The CSI Effect: Juries Want More Are crime shows influencing real-life juries? US prosecutors are seeing "an increasing desire on the part of juries for the kind of certainty shown on television programs such as "Crime Scene Investigation," in which crimes are solved conclusively in less than an hour. Across the country, prosecutors say, juries are demanding more from them." Chicago Tribune (LAT) 03/22/05
Posted: 03/22/2005 9:00 am
Why Logic Misfires In The Brain Why do people often make decisions that seem to go directly against their interests? "Neuroeconomics, while still regarded skeptically by mainstream economists, could be the next big thing in the field. It promises to put economics on a firmer footing by describing people as they really are, not as some oversimplified mathematical model would have them be. Eventually it could help economists design incentives that gently guide people toward making decisions that are in their long-term best interests in everything from labor negotiations to diets to 401(k) plans." BusinessWeek 03/21/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 5:10 pm
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Angkor Looting Increases Looting at Angkor Wat has increased in the past six months. "One of the astonishing aspects of the Angkor sites is their diminished nature at the hand of modern man. Amid the grandeur, empty pedestals, headless carvings and missing lintels cast an aura of indelible loss. The sudden cascade of tourists - one million foreign visitors came to Cambodia last year, a vast majority to Angkor - brings many risks: overcrowding, dwindling of the scant local water supply, a cheapening atmosphere." The New York Times 03/21/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 8:11 pm
This Year's Beck's: The Anti-YBA's? Artists on this year's Beck's Futures prize shortlist have a show. "If there is anything that connects the six artists here it can be seen, as much as anything else, as a refusal of the market-affirming object-based practice of the YBAs." The Guardian (UK) 03/22/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 7:46 pm
A Proposal To Save Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Can the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation (based in Scottsdale, Arizona) be saved? "The foundation has been beset with financial woes, revolving-door management, turmoil on its board of directors and faculty and student turnover in its famed architecture school." One solution being proposed to to try to work with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy... Arizona Republic 03/19/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 7:17 pm
Outsider Comes In "People still debate the relative value of art made to be used (crafts and design), and art made to be contemplated (painting, drawing and sculpture). It's the utilitarian versus the high art tradition. But why must high mean better? Why can't it just describe a certain history of techniques and practices? Given the adulation and money poured into the high art world by collectors and corporations, the notion of art for art's sake seems pretty passé." The New York Times 03/22/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 7:12 pm
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World Recording Sales Down, US Up "Worldwide sales of recorded music declined 1.3 percent to $33.6 billion last year as the U.S. market grew for the first time since 1999 and consumers bought more concert and video DVDs. The figures released on Tuesday, which reveal the fifth straight year of falling sales for the record industry, do not include digital downloads or mobile phone ringtones, which music companies say would have made 2004 sales flat against 2003." Yahoo! (AP) 03/22/05
Posted: 03/22/2005 3:36 am
Brits Top Music Consumers Brits buy more music than anyone else, according to new sales figures. "The UK music industry recorded an overall 3% increase in volume sales, mostly due to its robust albums market. However, world music sales declined by 1.3% to $33.6 billion (£17.7 billion). The UK CD albums market grew by 4.5% in 2004 with a record 174.6 million units sold. On average every Briton buys 3.2 CDs per person per year." BBC 03/22/05
Posted: 03/22/2005 3:29 am
Back To Vinyl Damian Thompson has abandoned digital music for the real vinyl experience. "After nearly 20 years of exclusive loyalty to compact discs, I have bought a record player - partly out of nostalgia, partly to test the theory that they produce a better sound than CD players, and partly out of irritation at the cult of the iPod. The experience has been ridiculously exciting." The Telegraph (UK) 03/22/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 8:00 pm
Can La Scala Find Its Way Back From The Edge? A mediator is trying to resolve the out-of-control labor situation at La Scala. "While La Scala’s governors seek to emphasise that Muti is staying, it is difficult to foresee how the musical director can continue under the present circumstances. Several contenders have been touted as potential successors including Covent Garden's Antonio Pappano." Gramophone 03/21/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 6:04 pm
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Musicologist Stanley Sadie, 75 "Sadie’s greatest achievement was the 20-volume The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which he edited from 1970 onwards, along with a number of companion titles including The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. He also worked on its successor, published in 2001, having been made emeritus editor in 1999."
