Thursday, December 29
A Quantum Experience
"Nary a week goes by that does not bring news of another feat of quantum trickery once only dreamed of in thought experiments: particles (or at least all their properties) being teleported across the room in a microscopic version of Star Trek beaming; electrical "cat" currents that circle a loop in opposite directions at the same time; more and more particles farther and farther apart bound together in Einstein's spooky embrace now known as "entanglement." At the University of California, Santa Barbara, researchers are planning an experiment in which a small mirror will be in two places at once."
The New York Times
12/27/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 6:37 am
Why You Should Put Off Till Tomorrow...
"Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it. But this is, strictly speaking, impossible. There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you're not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well."
Paul Graham
12/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 10:56 pm
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Why Rural Museums Are Dying
Over the past few decades, while museum attendance at big city museums has soared, the numbers at smaller rural museums have fallen by about half. Why? "Numerous causes have been cited for this precipitous decline, including the weather and 9/11. But one factor stands out among the reasons behind this consistent, decades-long trend: the 1978 deregulation of the airline industry and a new era of cheap air travel."
OpinionJournal.com
12/27/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 7:08 am
Japan's Impact On Euro Art
Japan has a long and glorious artistic tradition, of course, but you wouldn't necessarily expect the country to come up when discussing the sources of influence in European art. But in fact, Western art reveals plenty of "modern manifestations of the classical Japanese aesthetic."
The Times (UK)
12/28/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 10:06 pm
Art's Most Underappreciated Continent
"If the history of Africa tells us anything, it is that producing great art is no guarantee of winning anyone's respect. It seems incredible, when you look at the masterpieces of African art in the British Museum, that exploiters and imperialists could ever have dismissed the disparate peoples of Africa as lesser breeds, ripe for the plucking. Africa has created some of the greatest art that ever existed, and the brilliance of it has been known to Europeans for a long time... And yet the African experience suggests that even when oppressors acknowledge, quite fulsomely, the beauty of your art, this doesn't stop them classing it as 'primitive' and continuing to treat you as a lower form of life."
The Guardian (UK)
12/29/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 9:54 pm
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Detroit Listeners Sue Radio Station For Dumping Classical Music
Detroit classical music fans are suing public radio station WDET-FM for ditching its classical music format. "The fury in Detroit over program changes at WDET-FM has listeners claiming they were tricked into contributing money to the station during a pledge drive while station operators were secretly planning to junk locally produced programming and replace it with national talk and public affairs shows. In a public radio world known for lowered voices and reasonable behavior, the class-action lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court last week is nothing short of incendiary."
Chicago Tribune
12/28/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 7:32 am
Music Biz Moving Online
Sales of CDs dropped seven percent in 2005, but downloads more than doubled. "Sales stood at 602.2 million during the year, down from 650.8 million in 2004, report analysts Nielsen Soundscan. Downloaded music reached 332.7 million for 2005, an increase of 148% on the previous year. More than 95% of music is sold in CD format, with Mariah Carey and 50 Cent proving the year's biggest sellers."
BBC
12/29/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 6:43 am
More Chaos At English National Opera
The English National Opera could scarcely be having a worse holiday season, what with the recent resignations of its artistic director and chairman, and the continued browbeatings the company is taking in the British press. Now, music director designate Oleg Caetani has apparently been relieved of the post he was to take up next month. "Sources say that the reason for Caetani's pre-emptive ejection was the lack of time he could commit to the company - an issue that had caused concern among observers from his appointment in March this year after a 14-month search."
The Guardian (UK)
12/29/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 9:11 pm
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And A Strike, Too...
"Members of the union Bectu, who work in the technical, managerial and administrative departments at the Coliseum, the English National Opera's London home, have voted by a massive majority - 94.6 per cent of those who voted - in favour of industrial action over its pay claim [against the beleagured opera company.] While there are no operas, only ballets, on stage until late January, strikes would hit rehearsals for new productions as well as the resumption of operatic performances [in] February."
The Independent (UK)
12/29/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 9:10 pm
The Best Instrument You've Ever Laughed At
The trombone is one of those much-maligned instruments, like the bassoon or the viola, which plays a crucial role in the orchestra and yet seems to provoke more snickers than applause. The slide looks silly, the sound is frequently used for comic relief, and a recent episode of the UK's popular TV series, Doctor Who, featured a campy but sinister lineup of deadly trombone-wielding Santas. "One sometimes detects among trombonists a sense that the world is doing them down."
The Guardian (UK)
12/29/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 9:04 pm
Is Barenboim Headed To La Scala? He Seems To Think So.
Daniel Barenboim is fueling speculation that he will soon be named La Scala's next music director, succeeding the ousted Riccardo Muti. Barenboim will be leaving the directorship of the Chicago Symphony next summer, leaving him available for the post in Milan. "In May, the governors appointed a Frenchman, Stephané Lissner, a friend of Barenboim, as general manager and artistic director. It was he who lured Barenboim, 63, back to La Scala, where he last performed 30 years ago. And, in what was seen by insiders as a possible pointer to the future, agreed to his being the first musician to use Muti's old dressing room."
The Guardian (UK)
12/29/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 8:55 pm
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Rats Die In The Name Of Art
An anti-animal cruelty group in Northern Ireland is up in arms over the suffocation of 90 white rats in a supposed piece of performance art in Belfast, and a decision by authorities not to prosecute the perpetrator. "Blood stains indicated that the animals had turned on each other after being dropped [into a see-through but airtight case.] The design made escape impossible." Prosecutors announced this week that they lacked sufficient evidence for a prosecution.
