| NEWS |
|
|
11-22-07
Novel Rejected By 15 Publishers Is Shortlisted For Prize
Catherine O'Flynn, 37, whose novel, What Was Lost, was turned down repeatedly before it secured a publishing deal, began writing while working long hours at a shopping centre. Source: The Independent.
|
11-22-07
What Museum Wouldn't Notice A Missing $300K?
The former CFO of Washington state's Bellevue Art Museum was charged this week with embezzling more than $300,000 from her employer. "Prosecutors say Ellinger stole most of the money by writing checks to herself and then covering them up with fake entries in the museum's financial ledger. Source: Seattle Times.
|
11-21-07
Trashed Painting Sells For $1 Million
An oil painting by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo that was plucked from a sidewalk trash heap several years ago sold for more than $1 million on Tuesday at Sotheby's auction of Latin American art. Source: Yahoo!
|
11-21-07
Canada To Officially Ban File-Sharing
New copyright legislation could be introduced in Canada within the next few weeks... The new legislation, which is likely to make it illegal to download or share songs on the internet without paying a fee, was promised in the Conservative government's fall throne speech. Source: CBC.
|
11-21-07
How To Build Up Your Academic Credibility
The guitarist from the rock band Queen has been named chancellor of England's Liverpool John Moores University. The guitarist will begin the role in February, taking over from former Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife, Cherie. Source: BBC.
|
11-20-07
London's Jazz Evolution
London's jazz scene has been going through a rebirth in the last few years, and no one has been more responsible than 27-year-old club manager Will Gresford. From writing grants to drawing younger audiences to adding a healthy dose of promotional savvy to a staid industry, Gresford is changing the way the public views jazz. Source: London Evening Standard.
|
11-20-07
Why Conservatives Get Fewer Doctorates
A study -- 'Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don't Get Doctorates' -- argues that the much debated minority status for conservatives in higher education may be the result of differing priorities of graduating college seniors of different political persuasions. Source: InsideHigherEd.
|
11-20-07
Why Giving Away Your Work Is Better
The accessibility of creative work on the Internet is changing traditional ideas about intellectual property, and some major artists are beginning to respond. Source: Philadelphia Inquirer.
|
11-19-07
The (Un)Conscious Mind
The part of our world that is most recalcitrant to our understanding at the moment is consciousness itself. How could the electrochemical processes in the lump of gray matter that is our brain give rise to the dazzling technicolor play of consciousness, with its transports of joy, its stabs of anguish and its stretches of mild contentment alternating with boredom? Source: New York Times Magazine.
|
11-19-07
MTV Goes To The Middle East
MTV Arabia, which launched over the weekend, will feature 60 percent international music and 40 percent Arabic music, along with local adaptations of the channel's popular non-music shows. Source: Yahoo!
|
11-19-07
Promote Culture? But Which Culture?
What is culture? The EU's own definition - in Article 5: Decision 1419/1999/EC, should you want to look it up - talks about the arts, literature and shared lifestyle. But whose arts? Whose literature? Whose lifestyle? In short, whose culture? Any suggestions gladly received. Source: Financial Times.
|
11-16-07
Rapper Jay-Z dissing the dollar
In an apparent nod to the low value of the dollar, rapper Jay-Z's new video Blue Magic features another currency. He is seen cruising the streets of New York in Bentleys and Rolls Royces (now owned by Germany's Volkswagen and BMW) with a briefcase of 500 euro notes. Source: BBC.
|
11-16-07
TV Strike Makes People Read More?
