Contrast

If contrast didn't matter in music, then music wouldn't ever get beyond a single voice singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat. " But instead, we have Regina Spektor singing "All the Rowboats," the first single off her fourth major-label studio album, "What We Saw From the Cheap Seats," scheduled for release on May 29. As in so many Regina Spektor songs, the drama derives in part from the contrast between her shifts in tone and the song's simple underlying structure....

The Globe, probably inadvertently, revealed the stark realities and contradictions in America by the juxtaposition on the front of the May 11 Metro section of Brian McGrory's column, " $4.5 million. For an office ," with the feature story, " An old school reborn . " While Liberty Mutual executives pursue their self-interest with lavish offices and $50 million annual pay packages, Presentation School Foundation volunteers raise $4.2 million over eight years to transform a closed Catholic school in Brighton into a community center.

The Globe, probably inadvertently, revealed the stark realities and contradictions in America by the juxtaposition on the front of the May 11 Metro section of Brian McGrory's column, " $4.5 million. For an office ," with the feature story, " An old school reborn . " While Liberty Mutual executives pursue their self-interest with lavish offices and $50 million annual pay packages, Presentation School Foundation volunteers raise $4.2 million over eight years to transform a closed Catholic school in Brighton into a community center.

When Hollywood set out to tell the story of how Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, it enjoyed the flexibility of portraying a man who, despite his social network's worldwide reach, was all but unknown to the public. A year and half later, the movie "The Social Network" and the attention that followed have dispelled much of the mystery surrounding Zuckerberg, sketching out the essentials of his story line. But as Facebook promotes the vision of its 28-year-old CEO as part of this week's first-ever sale of stock to the public, one of the most striking features of his persona is the...

THE FRONT page of the Aug. 10 Boston Globe provided an interesting contrast between our two senators. Senator Kerry had been appointed to the 12-member congressional committee charged with cutting $1 trillion from the federal deficit ("Kerry chosen for debt deal's key panel"). Senator Brown, on the other hand, was pictured playing a game of Uno with children in Dorchester ("For Brown, politics is still local"). It appears that each of them has found a suitable place on the public stage.

Stocks plunged Friday after the government said hiring slowed last month, stoking fears that the US recovery is faltering. Both the Nasdaq and S&P 500 closed their worst weeks of the year. The slump was a contrast to Monday, when the Dow closed at its highest level in four years, propelled by a report that showed a gain in manufacturing.

Any young string quartet that presents a complete program of music by the formidable German avant-gardist Helmut Lachenmann is, shall we say, not messing around. That was what the New York-based Jack Quartet brought to the Goethe Institute last year for a concert in the composer’s presence. On Tuesday night, the Jack returned to town, this time for a bracing performance in the sleek theater at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The Jack lists both the Arditti and Kronos quartets among its teachers, but this program seemed distinctly in the orbit of the former group, with its fierce devotion to the...

CAMBRIDGE - The title of José Mateo Ballet Theatre's latest concert, "Revel Without a Cause," whimsically refers to Mateo's conscious choice to liberate himself from the necessity of balletic narrative. And revel he does, as shown in the new abstract "Streams," given its world premiere at the Sanctuary Theatre Saturday night. "Streams" takes inspiration from Terry Riley's 2004 composition, "The Cusp of Magic," for string quartet and pipa. As the tuneful, rhythmically charged music plays off an eclectic range of influences, from North Indian raga to American blues,...

RAGUSA IBLA - The way homes cling to the hillsides in southern Sicilian cities often looks like an M.C. Escher drawing: Look up and there's a stairway, look down and there's a stairway, forget to look and you fall down the stairs. Contrast that tightly-packed beauty with the Ragusa region's endless fields of fruits and vegetables, almonds and olives, all neatly delineated with mile after mile of white stone walls. It's Baroque and Liberty architectural styles brought to a high point, juxtaposed with pastoral perfection, all joined and made human by the history of the...

When the head of JPMorgan Chase met with shareholders to answer for a trading loss of more than $2 billion Tuesday, it was against an evolving political backdrop: Donors from big banks are betting on Mitt Romney to defeat President Obama and repeal new restraints on risky, large-scale investments. "There's no doubt that there's been a big diminution of support for the president," said William M. Daley, Obama's former chief of staff and a former top JPMorgan Chase executive. "People in the financial services sector are saying, ‘The president has been too tough on us, both in policy and on...

