11 Ways To A better Brain Okay - we've had doctors for a long time, and to be honest, a lot of the time they've only guessed at what makes us better. But more and more, they're nailing down real answers to what makes our bodies work. So you want to build a better brain? Here are 11 things you can do to improve and retain mental health... New Scientist 05/28/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 11:33 am
- The Sarcastic Brain Where does sarcasm come from? Turns out it's a very specific part of the brain. "By comparing healthy people and those with damage to different parts of the brain, they found the front of the brain was key to understanding sarcasm..." BBC 05/27/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 11:31 am
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Mourning The Corcoran's Gehry (What Might Have Been) Las week the Corcoran Gallery In Washington announced it wouldn't go ahead with a planned expansion by Frank Gehry. Benjamin Forgey is disappointed. "Gehry's Corcoran joins the short, unhappy list of highly significant modern buildings designed for Washington but not built: Eliel and Eero Saarinen's competition-winning 1939 design for a Smithsonian Gallery of Art on the Mall; and Frank Lloyd Wright's Crystal Heights, the stunning mixed-use project he designed in 1940 for the spot where the Hilton Washington stands today. Both of these potential modernist masterpieces were staunchly opposed by the city's architectural establishment. By contrast, Gehry's building won widespread approval. Not that it helped." Washington Post 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:53 pm
The Small Museum Squeeze So many museums seem to be building new buildings or expanding. But smaller museums are having a tougher time. ''While there is a sense that things are getting better, small museums are certainly seeing no evidence of that. Fund-raising is not increasing. The numbers of school districts able to afford tours is diminishing. The economy does not seem to be turning around for us." Boston Globe 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:34 pm
Court Rules British Musuem Can't Return Nazi Loot The British Museum wants to return drawings looted by the Nazis. But a British court has ruled that an act of the British parliament prohibits such returns. So might parliament change the law? Not likely... The Guardian (UK) 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:15 pm
Pollock... Or Not? Two years ago a trove of paintings said to be by Jackson Pollock was discovered. "In the two weeks since the news of the works' existence - delivered with the help of a Web site and a flurry of press releases - an intense and at times personal battle over who really painted them has been shaping up within a small, once unified group of the world's leading Pollock experts." The New York Times 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 11:42 am
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The Boston Symphony - Model For America's Orchestras? The Boston Symphony, writes John von Rhein, "is a unique orchestra, a unique audience and a unique administrative vision that has made the Boston Symphony Orchestra the business model for other symphony orchestras, at a time when just about everyone in classical music, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is chanting the same litany of declining ticket sales, rising deficits and aging audiences." Chicago Tribune 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:44 pm
Chicago's Difficult Season In the Concert Hall It was a bit of a difficult season for classical music in Chicago. "There are no easy answers to the difficulties classical music organizations are facing, and endless facets to the questions themselves. Classical music in America is far from dead, but the shape of its future may look quite different from its past." Chicago Sun-Times 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:41 pm
Buena Vista Case Moves to Cuba After video links break down between Cuba and London in the case of disputed copyrights of songs made famous by the Buena Vista Club, the English judge moves hearings to Cuba. "The hearing is likely to take place in September at the British embassy in Havana, with lawyers abandoning gowns and wigs, but not necessarily resorting to Bermuda (or Cuba) shorts - and possibly gaining first-hand experience of local music in bars." The Guardian (UK) 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:05 pm
Toronto Symphony Makes A Dramatic Comeback A few years ago the Toronto Symphony was an organization in trouble. Then came a dramatic turnaround. "The upshot? Over a three-year period, audiences have risen by 25 per cent. There are now 25,000 subscribers and the orchestra sells 230,000 seats per season. More than 20,000 young people (aged 15 to 29) have been recruited to the new "tsoundcheck" program alone, offering them good seats over the Internet for only $10 a ticket. The price makes going to the symphony competitive with a first-run movie." Toronto Star 05/28/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 12:07 pm
Van Cliburn Finalists The Van Cliburn Piano Competition enters its final round. "For the first time in the competition's history, three Asian women have reached the finals. Two Italians and a Russian make up the men. " Dallas Morning News (AP) 05/30/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 11:59 am
- Some Cliburn Demographics This year's Van Cliburn Piano Competition is a very international affair. But "of the 35 initial contestants, the largest group, 10, has graduated from or is still studying at New York's Juilliard School. Seven are or have been students of Yoheved Kaplinsky, the Israeli-born chairwoman of the piano department. Four list Robert McDonald among their teachers." Dallas Morning News 05/28/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 11:54 am