A full 42 percent of Americans said that if the networks have to resort to reruns to fill their schedules they would read more. Interestingly, the study says, women were more likely than men to pretend, er, answer that they would read more if the TV landscape becomes littered with repeat programming. Source: Washington Post.
|
11-16-07
Dutch Police Arrest Teen For Stealing Virtual Furniture
He was playing a game in a virtual world. The 17-year-old allegedly stole $5,800 worth of imaginary furniture. Real police arrested him. They suspect other teens of receiving the stolen goods. Source: NPR.
|
11-16-07
CAD At 25 - How Computer-Aided-Design Changed The World
In that quarter-century, much has changed in the CAD world. The industry has become more diversified and competitive, yet the same things that made computer-aided design commercially popular 25 years ago remain just as true today. Source: Wired.
|
11-15-07
China Leads In Social Engineering Of Weather
When next summer's Olympics roll around, the Beijing Weather Modification Office will be poised to intercept incoming clouds, draining them before they get to the festivities. No fewer than 32,000 people nationwide are employed by the Weather Modification Office. Source: Wired.
|
11-15-07
How To Define A Good Short Story
Richard Ford writes in his curiously defensive introduction to The New Granta Book of the American Short Story" about "the cold, suffocating hands of the American writing-program industry on our faltering national literary 'product'. But this is surely a canard, an arthritic kneejerk generalisation... Source: The Telegraph.
|
11-15-07
Researchers: Basic Human Nature Is Optimistic
Psychologists puzzle over this basic bias for the bright side. This sense of hope boosts consumer confidence, creates market bubbles and spurs irrational exuberance. 'We don't know whether optimistic people are dumber or better than pessimistic people. Source: Arizona Star.
|
11-14-07
Survey: Young Europeans Prefer Internet To TV
Almost six out of 10 West Europeans now regularly access the Internet and, for the first time, young people are more likely to go online for most days of the week than turn on the television, according to a new survey. Source: Miami Herald.
|
11-14-07
The Colours Of Your Mind
Brainbow allows researchers to tag several hundred neurons at once with roughly 90 distinct colors. The resulting images , which resemble abstract color paintings, are both beautiful and informative. They look like they could hang in a modern art museum and are among the most detailed images of neuronal connections ever made. Source: LiveScience.
|
11-14-07
Internet Radio That Beats All
Radio is, of course, the great survivor medium, a century old and still occupying more hours in the average American's week than network television--and just about every other type of entertainment, too. But given what's out there for free, it's hard to imagine why anyone would bother to pay for a satellite subscription. Source: The Atlantic.
|
11-13-07
Where Would Money For Striking Writers Come From?
Good question. A bleak new report concludes that much of the income -- past and future -- that studios and writers have been fighting about has already gone to the biggest stars, directors and producers in the form of ballooning participation deals. A participation is a share in the gross revenue, not the profit, of a movie. Source: The New York Times.
|
11-13-07
The Poet As Terrorist?
Samina Malik went all Web 2.0 and posted poems - terrible, terrible poems - on various websites. That's about the extent of her terrorist activity. But never fear. The judge and prosecutors went the extra mile to give her a notoriety that her very, very bad poetry and infantile fantasies about being a terrorist really don't warrant. Source: The Guardian.
|
11-13-07
Claim: Oxford's Michelangelos Are Fakes
Three academics from the Universities of Leipzig and Hamburg have written a five-volume study that casts doubt on the works held in Britain, which are among up to 40 per cent of the world's Michelangelos that they believe should be dismissed as copies. Source: The Times.
|
11-12-07
Chinese Writer Jiang Rong Wins First Asian Booker
The prize is sponsored by the Man Group Plc -- the financial group behind the world-renowned Booker Prize. Publishing giant Penguin is set to release Jiang's work next March and it believes the book could become a global hit. Source: Yahoo!
|
11-12-07
Sex Up The Opera (Think It'll Work?)
It seems only logical that orchestras and opera companies, desperate to attract young ticket buyers flush with cash and hormones, should resort to the sexual sell. Now the mating game has been taken up by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which last week inaugurated a series of exploratory evenings, entitled Connect at the Met, for singles. Source: The Observer.
|
11-12-07
How Technology Ruins Debate (And Restores It)
Mass media, the communications technology that became supreme in the 20th century, has ruined debates. Today's mass media, reflecting a cultural short attention span, elevates shallowness. But technology can also help restore the debate. Source: Boston Globe.
|
11-09-07
Why Do We Fund What We Do In The Arts?
