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Stupidity As Science Did you know that: crosswalks increase pedestrian accidents, many tanning lotions contain carcinogens, computers vastly increase the consumption of paper, and that better hygiene creates susceptibility to bacteria? A new book catalogs stupidity and the detriments of ideas that were supposed to help. The Independent 04/06/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 7:02 pm
Only 200 US Colleges Reject More Students Than They Accept "In the ongoing debate about affirmative action, with the Supreme Court expecting to decide a case involving admissions procedures at the University of Michigan, the term meritocracy is a canard. American education is not meritocratic, and it never has been. Merit, defined as quantifiable aptitude and achievement, is just one of the variables that decide educational outcomes. Success in college admissions, as in almost every sphere of life, is a function of some combination of ability, connections, persistence, wealth, and special markers?that is, attributes valued for the difference they make to the mix. There are more than two thousand four-year colleges in the United States. Only about two hundred reject more students than they accept. The vast majority of American colleges accept eighty per cent or more of those who apply." The New Yorker 04/07/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 6:56 pm
Utzon Wins Pritzker Jorn Utzon has won this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's most prestigious international award. Utzon was the architect of the Sydney Opera House, "perhaps the world's most famous 20th-century building." Washington Post 04/07/03
Posted: 04/07/2003 12:10 am
A Clue To Who Mona Was Mona Lisa is a star. But who was she? "Over the past five centuries, that smile has been exploited and replicated in so many forms that the Mona Lisa has been transformed from a mere masterpiece into an international celebrity. And, like a Hollywood star, she now has to have her own bodyguards and lives behind triplex bullet-proof glass in a humidified, air-conditioned environment. Aside from the riddle of the smile, it's the mystery of Mona Lisa's identity that has inspired amateur art detectives all over the world. After centuries of uncertainty, a vitally important document has recently come to light in the Milan State Archive." It suggests Mona Lisa's identity. The Telegraph (UK) 04/07/03
Why Art Is Stolen Art is stolen for other reasons than the usual profit. "The theft of major paintings is essentially illogical. Contrary to popular belief, high-profile pictures are rarely stolen to order, and the resulting publicity means that they are impossible to sell on the open market. In reality, they pass through a number of hands fairly quickly, and for a variety of reasons..." The Telegraph (UK) 04/07/03
The Man Who Invented Photography "The world may not know who painted the first painting or who carved the first sculpture, but we do know who made the first photograph in a modern sense. And it wasn't Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, whose 1826 invention of a photomechanical printing plate was indeed epochal, or Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre." It was William Henry Fox Talbot. He's the man who "set certain basic terms by which photography operated for almost the last 150 years. He invented the photographic negative, the process by which light creates a negative image on a piece of chemically treated paper, which can then be reproduced - once or in great quantity - in a positive form." Los Angeles Times 04/05/03
Art Scam - Art For Drugs US prosecutors have charged a Connecticut art broker and two New York art dealers with money laundering in a scheme to exchange art for money. The art included a Degas and a Modigliani. The Art Newspaper 04/04/03
Thaw In French Government Attitude To Art The French government has for some time been deaf to concerns of the art market. But "last year saw the right wing get a resounding majority in Parliament, and the present government is no longer hostile to the arguments of the art market. The reform of auctioneering has shaken up the establishment and brought new players into the field." The Art Newspaper 04/06/03
Beethoven Ninth For Sale Sotheby's is selling a manuscript of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. "In three bound volumes of 465 pages, the offering includes virtually the complete score of that symphony in manuscript. (Two fragments of the same manuscript reside in the Beethovenhaus in Bonn and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.) The hands are mainly those of two copyists, but Beethoven scribbled corrections and changes throughout. The manuscript may have been used at the work's premiere, in 1824, and it was the basis for the first printed edition, in 1826." The New York Times 04/07/03
Posted: 04/07/2003 12:40 am
CD Copy Protection May Deprive Artists Of Air Time Recording companies that press CD's with copy protection may be depriving their artists of radio playtime. At at least one station, all the CD players are part of computer systems, and the machines won't play copy-protected disks... The Age (Melbourne) 04/03/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 7:33 pm
