Socrates: Books Cause Stupidity Has the printed word replaced good old-fashioned brain power? "In the days before print, books had to be copied out by hand, like medieval manuscripts. If you were a copyist, you wanted to make sure you weren't wasting a few years of your life writing out some piece of trash. You stuck with the tried and true: the Bible, or Aristotle, or Virgil. But a printer could publish anything reasonably quickly," even if it had no real value. Besides, books were never any use to anyone, according to such noted thinkers as Socrates. Writing down information is really just an excuse not to memorize it, and the easy availability of books just encourages idiots to substitute regurgitated information for original thinking. Toronto Star 10/30/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 8:39 am
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Needed: A Plan To Save Egyptian Tombs From Tourists Tourist traffic is destroying Egypt's Valley of the Kings. "Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has asked the archaeologists, architects and engineers of the Theban Mapping Project - launched 25 years ago simply to make a detailed map of the 62 tombs and temples of the pharaohs and nobles buried more than 3,000 years ago - to complete a plan for the conservation of the valley by the end of 2005." The Guardian (UK) 11/01/04
Posted: 11/01/2004 6:58 am
Piece Of The Berlin Wall Goes Back Up A Berlin museum has re-erected a portion of the Berlin Wall. "The rebuilt concrete barrier stands at the former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing, next to a field of 1,065 crosses meant to represent the people who were killed as they tried to escape the former East Germany between 1961 and 1989." The Guardian (UK) 11/01/04
Posted: 11/01/2004 6:53 am
British Museum Raided A theif managed to steal jewelry out of the British Museum over the weekend. "The raider beat sophisticated security systems and pocketed around 15 items, including ornate hairpins and fingernail guards. He is thought to have posed as a visitor and grabbed the items from under the noses of staff." Evening Standard (London) 11/01/04
Posted: 11/01/2004 6:47 am
Power Play - Making Fun Of Vettriano Scottish painter Jack Vettriano made this year's list of "most powerful" people in the art world. But "Vettriano, a former miner whose popular paintings have earned record-breaking prices at auction in recent years, is given a sarcastically critical entry which begins by claiming the 53-year-old first made his living by 'copying Old Masters' and ends by noting that no major public gallery had so far chosen to invest in his work, 'thank Heaven'." The Scotsman 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 11:24 pm
Degas' Private Life "Along with the other stars of the Impressionist movement, Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet, Degas has been one of the most recognised and popular painters in the world; and of Degas the man, we know almost nothing. But the peculiarities of his private life did not escape his contemporaries - nor were his quirks denied by the artist himself." The Guardian (UK) 10/30/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 8:04 pm
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Voigt Out Of Another Strauss Production Deborah Voigt was supposed to sing her first-ever Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier at Vancouver Opera this month. "The diva arrived a week late for rehearsals but everyone understood. A resident of Florida, she had just come through some terrifying hurricanes. What everyone did not understand was her unpreparedness. It soon became apparent that she was not ready to sing what could become one of the most important roles of her career. And so, her management announced that she would be withdrawing from the production, stating in a news release that she had stretched herself too thin, a singularly unfortunate turn of phrase considering that she had been released from a production earlier in the year by London's Royal Opera, Covent Garden for being too fat." Toronto Star 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 10:32 pm
What's Next For The Met? What does the appointment of Peter Gelb to run the Metropolitan Opera mean for the country's artistic future? "What will his artistic priorities be? This question can't be answered without knowing what James Levine intends his own role to be now that his title has been downsized from artistic director to music director. Will Mr. Levine, busy in his new job as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Mr. Gelb divvy up the artistic responsibilities? It's not yet clear - not even, I suspect, to them." The New York Times 11/01/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 10:14 pm
Shostakovich Looking For Home A home is being sought for Shostakovich's collections of thousands of recordings and manuscripts. "The collection was owned by conductor Roman Matsov, a close collaborator of Shostakovich. The recordings are stacked in the Estonian apartment where Matsov lived before his death in 2001, aged 84. Matsov's son, Mark, is having trouble paying rent on the flat and fears the collection could lose its home." BBC 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 9:56 pm
Crossover, A Primer "Crossover used to be the special realm of opera singers, who dipped into the vernacular by enthusiastically singing folk songs or reluctantly pandering with a bit of pop fluff." But that was then. Now crossover is a way of life for performers and the genre has been mainlined... Newark Star-Ledger 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 8:17 pm
You're A....Ooh... Rockist? "A rockist isn't just someone who loves rock 'n' roll, who goes on and on about Bruce Springsteen, who champions ragged-voiced singer-songwriters no one has ever heard of. A rockist is someone who reduces rock 'n' roll to a caricature, then uses that caricature as a weapon. Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher. Over the past decades, these tendencies have congealed into an ugly sort of common sense." The New York Times 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 8:10 pm
