Moreover, Wohlmut traces the strong connections between local landowners the De Sassets, the banking Rothschilds (at last, featured in a benign conspiracy theory) and some of the highest members of the French government. Not only was the San Jose tower potentially a model for the Tour d'Eiffel, its iron structure may also have solved the problem of building the core structure of the Statue of Liberty. The invention of the arc light, and the electric generators to power them, led to experiments of suspended lights from high structures; towns even as nearby as Nevada City tried it. » Read More

Last year's Jury Prize winner at Cannes has a strange title that Bible-readers might get. Matthew 11:23: Jesus felt that the town of Capernaum was insufficiently appreciative of his miracles, so he damned the whole village. Damnable Capernaum survives in spirit in Beirut, Lebanon today. The city's jagged skyline, seen from aerial shots, confuses as well as oppresses, even with the glimpses of Mediterranean light between the rickety, off-plumb high-rises. Hundreds of used tires weigh down the tarps over leaky roofs. Below are scribbled walls, gulch-like streets, and the friendly treachery of sidewalk hustlers. » Read More

Every photograph looks like it's taking place in a stadium-sized event with people sitting or standing in different tiers, in row upon row. But the backgrounds are distorted and abruptly shift. In one corner of Balloon, you can see the downward curve of a typical hilly street. But the Castro Theatre marquee sign shows up in the foreground just to the right of it. When you're standing in front of the theater, you'd have to turn your head in either direction to see a street that rises out of the Castro and up to Noe Valley or to Divisadero. And, as if they're defying gravity, a dozen protestors float upward, blocking out the "R" and the "O" in the Castro sign. JR isn't afraid to enliven a busy scene like this with even more randomness. You » Read More

Soon, we are introduced to Queequeg, an American Indian sailor who proceeds to wake up the rest of the ship with an indigenous ritual and dance. This leads to a religious argument between Queequeg and Greenhorn, the opera's main protagonist, who in the original book is called Ishmael. From there, we are introduced to the ship: There's the peg-legged, scarfaced Captain Ahab; his first mate, the shrewd but conflicted Starbuck; and their squadron of ragtag shiphands. This adaptation is a dramatic, visually impressive anthology of poignant moments that unfortunately don't add up to cohesive whole. While the performers bring their A-game, there are plenty of problems with this show, mostly stemming from the script. » Read More

An unspoken question that McNally implies but never articulates is, What if Katharine had been a loving mother who had accepted her gay son? Would Andre's life have turned out any differently? The playwright structures Mothers and Sons as a series of confrontations. Some of them develop into arguments. Others fizzle out. Some reveal truths about the past. Cal reminds Katharine that he cared for Andre during his illness. He fed and bathed him until he died, while the most she could bring herself to do was attend the funeral. After all these years, her son's death hasn't improved her disposition. Katharine is alternately cold or enraged and filled with bitterness. For Cal and Will, it's puzzling that she's chosen this moment to have a » Read More

Nowhere in his new book, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, does McNamee make such a claim. The problem is that when a CEO lives in a filter bubble, everything that happens downstream from him will probably reflect the CEO's own predicament. McNamee, a decades-long Silicon Valley investor, has held significant positions in many firms over the years, leading growth-stage investments in Electronic Arts, Sybase and Radius before co-founding Integral Capital Partners, a fund created in tandem with Kleiner Perkins, which put him at ground zero for the internet revolution. He was there on the very day Jeff Bezos pitched Amazon and when Larry and Sergey pitched Google. His most recent fund, Elevation Partners, included U2's Bono as a » Read More

Call it migratory collaboration. This Sunday, thanks to the San Jose Museum of Art and a local literary performance series, Play on Words, an international program of stories will erupt in conjunction with the museum's current initiative, New Terrains: Mobility & Migration. Whoever registers in advance to attend the literary event won't have to pay museum admission. Play on Words began six years ago. To date, the series has migrated through a variety of venues, from Cafe Stritch to Saint James Park, uniting performance artists, actors, theater enthusiasts, fiction writers and community gadflies. Play on Words operates via a submission process similar to literary journals, in that anyone can submit work for consideration: poetry, fiction, » Read More

As a powerful, confident woman, you can make a man feel like a real animal: a Chihuahua in a bee suit nervously peeking out of a little old lady's purse. Social science research finds that there's a bit of a chasm between what men think they want in a female partner and what they actually end up being comfortable with. For example, when social psychologist Lora E. Park surveyed male research participants, 86 percent said they'd feel comfortable dating female partners smarter than they are. They likewise said they'd go for a (hypothetical) woman who beat their scores in every category on an exam. However, when they were in a room with a woman who supposedly did, the men not only expressed less interest in her but moved their chairs away » Read More

In December 1915, the California city of San Diego was suffering from a draught. City officials hired a professional "moisture accelerator" named Charles Hatfield, who promised to make it rain. Soon Hatfield was shooting explosions of a secret blend of chemicals into the sky from the top of a tower. The results were quick. A deluge began in early January of 1916 and persisted for weeks. Thirty inches of rain fell, causing floods that damaged the local infrastructure. The moral of the story, as far as you're concerned, Aries: when you ask for what you want and need, specify exactly how much you want and need. Don't make an open-ended request that could bring you too much of a good thing. » Read More