Hrag Vartanian

Increasingly academics are realizing that the internet is growing in importance and lack of knowledge about the medium could actually hinder their jobs (particularly in the health care profession). Two recent tidbits from the University of Toronto (my alma mater) piqued my interest:

U of T’s Citizen Lab (funded by Soros) develops new guide to bypass [...]

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I’ve long been a fan of the type of American painting called “Color Field”…yes, it’s two words, not one. As the name suggests, Color Field is characterized by art dominated by color and its luminous possibilities. While some Color Field artists are internationally known, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry [...]

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Interesting tidbits from Armenian-land:

Russian Armenian director Anna Melikyan is showing MERMAID (RUSALKA) at Sundance. It is “The fanciful tale of an introverted little girl who grows up believing she has the power to make wishes come true. She must reconcile this belief with reality when, as a young woman, she journeys to Moscow and grapples [...]

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My Top 10:

What some people in 1951 thought were the essential parts of an ideal city
Museum’s discover the blogosphere
East Village’s iconic mosaic man sets sail for Brooklyn
Is this map (United States of Islam) what Bush stares at when he goes crazy about “them” wanting to get “us”?
Is Canada a prison?
Have mainstream journalists become irrelevant? {via [...]

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In Quebec’s federal by-elections yesterday there was a lot of controversy over whether Muslim women should be required to show their faces as proof of their identity, The Toronto Star reports:
Controversy in the lead-up to the vote over a decision by Elections Canada to allow veiled women to vote without showing their faces, which all [...]

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