"The Sydney Symphony receives nearly $9 million each year. That is more funding than goes to all of Australia's visual artists, or all of the nation's writers and publishers, or all the dancers, or all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, or all the community art practitioners. My problem is not that we still fund classical European culture, it's just that we fund so bloody much of it and so very little of everything else.". Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
|
11-09-07
Plan To Fix Ailing Pompidou Centre
Paris' Pompidou Centre has become "cut off, cumbersome, and complex," says its new leadership. What's needed? A turnaround plan, of course, and a big one is in the works...Source: bloomberg.com
|
11-09-07
The Woman From Arkansas And Her Museum
Alice Walton is the second richest person in the world. She's spending $50 million on a museum in the American outback. "The art museum is, in many ways, her way of making peace with her home town and an attempt at personal redemption." Source: independent.co.uk.
|
11-09-07
How Iraq Is Different In Film
"The invasion of Iraq, with its escalating anarchy and swift fall from public favour, is commonly compared to Vietnam. But the manner in which film-makers have handled Iraq, from no-budget documentary crews all the way up (or down) to Hollywood studios, couldn't be more different." Source: newstatesman.com
|
11-09-07
Europe's Best Museum?
Europe's leading museum or not, the Prado's new section, including its exhibition of 19th-century Spanish paintings from Francisco de Goya to Joaquin Sorolla, is a must-see. Source: The Guardian (UK)
|
11-08-07
Movie Museum Has An Architect
The Oscars are getting their own museum in LA, and "an architect who helped raise a bustling new quarter from the industrial mess of southeast Paris" has been tapped to design it. Christian de Portzamparc's movie museum will rise just south of Hollywood Boulevard, and is expected to cost $200m. Source: NY Times Online
|
11-08-07
Broadway's Mr. Wizard
Broadway audiences have become quite used to seeing dazzling special effects on stage. But live theatre isn't like the movies - someone actually has to make sure that all those stunning effects work seamlessly every single night. Enter Sam Ellis, the go-to guy for achieving the impossible. Source: Christian Science Monitor
|
11-08-07
Canadian Portrait Gallery Well And Truly Dead
"[Canada's] Conservative government nailed the final nail into the coffin of the National Portrait Gallery's Ottawa building site yesterday, ordering workers to take down signs outside the former U.S. embassy on Wellington Street that was to have housed the fledgling institution." Source: The Globe and Mail
|
11-08-07
Berlin Phil Admits Past Nazi Ties
"The Berlin Philharmonic, widely considered the world's greatest orchestra, has finally opened up about its Nazi past after decades of silence. The orchestra is following a trend of German institutions which are admitting their past association with the Nazis." More about this at The Telegraph Online
|
11-07-07
Why Don't Theatre And Poetry Mix?
"Theatre and poetry are kissing cousins. Theatre, it seems to me, is a deeply poetic art, and poetry is profoundly theatrical. They are crucially and profoundly different, and yet there is much in each art form that can be learned from the other." The Guardian
|
11-07-07
What Makes A Significant Collector?
"Since the Second World War a rather different strain of collectors has grown up. Their pastime has acquired a much more public dimension. They pursue their own passions -- but with a growing awareness of wider responsibility. Their hoards are a matter of public record. Their finest pieces become globetrotting loans." The Times Online
|
11-07-07
Five Authors Sue Publisher Claiming Sales Manipulations
Five authors are suing their publisher claiming that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, "orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate." The New York Times
|
11-07-07
Study: Pot-Smoking Students Do Better
Study: Pot-Smoking Students Do Better
"A study of more than 5,000 youngsters in Switzerland has found those who smoked marijuana do as well or better in some areas as those who don't." From ABCNews.com
|
|