If contrast didn't matter in music, then music wouldn't ever get beyond a single voice singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat. " But instead, we have Regina Spektor singing "All the Rowboats," the first single off her fourth major-label studio album, "What We Saw From the Cheap Seats," scheduled for release on May 29. As in so many Regina Spektor songs, the drama derives in part from the contrast between her shifts in tone and the song's simple underlying structure....

Stocks plunged Friday after the government said hiring slowed last month, stoking fears that the US recovery is faltering. Both the Nasdaq and S&P 500 closed their worst weeks of the year. The slump was a contrast to Monday, when the Dow closed at its highest level in four years, propelled by a report that showed a gain in manufacturing.

CAMBRIDGE - Calling the Tallis Scholars regular visitors to Boston is an understatement. Saturday's performance was the British vocal group's 23d annual concert under the auspices of the Boston Early Music Festival. A large turnout at St. Paul Church in Harvard Square confirmed that early music's audience has not tired of the singers' presence. The Tallis Scholars have been in business for almost 40 years, and over that time they have honed a restrained, finely-grained sound that is entirely their own. Textures are precise, colors restrained.

CAMBRIDGE - "Pure harpsichord music. " That's how Richard Egarr described his Boston Early Music Festival recital on Friday night, music by four 17th-century composers who turned the instrument's friable, intractable twang into a virtue. But the virtues diverged: Egarr, music director of the Academy of Ancient Music (and, in recent seasons, a frequent guest of Boston's Handel and Haydn Society), underscored contrasts, the varied ways each composer assembled the harpsichord's brittle points into something resembling a wave.

DUBUQUE, Iowa - In debates and on the campaign trail, Newt Gingrich has been sharply critical of the universal health care law signed by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, calling it an example of big, bureaucratic thinking. But five years ago he praised it, according to a 2006 document republished yesterday. Before he became Romney's rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Gingrich called the Massachusetts law a potentially path-breaking way to extend coverage to the uninsured, according to an April 2006 newsletter called "Newt Notes"...

It wasn't long ago - only a dozen or so years - when the networks were major players in the so-called New Golden Era of TV. With original dramas such as "The West Wing," "Once & Again," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and "Ally McBeal," visionary TV auteurs including Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon joined David Chase of "The Sopranos" in giving the medium a turn-of-the-century upgrade, begging for comparisons to art-house movies. TV drama is still in an outrageously good place - an even better place than in 1999, really - with the kind of storytelling that can make your jaw drop ("Breaking...

A new method of performing virtual colonoscopy using a CT scan - which does not involve the dreaded laxative preparation to clear the colon the night before - may be about as effective as a standard colonoscopy at identifying the large polyps most likely to become cancerous, according to research conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and elsewhere. If larger studies confirm the finding, the technique could eventually serve as a first-line screening tool for colon cancer, especially for the many people who avoid screening altogether.

T he despot in "The Dictator" is a tall, fit, flamboyantly bearded goofball — Admiral General Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen) — who lords over a fictitious little North African country called Wadiya. Aladeen's misdeeds are denounced internationally — he's ordered the murder of thousands and is months away from achieving weapons-grade uranium, which, he winkingly announces, will be only for peaceful purposes. These early scenes have an easy whimsy. Cohen turns the character into a conceited ham with a taste for showmanship and a disdain for the competition.

THE FRONT page of the Aug. 10 Boston Globe provided an interesting contrast between our two senators. Senator Kerry had been appointed to the 12-member congressional committee charged with cutting $1 trillion from the federal deficit ("Kerry chosen for debt deal's key panel"). Senator Brown, on the other hand, was pictured playing a game of Uno with children in Dorchester ("For Brown, politics is still local"). It appears that each of them has found a suitable place on the public stage.

In Springfield, school officials tallied 256 reports of bullying during the recently completed school year. In Lawrence, administrators addressed 240 complaints and alerted police to more than 60, including numerous threats of violence. Yet in Brockton, administrators recorded just three incidents all year, the first under the state's new antibullying law that requires schools to document and investigate every complaint and forward potential criminal cases to law enforcement. Administrators in several other school systems, including Boston, did not know how many complaints had been lodged or how...