Adelaide Symphony Looks For Stability The Adelaide Symphony lost its two top executives last week. With an accumulated deficit of about $2.5 million, and with an operating loss of a further $150,000 predicted for this year, the orchestra is looking ahead to more stability... The Australian 11/01/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 7:39 pm
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Belfast Arts Center On Hold Plans for a major new arts center in Belfast have been put on hold. "The proposal was to house the Lyric Theatre, the Old Museum Arts Centre and the School of Music on a site within the Cathedral Quarter. It was hoped that the move would create a thriving cultural area in the heart of the city. However, the £27m price tag and disagreements over the details of the plan have seen it fail to develop." BBC 11/01/04
Posted: 11/01/2004 6:45 am
Voting On The Arts (Tuesday) Alongside the national races Americans will be voting on Tuesday, numerous communities will be deciding on local arts-funding initiatives... Backstage 10/29/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 10:04 pm
Cleveland's Arts Problem "While the arts and cultural base clearly falls among Cleveland's top three comparative advantages, we haven't adequately embraced this area in our region's economic strategy. Arts and culture have an enormous impact on our economy, and yet our region has one of the lowest rates of public support for this sector in the country." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 9:46 pm
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Hans Christian Anderson, Dancer? Hans Christian Anderson knew he was going to be a star when he was a teenager. But of what? At one point he decided his future was as a ballet dancer, and presented himself for an audition. "What Andersen thought he could achieve is unclear. Not only did he have no formal dance training but his gawky limbs lacked any kind of instinctive grace or co-ordination. The audition was a disaster." The Guardian (UK) 11/01/04
Posted: 11/01/2004 7:06 am
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Theatre Of Politics "No doubt that may be the feeling of some people who believe theater should be uplifting and inspiring rather than critical and political. They may believe theaters should focus on uncontroversial classics by dead playwrights rather than rabble-rousing by decidedly live and lively ones. But in this election season, there are some who like their theater on the hot side." Hartford Courant 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 11:01 pm
Your Flop Of Flops "While a West End contract would once have come with a steady pay cheque, those job-secure days have long gone. London has never suffered from the same "smash or flop" psychosis that drives Broadway (where stories abound of actors celebrating first nights at fashionable restaurants, only to have their champagne glasses wrestled from their grasp by waiters just seconds after a duff review has appeared in the first edition of The New York Times), but the indications are that we are rapidly heading down the same road. With rare exceptions, shows today are often either enormous hits or 'snigger-at-it-while-it-lasts' shockers." The Telegraph (UK) 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 10:43 pm
George W., Theatrical Muse You can't turn around in the theatre world today without bumping into an on-stage characterization of the President of the United States. Ben Brantley has watched a wide array of the Bush portrayals, and is amazed at the passion the man seems to have inspired in actors and playwrights. "This wide-ranging theatrical Bush garden is the more remarkable considering that in the 1990's, I never reviewed a work in which William Jefferson Clinton was the leading character." The New York Times 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 9:07 am
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Nobel-Winner Sues America To Publish In US When Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi went to publish her memoirs in the US she discovered that "doing so would be illegal, under a trade embargo intended to punish repressive governments such as the regime in Tehran that once sent her to jail. Last week, Ms. Ebadi and her American literary agency, the Strothman Agency of Boston, sued the Treasury Department, which enforces the sanctions, in Manhattan federal district court. The suit says the regulations ignore congressional directives to exempt information and creative works from the trade sanctions, and more broadly violate the First Amendment rights of Americans to read what they wish." Wall Street Journal 11/01/04
Posted: 11/01/2004 8:09 am
LRB Turns 25 "For the uninitiated, the best way of describing the London Review of Books, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this week, is that it is to words what Slow Food is to cooking." The Observer (UK) 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 11:33 pm
A Matter Of Obscurity (But Not Awards?) Some critics blasted the National Book Awards' shortlist for being too obscure. Like including Christine Schutt, whose book sold only 100 copies (or is it 1099 copies?). But what's a writer got to do to pay dues?... New York Times Magazine 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 8:37 pm
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Sync Along With Me... Does anyone really believe that pop stars don't lip sync at least some of thye time? Okay, so what accounts for the storm of controversy after Ashlee Simpson was caught lip-syncing (or not) on last week's Saturday Night Live? Toronto Star 10/30/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 7:23 pm
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Dancing In Chicago "Dance Chicago began 10 years ago to showcase about 40 local dance companies and foster new audiences for dance. Still based at the Athenaeum but featuring more than 200 Chicago troupes in every imaginable genre, from ballet to hip-hop, the festival could easily be known as Choreography Chicago." Chicago Tribune 10/31/04
Posted: 10/31/2004 7:56 pm
