Has Paris Nightlife Gone To Sleep? "According to an online petition entitled "When the Night Quietly Dies," which was organized by a group from the techno and electronic music scene, the City of Lights is in danger of becoming the "European Capital of Sleep." Among the complaints listed in the petition are the closure of leading bars, strict rules on noise and smoking regulations." Der Spiegel 11/20/09

And What Is Art For, Anyway? The Independent offers a debate on the question, with entries from, among others, theatre director Simon McBurney, novelist Lionel Shriver, Serpentine Gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones, and nine thoughtful readers. (Says Shriver, "This assignment is a formula for sounding like a prat.") The Independent (UK) 11/19/09

Live Online, Seeking Better Data On Arts' Economic Impact On Friday, "an assortment of academics, federal bureaucrats, and staffers from private think tanks and research organizations will assemble in Washington, and in cyberspace at www.nea.gov." The forum is an attempt "to broaden and improve the statistical evidence" that what artists do "is not just fluff and filigree, but part of the dollars-and-cents fiber of the country." Los Angeles Times 11/19/09

What Are The Rules For Being A Good Critic? "Bloggers are wondering just that this week as Charles Spencer, the Telegraph's chief theatre critic, kicked the discussion off … 'The critic's obligations can be summed up very briefly,' he writes. 'Arrive sober, stay awake, stay to the end and don't take a bribe unless it is big enough to allow you to retire in comfort for the rest of your life'." Is that really all? The Guardian (UK) 11/18/09

Armenia's New Arts Center: 'A Mad Work Of Architectural Megalomania' Michael Kimmelman on the Cafesjian Center for the Arts in Yerevan: "Imagine an Art Deco version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon stretching nearly the height of the Empire State Building, its decorations coded with Armenian symbolism. Did I mention the artificial waterfalls?" What the Center will house, however, is a different question. New York Times 11/19/09

What's The Etiquette For Spoilers? In this era of live blogging and TiVo time-shifting, "[p]eople are, if anything, more insistent on keeping their bubbles of cultural innocence intact. Heaven forbid they should learn that, in a romantic comedy that opened three weeks ago, the guy gets the girl in Act 3." Chicago Tribune 11/20/09

Panicking Over A 2012 Apocalypse? NASA Says You Can Relax What with the movie, the Mayan calendar, and the solar-galactic-alignment thing, one NASA astronomer has "been getting about 20 letters and e-mail messages a day from people … scared out of their wits," seriously wondering if they should euthanize themselves and loved ones before the end of the world less than three years hence. So the agency "felt it was prudent to provide a resource." New York Times 11/17/09

Get Ready For Graphics Transmitted Right Onto Your Contact Lenses "A contact lens that harvests radio waves to power an LED is paving the way for a new kind of display" - graphics transmitted right onto the lens and into its wearer's field of vision. Uses might "include subtitles when conversing with a foreign-language speaker, directions in unfamiliar territory and captioned photographs." New Scientist 11/12/09

Tampa Bay PAC Gets A New Name (And Several Million Dollars) "Thanks to what was billed as the largest individual philanthropic gift made to a cultural institution in the bay area, the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center will be renamed the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts." The donation is thought to be upwards of $20 million. St. Petersburg Times (Fla.) 11/17/09

Studying Aboriginal Art To Death "Modernity both exalts and threatens remote Aboriginal societies, yet there is no path of retreat back to some gilded pre-contact time. In fact, the academic penetration of the north is now at its height, our knowledge of the Yolngu, the clan groups round Oenpelli and the people of Groote Eylandt is incomparably greater." The Australian 11/16/09

Copyright Bomb Set To Disrupt Music, Publishing Industries "At a time when record labels and, to a lesser extent, music publishers, find themselves in the midst of an unprecedented contraction, the last thing they need is to start losing valuable copyrights to '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s music, much of which still sells as well or better than more recently released fare. Nonetheless, the wheels are already in motion." Wired 11/14/09

A New Approach To Selling Tickets Online "Teams are focused on season tickets, big theater groups are focused on subscriptions, that kind of stuff. We are really focused on viral social-marketing technology that will allow music venues and promoters to sell tickets." The New York Times 11/14/09

Where's The Arts Audience? Probably Playing Video Games "How many video game addicts also do drama? Probably very few. Away from central London, professional theatre and music struggle to compete with multi-channel television, video games, pubs, clubbing and IT networking, a situation exacerbated by 25 years during which arts and culture have been downgraded in the curriculum, and the chance of being enthused decreased by the daunting documentation and fear of litigation that deters schools from organising trips." The Guardian (UK) 11/13/09

How The Arts Coped With Life Behind The Iron Curtain "The cultural responses to totalitarianism and the censorship of the arts differed from country to country. But one common thread through the undergrounds of the Eastern Bloc was that artists wanted their ideas to spread and be considered by the general population. A freedom of speech, however constrained, was very much fueled through the arts." The New York Times 11/13/09

Most Late-Night TV Watchers Are Women, The Writers Men "In the 1980s, [David] Letterman pioneered the kind of college-age male humor that dominates late night. But now, his audience is almost 55 percent women; [Jay] Leno's is more than 53 percent, and [Conan] O'Brien's just over one half. Yet the writing room and sensibilities of the show itself remain largely male." The New York Times 11/12/09