo Loo Skip To My Loo— The high tech revolution seems to have bypassed toilets. Minor advances are automatic flushing, dry flushing, toilet seat lining.
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Palaces of Dictators— Megalomania drove dictators to build fabulous palaces without regard to their countrymen living in abject poverty and starving to death.
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Iris Chang— The Rape of Nanking is one of the most tragic events of WW2 and referred to as the Chinese holocaust.
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Ranking Universities— There is something about the competitive streak in human nature that makes us want to compare ourselves with everybody else.
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Spim spam, flim flam— Sometimes I make an expedition to the gallery of modern words to admire the sumptuous beauty of these new forms.
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The Mozart Effect— The Mozart Effect is less the raising of spatial-temporal intelligence, but more the effect of mass media in stampeding a herd mentality.
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The Perfect Search— Jealous of Google's domination, new search engines hope that they can vanguish this behemoth.
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2046— 2046 is Wong Kar Wai's film about loneliness, longing, and the futility of escaping from the fetters of past memories.
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The Front— Of all the films about McCarthyism, The Front affected me the most profoundly. It is the finest film on this topic.
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What a Racket!— Technology has revolutionised tennis. The real breakthrough came when Howard Head developed an aluminium racket in 1976.
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Mistyping Personality— Woody Allen said: "I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype," which of course means the exact opposite.
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Almost Normal— The British Dyslexia Association and the University of Westminster are on a quest to uncover latent dyslexia, dyspraxia, and dyscalculia.
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Spam, Glorious Spam— Transformed by programming ineptitude into a monster of Frankenstein proportions, it broke loose and proceeded to spam news.admin.policy with 200 messages
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Cigarettes— In 1954, Richard Doll published his findings in England that there was a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Fifty years later, the United
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Hollywood Insider— Mike Medavoy’s memoirs of his 40 years in Hollywood, "You’re Only As Good As Your Next One" is a book written by an insider. It
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Signs of Success— To their teachers' amazement, the Nicaraguan children started communicating with each other through a unique system of hand gestures. A new sign language was being
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Vision and Art— Doctors and scientists suggest that the reason why artists see things differently, is because they have something wrong with their eyesight. Art historians have renounced
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Back to Methuselah— Woody Allen said: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying." Would you want to live
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The Blog Dictionary— Recently there has been a spate of new words associated with blogging. I decided to do a bit of research on this important topic. To
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Fred Ebb— Fred Ebb’s lyrics are intelligent, provocative, and he is not afraid to tackle controversial themes. They will always be remembered for their hit songs like
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Encyclopedia Wars— The major strength of the Wikipedia is its breadth of coverage. Compared to Britannica and Encarta, it is more topical with up-to-date news items, and
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Perchance to Dream— Have you ever been stumped by an unusually tough problem, your mind blank, and no solution in sight?
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Sunday In The Park— George Seurat’s painting "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" depicts a rather prosaic view of Parisians relaxing in a park on a
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Les Choristes— Les Choristes is a delightful little film about a newly appointed teacher, Clement Mathieu, who arrives at a wretched reform school for orphaned, abandoned, and
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The Hippie Dictionary— The Hippie Dictionary is a 700-page reference book written by John McCleary. It is not merely an alphabetical listing of words, but has been described
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The Barbarian Invasions— The Barbarian Invasions is an intelligent film with many layers to it. Beautifully acted, truthful, and touching. It is a tragedy masquerading as comedy, so
All BC Articles