Ideas Is Stupidity A Medical Condition? Is low intelligence a disease? Fifty years after the discovery of DNA, one of the co-discoverers says he believes that "low intelligence is an inherited disorder and that molecular biologists have a duty to devise gene therapies or screening tests to tackle stupidity." New Scientist 02/28/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 7:49 am Visual Arts Britain's Historic Buildings Are Being Looted "The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings warns that churches and historic houses have never been at so much risk as crooks target decorative fixtures and fittings to feed the home renovation boom. Such thefts have reached 'epidemic' proportions, according to the society, Britain's oldest heritage conservation group. Last year there were 3,600 thefts from churches alone, with statues, fonts and even whole altars vanishing." The Guardian (UK) 03/01/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 12:52 pm WTC: Protecting A Master Plan From The Gnats "Daniel Libeskind's master plan for the former World Trade Center site, selected Wednesday, is a new noble, logical diagram - one that is sure to need a shield if real estate interests try to torture it with death by a thousand 'gnat bites,' as Robert Ivy, the editor of Architectural Record, so trenchantly put it. It inevitably will be changed, as all master plans are, as the economy rises and falls, as interest groups like the victims' families make their voices heard, and as political actors enter and exit from the stage. The questions are: Will the change be for good or ill?" Chicago Tribune 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 10:51 am Starting Over With A Develpment Plan Now that a plan for the WTC site has been chosen, the real heavy lifting begins. One good first step, writes David Dillon, would be abandoning the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and Port Authority's development plans and starting over. "The Port Authority's program belongs to the 1960s, not the 21st century, and repeats many of the mistakes that made the World Trade Center a bad neighbor." Dallas Morning News 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 10:02 am Music Vanity Books Set To Music So you have a song you've written. So you hire pros to finish it up and record it. "The American Song-Poem Anthology: Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush'' collects 28 mind-bendingly strange and very funny songs paid for by amateur lyricists and recorded by hard-up professional singers and musicians. 'It's the only scam I know of where each transaction is a unique work of art. Of course the work of art isn't always great. These are vanity books set to music. But that's what makes it so interesting. You have these very talented musicians working very rapidly to fulfill a quota of so many songs per hour, and sometimes the results transcend the limitations of the form'." Boston Herald 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 9:03 am CDs With A Different Commercial Purpose Tour-only CDs are catching on with indie-label musicians and their fans. They're 'low-concept, short-production-run discs typically sold only at concerts and usually recorded live or in the artist's home-studio. Tour discs might contain early versions of songs that will make it onto future label releases, unedited recordings of live shows, or a selection of what will ultimately turn out to be rareties. For musicians it's a "chance to raise a little bit of extra cash while they're out on the road, the opportunity to experiment musically in the presence of a friendly audience, or simply a way to provide music without worrying about whether it's the best artistic or career move." Boston Globe 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 8:54 am Arts Issues Critical Reading - A Critic And His Letters From Readers Bernard Holland goes through his files of reader letters over the past six years. "Critics open their mail with a blend of gratitude (someone cared enough) and apprehension (we have been found out), but most will recognize an imbalance of justice at work. Reviews and columns come, potentially at least, before many eyes; the letter reaches only two. Yet when accurately aimed, it can hurt. The accusation might concern a wrong name or an unnoticed change of cast, or a fact just plain wrong. If writing accepts the privilege of public exposure, it cannot flinch from the returns of service whizzing back at it in swift postal forehands and backhands. Hovering just beyond this building lurk the grammar gestapo and the spelling storm troopers, issuing postcards in wavering hands and eager to point out the illiteracy of the addressee." The New York Times 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 2:05 pm Raising Money From The Arts - A Conflict Of Interest? Should politicians who support the arts be trying to raise campaign money from the arts community? Connecticut's governor, an arts supporters recently solicited attendance of arts groups for a $250/plate fundraiser. "He calls and says, 'I'm having a fund-raiser for Gov. Rowland and I'd like to see you there.' There's pressure to attend." Some feel coerced. Hartford Courant 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 1:20 pm People Meet Mr. Post-Brustein Robert Woodruff has a tough job - succeeding the legendary Robert Brustein as director of American Reportory Theatre in Cambridge. Some thought the director and the new job might not be a good fit. But "offstage, stripped of the spotlight, the outlaw director comes across as surprisingly regular. For all his Johnny Cash cool, he is equal parts Woody Allen: a slightly neurotic New Yorker overworked and unwilling to rest until every detail is in place. Strip away a few sexy hobbies - riding his BMW motorcycle, hiking to 18,000 feet in Tibet - and Robert Woodruff's life outside the theater begins to sound pretty bland. In fact, there is little in his life that doesn't involve theater." Boston Globe 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 8:33 am Checking In With Frank Gehry Architect Frank Gehry's laid-back air "is a large part of the appeal of his architecture. His