Musicals are booming→

The Economist: ​

Musicals have odds like venture capital: only one in ten makes money, and two out of ten lose it all. The hits, however, are huge. “Cats” probably made a 3,500% return for its initial investors. Since it debuted in London 27 years ago “The Phantom of the Opera”, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, has grossed $5.6 billion worldwide, more than any film or television show. 

Good Science Fiction

"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam" - Fredrik Pohl

— joanne mcneil(@jomc) May 4, 2013

​More about Pohl. His books. 

The Week's Links: May 3, 2013

All the links posted on social networks this week:

• Muddy Colors: How I Make a Picture Book ➞
• 10 Practices from the Most Innovative Organizations ➞
  
• Digital Public Library of America Launches with 2 Million Items ➞
  
• Neuroscience Explores Why Humans Feel Empathy for Robots ➞
  
• Best of Fluent 2012: /Reg(exp){2}lained/: Demystifying Regular Expressions ➞
  
• Sleep: Everything You Need To Know ➞
  
• Daily Rituals: A Guided Tour of Writers' and Artists' Creative Habits ➞
  
• "This Is Coffee" A Vintage Film For Coffee Lovers ◉
  
• Scientists Identify Neurons That Register Itch ➞
  
• A Night at the Museum with the Smithsonian's Laser Cowboys ➞
  
• Why Hewlett-Packard is hiring dancers ➞
  
• Chili Peppers Do To Your Skin What Migraines Do To Your Brain ➞
  
• The Film before The Film ◉
• Read the book in one go, great intro to it here: How to Find Fulfilling Work ➞
  
• Paul Miller: back online after a year without the internet ➞
  
• Coffee: From Balzac to Beethoven, it has fueled artistic endeavor for centuries. ➞
  
• The Mathematics of Planet Earth ➞
  
• Ken Burns: A Great Story is 1+1=3 ◉
  
• Gorgeous timelapse: MIDNIGHT BARCELONA ➞
  
• Top 14 World Albums, Spring 2013 ➞
  
• TED Playlists: How to tell a story ➞
  
• When Will We See A Macklemore Or 50 Shades-Style Blockbuster--In Movies? ➞
  
• Will we ever… understand why music makes us feel good? ➞
  
• Sketchnoting 101: How To Create Awesome Visual Notes ➞
• The Digital Public Library of America: a hub for books, made an API so anyone can build a reading room. ➞
  
• How Pixar Used Moore's Law to Predict the Future ➞
  
• Creativity Top 5: Week of April 29, 2013 ◉
  
• The Harvard Classics: A Free, Digital Collection ➞
  
• A sperm whale’s head is actually an oversized nose ➞
  
• 10 Incredible Repurposed Train Stations ➞
  
• Jonathan Harris On Reshaping Culture In The Digital Age ◉
  
• A Brief History of the High Five ➞
  
• Say It Out Loud: How David Sedaris Makes His Writing Better ➞
  
• The 10 Fastest Growing Megacities In The World ➞
  
• This Art Is Made From Food, But It's More Than Just Playing ➞
  
• This Art Is All Made From A Newly Invented Kind Of Wood ➞
  
• What Job Candidates Really Want: Meaningful Work ➞
  
• Brain Puzzle: What is Perception? ➞
  
• 10 Inspiring Type Designers From A New Generation ➞
  
• Get that tune out of your head ◉
  
• The Future Of Opera Is An FX Extravaganza ➞
  
• The Company That's Buying Up All the Key Pieces of the Online-News Ecosystem - Technology ➞
  
• The Digital Public Library of America Opens its Doors ➞
  
• Have Headphones Changed Your World? ◉
  
• 20 Things You Didn't Know About... Hair ➞
  
• The Story Of Superstorm Sandy Through The Eyes Of NYC's Digital First Responders ➞
  
• Hopscotch: Coding for Kids ➞
  
• How to Work with Creative People ➞
  
• An important reminder that the universe has three spatial dimensions and is best appreciated with all three engaged. ➞
  
• Click a few dots, and this program will try to guess your age. ➞
  
• Amazing: Insects Caught Mid-Air With Laserbeam HD Camera Rig ➞
  
• How Pixar Used Moore's Law to Predict the Future ◉
  
• Infographic: Plotting Comic Books' Rapid Takeover of Hollywood ➞
  
• Intuition as the Basis for Creativity ➞
  
• From Love To Bingo In 873 Images ◉
  
• Michael Bierut: Typography, Modern Applications, and Timeless Communication Challenges ➞
  
• Illustrations from a Victorian book on Magic (1897) ➞ /via @Coudal
  
• How Sriracha was introduced to the US. ➞ /via @Coudal
  
• More Than 50 Years Of Putting Kids' Creativity To The Test ➞
  
• What 15,000 Years Of Cooking Fish Tells Us About Humanity ➞
  
• Jill Bolte Taylor: 10 TED talks on human nature ➞
  
• How Google Creative Lab Links Product to Stellar Storytelling ➞
  
• TED-Ed: Who invented writing? - Matthew Winkler ➞
  
• Fantastic: Revisiting the Original 1992 WIRED Media Kit ➞
  
• Cool: Branding the Presidents of the United States ➞ /via @Coudal
  
• Was Shakespeare a Humble Schoolmaster During His ‘Lost Years’? ➞
  
• Andy Day: Documenting the high-flying world of parkour ➞
  
• Some of these are terrifying: 11 of the Most Unusual Elevators ➞
  
• The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses: Walter Benjamin's Timeless Advice on Writing ➞
  
• The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens: Scientific American ➞
  
• How an accountant created an entire RPG inside an Excel spreadsheet ➞
• Kickstarter for Surgery Lets You Help Those in Need ➞
  
• My Video Gamer Is Smarter Than Your Honor Roll Student ➞
  
• The greatness of the grilled cheese, explained. ➞
  
• How One Family Helped Change the Way We Eat Ham ➞
  
• Seven Counterintuitive Ways to Be Insanely Productive ➞
  
• E-Book Subscriptions Are Coming ➞
  
• Brain scans predict how much you'll pay for music ➞
  
• In A Fragmented Cultureverse, Can Pop References Still Pop? ➞
  
• CSS-Tricks: Slide In (as you scroll down) Boxes ➞
  
• Design/UX: Transitional Interfaces ➞
  

Recommended This Week: 

The Film before The Film

“THE FILM before THE FILM” is a short documentary that traces the evolution of title design through the history of film. This short film was a research project at the BTK (Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule) that takes a look at pioneers like Saul Bass, Maurice Binder and Kyle Cooper by showing the transitions from early film credits to the inclusion of digital techniques, a resurgence of old-school style, and filmmakers' love of typography in space.

​Add this one to the long list of favorite things related to opening title sequences. 

Creativity Top 5: Week of April 29, 2013

The VW Beetle YouTube pre-roll ad skipper is so clever. The Boston Magazine May cover is very good. ​