Gramophone 03/22/05
Posted: 03/22/2005 4:43 am
Remembering Bobby Short Pianist Bobby Short was the best at what he did. "To dismiss Mr. Short, as some did, as a plaything of the rich and the chic is to overlook his contribution to jazz and to New York cultural life. He was one of the last exponents of an ebullient dusk-till-dawn nightclub culture that flourished in Manhattan until it was done in by television, rock 'n' roll and its own inflationary pressures." The New York Times 03/21/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 6:51 pm
Mayne In The Spotlight "The size and prominence of the commissions for Thomas Mayne's firm, based in Santa Monica, Calif., and called Morphosis, have increased dramatically in the last decade, from private homes and restaurants in Los Angeles to public, educational and commercial buildings in the United States, Europe and Asia." But he's not broken in to star ranks until his Pritzker win. "It's a really serious reward and I take it with huge humility and honor. My career has been so much outside the mainstream that I can't help but view it as a vindication of what I've tried to do." Washington Post 03/21/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 6:20 pm
Who Is Thom Mayne? Well, he won this year's Pritzker Prize for architecture. "Thom Mayne's taste tends to the shocking; if he were a filmmaker, he would be Roger Corman. His buildings have jagged, fractured forms and haphazard compositions that make them look, at first glance, as if they were not quite finished—or were falling apart. This is a subterfuge, of course, since they are solidly built and carefully detailed, but their appearance leaves the distinct impression of chaos." Slate 03/21/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 6:17 pm
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Arts To The People (In The Villages) One place of great growth in the arts? In the UK, in 2002/03, the country's 40 rural touring schemes staged more than 3,000 professional shows to a quarter of a million people. Since the creation in 1997 of umbrella body the National Rural Touring Forum (NRTF), performances have doubled. "Village halls are places where, far from the nearest focus group fretting about access or elitism, real life takes place. Gigs are packed with people, because whole communities - farmers, retired people, young families - turn out to what is a major event in their social calendar." The Guardian (UK) 03/21/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 7:26 pm
How Do You Reinvent Dinner Theatre? Dinner theatre is theatre for the old, right? So how do you attract new audiences? All arts organizations struggle with this, but dinner theatre has a stigma that younger audiences tend to reject wholesale. And when you try something new, your core audience... well it tends not to like change. Rocky Mountain News 03/21/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 6:41 pm
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NY Public Library And Its Digital Democracy "Officially launched on March 3rd, the New York Public Library DIgital Gallery is presently offering 275,000 images (stored on a 57-terabyte, a thousand billion bytes of data, network of servers) for public perusal and free personal use ("...individual private study, scholarship and research..."). Most of the contents of the Gallery is in the public domain, and if you can obtain your own reproduction of any image you find here, you can probably use it as you see fit. The digitized copies on the NYPL website, however, are protected by copyright, and the Library charges a usage fee if an image is used in any "nonprofit or commercial publication, broadcast, web site, exhibition, promotional material, etc" contexts." Christian Science Monitor 03/21/05
Posted: 03/21/2005 5:19 pm
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BBC Cuts Even Deeper Cuts in staff at the BBC are bigger than previously predicted. "The 2,050 job cuts - including 424 announced in December - take total job losses at the BBC to 3,780, saving £355m a year to reinvest in programmes. They are part of director general Mark Thompson's plans to streamline the BBC. He told staff it was "the toughest period any of us can remember". The National Union of Journalists said the cuts would "rip the heart out" of the corporation. BBC 03/22/05
Posted: 03/22/2005 6:34 pm
IS There Really An Audience For Quality TV News? TV news shows continue to lose audience. But just as NPR has seen a rise in its audience, so has CBS Sunday Morning. "The leisurely paced Sunday Morning averages 5 million viewers each week, up slightly over last year and at its highest point in a decade. That's about a million more than for the Sunday Today on NBC, with CBS's lead more than doubling in the past year, according to Nielsen Media Research. The increase comes despite ABC's relaunch of Good Morning America on Sunday over the past year. (It is seen by 1.9 million people a week)." Miami Herald (AP) 03/22/05
Posted: 03/22/2005 9:16 am
French Canadian Sweep At Genie Awards French Canadian movies dominated the prizes at this year's Genie Awards. "The bitter irony of the night is that English Canada's most ardent film buffs have likely never heard — let alone seen — many of the francophone winners, which are hugely popular in Quebec but virtually ignored in the rest of Canada. Ma vie en cinemascope and Mémoires affectives, for instance, don't even have release dates yet in English Canada." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/22/05
Posted: 03/22/2005 3:34 am
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