buildings, assertive and emphatic though they are, are generous and open to the unexpected. The laidback air is also partly fictional, as he has a fierce competitive and creative will that shows no sign of relenting." He's designing a new house for himself in Los Angeles. And he's up for a couple new projects in London. In the meantime there's the new Disney Hall getting set to open in LA... London Evening Standard 02/28/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 8:13 am Theatre World-Wide Reading Against The War With Iraq Monday, the Lysiustrata Project will perform readings of Aristophanes' anti-war play. "In the United States, as many as 1,000 separate productions are planned - in all 50 American states - 33 in Massachusetts and 18 in Chicago alone. In Canada, the play will be recited in seven provinces, at more than two dozen venues and, of course, in two languages. On the same day, there will be readings in London, Paris, Berlin, Athens, Beirut - indeed, almost every major world capital. Two readings are planned in Reykjavik, one in Damascus and nine in Aristophanes's homeland, Greece." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/01/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 12:46 pm Denver - Where Is The Theatre Of Protest? Though ten Denver theatres are participating in the Lysistrata Project, "there is no theater of protest here, no theater of war, not even one token production of the firehouse eulogy "The Guys," which has brought the tragedy home to cities outside New York in a way no other medium can. Denver is simply not a reactive theater community, which means it is failing in a fundamental and historic civic responsibility: to bring comfort, perspective and understanding not only about our past but also the world we walk out into once a play ends." Denver Post 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 11:33 am Has Broadway Gone Serious? Wendall Brock detects a shift in attitude in this year's Broadway season. "The season's most thrilling productions are asking serious questions about the troubled soul of our democracy. While the Great White Way has always been a showcase for the easy-to-digest, corn-fed Americana of Rodgers and Hammerstein and others, the current season signals an attitude shift that speaks to the jittery politics of the new century." Atlanta Journal-Constitution 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 8:19 am Publishing What Defines A Classic - Penguin Makes A New List Penguin Classics is "freshening its lineup. That means some authors get new attention while others get dropped. "Just as editors pretend to second-guess the market (whilst in fact trying to repeat their rivals' success), so Penguin Classics has been led by the nose towards the current milch-cow of Victorian genre fiction. Readers brought up on the pastiche melodramas of Sarah Waters, Peter Ackroyd, Peter Carey, Charles Palliser, et al, are hungry for the real thing. Hence the popularity of Wilkie Collins, whose 1860s sensation novels were massive in their own time, but sank without trace during the 100 years after his death." The Observer (UK) 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 1:02 pm Releasing Books Into The Wild Register a book, leave it someplace, and tell where it is on the internet. Someone else will pick it up, read it and pass it on in the same way. It's called bookcrossing. "There are close to 100,000 people who have signed up as bookcrossers on the Web site, with nearly 270,000 books registered and more than 20 million hits a month. Once you have registered a title on the site, you print out a BookCrossing label, paste it into the book along with your identity number and release it into the wild. Anybody picking up the book is supposed to register the find on the Web site, post a journal entry commenting on the book and describing the release date and location. All of that information is available on-line for anybody curious enough to browse the site. There are more than 13,000 books sprinkled around Canada waiting to be claimed, read and recycled." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/01/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 12:39 pm Oxford Sells Off Shakespeare Folio To Raise Money Oxford University has sold "one of English literature's most valuable works - a First Folio of William Shakespeare's plays" for an estimated £3.5 million to pay for building repairs and textbooks. "The book, which was printed in 1623 and has been kept in the college's library for more than two centuries, was bought by Sir Paul Getty, the philanthropist, in a private deal concluded in New York." The Telegraph (UK) 0/3/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 8:03 am Media Radio Consolidation Blues, Miami Style South Florida radio is woefully narrow. "Looking for local news? Buy a newspaper. Want to hear rock en español? Load up the CD player. Crave a Triple-A (adult album alternative) outlet like those in other cities that play such new, talked-about artists before they break through? Get a moving van. And if you have a desire to hear classical music on FM, well, tough tubas. How about alternative country, progressive/alternative hip-hop or Hindu chants set to dance beats? Uh, you're kidding, right? Miami's 36 English-language and 17 Spanish-language stations have each carved out their little piece of the pie with generally narrow playlists, and their owners are perfectly happy about it." Let's blame consolidation. Miami Herald 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 1:46 pm Dance Interpreting Dance Outside The Studio "Dance, by its very nature, lends itself to a wealth of interpretations — by critics, audience members and even the performers themselves." Paul Taylor says that once his dances leave the safety of the studio, "they cannot help but be transformed into something else, for better or worse. A conversation with Mr. Taylor shows how fraught the relationship between criticism and artistic control can be. He views criticism with a mixture of pleasure and disdain, although he does not follow reviews as diligently as he used to, he said." The New York Times 03/02/03 Posted: 03/02/2003 1:57 pm