Gioia: Two More "Hard" Years For State Arts Dana Gioia wants to use his position as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts as an advocate for arts funding. "The arts in America are enormously vital, and I think the public support remains strong. What we are facing right now is a very severe - but temporary - budget crisis for the arts brought on by the recession. On a state level, it looks like we have two hard years to manage through. Luckily from a federal level, the NEA budget [$115 million] has actually grown, and our position in helping state and regional councils will be firm.I see my role in Washington to be a national spokesman for arts funding. ... I refuse to believe that arts funding is a controversial issue in the United States." Hartford Courant 04/06/03
US Government Investigating Artists Who Protest? The family of an outspoken member of a San Francisco hip hop band says the musician has allegedly been investigated by the US government. "The mother, whom Michale Franti declined to name for her safety, said plainclothes investigators appeared at her door on March 16, showing pictures of the band performing at an anti-war demonstration the previous day in San Francisco, Franti said. They questioned her about entries made in her son's checking account, his travel records for the past several months, and his general whereabouts." San Francisco Chronicle 04/04/03
San Diego Sushi Stale After AD Resigns Vicki Wolf, longtime director of Sushi, San Diego's leading cutting-edge performance venue, has resigned. Wolf's departure, which is said to be motivated by "personal reasons," leaves Sushi "artistically rudderless at a crucial point in its 24-year history. Sushi's home, the distinctive and historically designated Carnation Building, has been sold to housing developers who plan to build high-rise condominiums on the footprint where artists now do their work." San Diego Union-Tribune 04/04/03
Embedded Critics - Coming Soon To Your Local Theatre If you can have embedded war correspondents, why not embedded critics? Dominic Papatola investigates a "new" CNN program: "The writer, G. Ima Toady, will receive unprecedented access to the theater's production process, including rehearsals, literary department briefings, budget meetings and the twice-weekly castigations of former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura by artistic director Joe Dowling. The arrangement 'will allow CNN viewers to view, up-close, the difficult and sometimes bloody process involved in creating theater,' said Sid Bedingfield, executive editor of the CNN News Group. 'No journalistic institution has ever been this close to the action'." St. Paul Pioneer-Press 04/06/03
The ABC's Elusive Chairman Australian Broadcasting Company chairman Donald McDonald is something of a mystery. He gives few interviews, preferring "to decline to comment". But its been a turbulent time at ABC, and McDonald decides to go public. Why take such a difficult job? "I was a child of the ABC in that it was a big window in my life. It never occurred that anyone would ask me to be chairman so I just said yes. Why not? Why not follow your intuition?" The Age (Melbourne) 04/07/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 7:20 pm
Almeida Theatre To "Surprise" Michael Attenborough, the new director of London's Almeida theatre, says that when the theatre reopens in May it should be constantly "causing surprise" and that "musicals, classical and new theatre will be part of his 'eclectic' long-term vision for the revamped venue." BBC 04/06/03
Posted: 04/07/2003 12:27 am
Ian McKellan: Shakespeare Was Gay? "Sir Ian said the complexity of the sexuality in Shakespeare?s comedies with their cross-dressing and disguises was immense'. We don?t really know for sure if Shakespeare was gay and it is not especially that important. But was he interested in the variety of human sexuality? Absolutely. Did he know about it? Better than anybody." The Scotsman 04/04/03
Posted: 04/07/2003 12:06 am
Study: Stage Fog Harms Actors A new study says that fog used in theatres and in movies is harmful to actors' health. "Compared to the control group, the entertainment industry employees had lower average lung function test results and they reported more chronic respiratory symptoms: nasal symptoms, cough, phlegm, wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath on exertion, and current asthma symptoms, even after taking other factors into account such as age, smoking, and other lung diseases and allergic conditions. The entertainment industry employees also had increased rates of work-related phlegm, wheezing, chest tightness, and nasal symptoms." Backstage 04/06/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 8:49 pm
Theatrics Of War "Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can really kill you. Words, metaphors, stories, can convince complete strangers that they have an obligation to disembowel you. Before anyone makes a smart bomb, they have to be persuaded, by smart words, that they should. Words create what Shakespeare called an "imaginary puissance" that can have lethal consequences. An imaginary garden, with real tanks. If you doubt that literature can 'cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war', consider four words enshrined in every library in the English-speaking world: 'God fought for us'." The Guardian (UK) 04/05/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 8:04 pm