Belfast Telegraph
12/28/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 9:48 pm
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Pamuk's Turkish Legal Troubles Continue
Orhan Pamuk is Turkey's most famous writer. Turkish authorities now say he will "not face charges over saying in an interview with a German newspaper that Turkey's military was sometimes a threat to democracy. "He is already on trial under Article 301 of Turkey's penal code for remarks made to a Swiss newspaper earlier this year about the massacre of Armenians and Kurds. Article 301 makes it an offence to insult the 'Turkish identity' or state institutions, including the armed forces."
CBC
12/29/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 6:58 am
Dali's Secretary & Exploiter Dies
"The former personal secretary of Salvador Dali, who was embroiled in scandals involving the surrealist Spanish painter's works, has died aged 86... During the time he worked as the painter's confidant, [John Peter] Moore amassed an important collection of works that became the subject of controversy after the artist's death in January 1989. In October 2004 a court in Figueras, Dali's birthplace, convicted Moore and [his wife] of violating intellectual property rights by changing the title of a Dali work displayed in their art centre... In November 2004 a Barcelona court ruled that Moore suffered from senile dementia and was incapable of standing trial on charges of falsifying and selling unauthorised reproductions of Dali's works."
Sydney Morning Herald (Agence France-Presse)
12/29/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 10:15 pm
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A Great Year For Broadway Theatre
The League of American Theaters and Producers reports that paid attendance on Broadway this year 'was the highest since 1985 - just shy of 12 million people, an increase of almost 6 percent from last year. And those theatergoers paid an average of $68.86 a ticket, about $2.75 more than last year. Gross sales reached $825 million for Broadway's 39 theaters, a jump of more than 10 percent from 2004. The total number of performances, another indicator of the industry's health, increased by about 4 percent, and attendance per performance was up, too, by about 1.5 percent."
The New York Times
12/29/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 7:24 am
The Producers: A Flop That Shows Why Theatre Works
"The Producers has a litany of things that are wrong with it as long as Elton John's wedding guest list. But the faults are instructive in the ways that they demonstrate why theatre has survived the onslaught of cinema and TV and why movies can be turned into great musicals, but seldom the other way round. The flaws flap around the film like munchkins in the Wizard of Oz."
La Scena Musicale
12/28/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 7:13 am
You Just Can't Find Good Help These Days
"In the face of a national shortage of skilled technical staff, one leading regional [UK] theatre has launched a more traditional apprenticeship scheme to train the wig makers and lighting designers of the future. The Birmingham Repertory Theatre is giving six people, aged 16 to 21, training for 18 months in many departments including sound, lighting, make-up, wardrobe and stage management."
The Independent (UK)
12/28/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 10:00 pm
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The Culture Of Texting
"About 7.3 billion text messages are sent within the United States every month, up from 2.9 billion a month a year ago. Compared with an ink-and-paper letter, messages may seem disposable. The relative inconvenience of typing out words using a numeric keypad -- the letter "c," for example, requires three presses of the "2" button -- and the brevity of the message may seem a hostile environment for heartfelt discussion. But the discipline of having to distill thoughts into short bulletins, then waiting to receive the response, allows users to pour more meaning into the writing, some text-message users say."
Washington Post
12/29/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 6:32 am
Understanding Israel's Book Market
"Israel leads the world in per-capita new titles per year - more than 4,000, or about 70 a week. 'I think that there is no need to publish more than 1,500 to 2,000 new books a year in Israel, tops. In France, 25,000 new books are published every year, but its population is 10 times the size of Israel's. In other words, they publish about half the quantity that we do, and France is a cultural superpower. Everyone there reads books on the streets and in the Metro'."
Ha'aretz
12/23/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 6:29 am
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When American Kid TV Meets China
"While every American industry that comes here faces its own obstacles, the bar that exporters of children's television programming must vault is particularly high: a traditional culture of respect for parents and authority reinforced by decades of Communist discipline and the ruthless competitiveness of an educational system that favors rigor over imagination. Still, Viacom, which dominates youth-oriented programming in the United States and other parts of the world with its MTV and Nickelodeon networks, is aggressively courting Chinese youngsters, hoping to introduce them to its brand of playfully antiauthoritarian programming." The New York Times
12/29/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 7:27 am
The REALLY Small Screen
"The next 12 months looks set to be the year mobile TV takes off. While the buzz around it is similar to the hype for 3G services, there is much greater optimism that TV will live up to its promise." Some expect "about 50 million users of mobile TV by 2009, generating an estimated £3.5bn in revenue. Content that feeds off existing shows or offer extra behind-the-scene video is likely to be widely available initially but eventually there will be bespoke made-for-mobile shows." BBC
12/29/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 6:52 am
Why Hollywood Doesn't Cast Women Over 40
There are few if any parts for them, and that's always been how the industry works. "It worked out that by the 1930s a woman could be a star into her mid 30s or even her mid-40s. As we progressed past World War II and up to the present time it got to be a pretty standard rule of thumb that once a movie actress got to be over 40 then supposedly, psychologically, America's young kids didn't want to see her playing leading roles so they wrote fewer parts for them." BBC
12/29/05
Posted: 12/29/2005 6:48 am
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Dancing In A War Zone
The Baghdad suburb of Mansour is known mostly these days for the near-constant sound of bombs, set off by insurgents targeting the new Iraqi army, and for the cries of those whose loved ones are caught in the crossfire. But Mansour is also home to Iraq's one and only Music and Ballet School, where a dedicated staff of teachers and professionals works to fill the lives of Iraqi children with a love of dance. In post-Saddam Iraq, anti-Western sentiment runs strong, and many at the school now keep their Western-derived professions secret from all but those closest to them. But asked how many Shiites and how many Sunnis make up the student body, the school's director has one firm answer: "We don't know. We have students."
The Times (UK)
12/29/05
Posted: 12/28/2005 9:22 pm
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