Is Too Much Video Creeping Onstage? "The artistic power of cinema has had beneficial effects on theatre - in, for example, a greater economy and fluidity in writing and staging - but the dark side has been that stage productions now seem to be apologising for not being films, like someone changing their appearance to look like a rival in love. Modern art has encouraged the use of 'mixed media', but the extended use of video in theatre always feels like a defeat. The point of theatre is that the performance is created as we watch." The Guardian (UK) 04/05/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 7:47 pm
Do Politics Keep Plays Offstage? Irish playwright Gary Mitchell finds that it's difficult getting his plays performed because they're set in Ireland, and they include political themes. "There are political reasons that prevent certain plays and films from being performed. Would a script about Jesus written by a born-again Christian be produced today? Would a political play written by a member of the Monster Raving Loony Party or the Conservative Party be turned down because it was dreadful - or would it be because the politics of the piece were not popular, or conflicted with the sensibilities of the theatre's board, or the agenda of the artistic director?" The Guardian (UK) 04/05/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 7:40 pm
Hemingway/Dietrich Letters To Kennedy Library Thirty of Ernest Hemingway's letters to Marlene Dietrich are being donated to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. "The letters, never made public, will remain sealed for four years, according to the wishes of Dietrich's heirs. 'We didn't know the collection existed,' said Deborah Leff, director of the Kennedy Library." The New York Times 04/07/03
Posted: 04/07/2003 12:52 am
British Museum Buys Rare Woolf Manuscripts The British Museum has bought a collection of rare handwritten manuscripts by Virginia Woolf. "The manuscripts form part of two mock newspapers composed by Woolf's nephews, Julian and Quentin Bell, as children. Some 188 editions of the partly hand-written, partly-typed newspapers - The Charleston Bulletin and The New Bulletin - were found in an old tin trunk." BBC 04/06/03
Posted: 04/07/2003 12:33 am
Does An Author's Looks Matter For Book Sales? As a writer with three novels published by New York houses, I knew that each new book got harder to place. I was aware of the publishers' lust for 'new blood,' for authors with no track record, but who were therefore full of potential, vs. those who were mid-list. That's the category for authors whose average sales are in the 5,000- to 7,000-copy range, the book industry equivalent of a woman who is dismissed as 'plain.' The thinking, of course, was that vivacious and photogenic authors were more attractive to the media and more effective on book tours. For a while this worked, until every bookstore in the country had a bestselling author every other night of the week and readers looked upon the opportunity to greet their favorite author with about the same enthusiasm as for their favorite pizza topping." Hartford Courant 04/06/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 8:10 pm
Down With The Language Bullies "Language bullying - or prescriptivism, as it's more politely called - is conservative in the worst sense. It advances a stuffy and old-fashioned view of language, the rules of which it considers set by supposed experts, such as the authors of grammar books, rather than common usage. It is deeply anti-populist and snobby, not to mention just plain wrong and cranky. Most 'rules' cited by bullies are highly suspect." National Post (Canada) 03/26/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 7:14 pm
Are Book Reviews "Advertising Posing As Criticism?" Heidi Julavits has largely given up on book reviews. In an essay in the new magazine Believer, she writes: "Maybe it's simply that book reviews have devolved to a point where they function as little more than advertising posing as criticism; the only books likely to be ratified by critical coverage are the books that promise to be ratified by the marketplace." Critic Bob Hoover takes offense: "The newspaper book editors I know, me included, have never written or run a review of rearranged copy cribbed from a press release or looked at the best-seller list as a source of recommendations, those titles 'ratified by the marketplace'." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 04/06/03
Posted: 04/06/2003 6:19 pm
Next-Generation Stowell "When Christopher Stowell first showed an interest in becoming a dancer, his parents ? Pacific Northwest Ballet co-artistic directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell ? were 'concerned'." But he persisted and went on to a career with San Francisco Ballet. "Now, two years after retiring from the stage, Stowell, 36, is poised to assume leadership of Portland's Oregon Ballet Theatre in July." Seattle Times 04/06/03
Posted: 04/07/2003 12:22 am |