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A Culture Of Critical Decline Critics have declining influence? "It is dangerous to be defensive -- there's no question that the critics' lot has changed for good. Critics now have less power. To the degree that flows from the marginalization of serious cultural inquiry -- and it surely does -- that fact is to be mourned and fought back against. But to the degree it flows from the empowerment of the audience, reader or listener, it is to be cheered." Chicago Tribune 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:49 pm
Some Critics And Some Critical Traction What did America's critics hope to accomplish by getting together and talking last week? Dominic Papatola: "Will my fellow critics and I reach any grand conclusions here in La-La Land? Perhaps not. Maybe the best we can do is reassure ourselves that, in a world of increasingly slippery standards, we can help to give culture some traction. And then go back home and fight the good fight." St. Paul Pioneer-Press 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:30 pm
With 400 Critics In A Room... So what was the scene in Los Angeles at last week's first-ever joint gathering of five of America's critics' associations? "Gather 400 of them and, depending upon the moment you step in, the scene might resemble a learned symposium, a stampede of cats with sharp claws, or a support group for the underpaid and overeducated." Los Angeles Times 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 12:31 pm
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Pianist Ruth Laredo, 67 Ruth Laredo has died of ovarian cancer. "She was particularly known for two sets of recordings: the complete solo works of Rachmaninoff and the piano sonatas of Scriabin, both recorded in the 1970s and re-issued in recent years. Ms. Laredo also recorded works by Ravel, Brahms, Chopin and Beethoven, among others, and was nominated for a Grammy Award three times." Chicago Sun-Times 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 12:34 pm
Italy Vs. Marion True Getty curator Marion True is caught in a difficult test of antiquities ownership. "In a case that attorneys and True's colleagues say is highly unusual, if not unique, she has been indicted in Italy on criminal charges involving the acquisition of antiquities. The trial — at which she is not required to appear — is scheduled to begin July 18. True, 56, is accused of criminal conspiracy to receive stolen goods and illicit receipt of archeological objects. The indictment also alleges that she in effect laundered artworks through a private collection to create a phony paper trail of their provenance." Los Angeles Times 05/27/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 12:10 pm
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Hare's Breadth Playwright David Hare had mixed feelings going into production of his play about the buildup to the Iraq war. "The power of theater is its unpredictability, the strange alchemy of response that happens only when a group of people examine something together. It's a bad playwright who seeks to demand a particular reaction. Everyone knows that in performance unpleasant people may begin to acquire charm through energy. Good people, it is said, may seem dull. It was interesting how often members of the audience came out of the show saying "Goodness, I never knew that." But even more often — and this is where theater really comes into its own — they emerged uneasy to have found their view of the leading players not quite the one they might have anticipated." Los Angeles Times 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:59 pm
Mixing And Matching Tony's Best Musical No one of the musicals nominated for this year's best musical Tony has all the ingredients of the great show. "If life were fair or the Tonys were smart, next Sunday's awards would probably be split among the four. We all know that isn't the way of the world, but just for the sake of argument, here's the way it should go. ''Spamalot" would win best musical, ''Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" best score, ''The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" best book, and ''The Light in the Piazza" best set design and actress." Boston Globe 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:38 pm
George C. Wolfe - Exit Interview Departing director George C. Wolfe on his role leading the Public Theatre: "Very frequently I told people I felt like I was the whore standing in the window in Amsterdam luring certain kinds of artists and luring money into the building." The New York Times 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 11:49 am
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The New Texas Poet Laureate Alan Birkelbach has been appointed Texas' new poet laureate. He's "a Plano computer analyst whose co-workers didn't even know he wrote poetry." Dallas morning News 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 2:11 pm
Missed In Translation Why is so little literature translated into English these days? “Readers looking for books in translation are now likely to find, at best, a few really big names (Eco, Allende, etc.) and then a lot of obscure stuff, which reinforces the idea of translated-works-as-exotic: sort of like subtitled art-house films, a boutique industry attracting a small, steady audience, but one that finds it hard to attract the average consumer." New York Sun 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 12:40 pm
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The Case For (Or Against) PBS Recent political fighting over American public television has David Shaw wondering why we still need PBS..."We now live in a cable world, a "500-channel universe," and while I would not argue that many of these cable offerings match PBS at its best, they (and Fox) do provide many alternatives to the three original networks we had in 1967." Los Angeles Times 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 2:03 pm
Movies And The Stay-At-Home Challenge "With box-office attendance sliding, so far, for the third consecutive year, many in the industry are starting to ask whether the slump is just part of a cyclical swing driven mostly by a crop of weak movies or whether it reflects a much bigger change in the way Americans look to be entertained - a change that will pose serious new challenges to Hollywood. Studios have made more on DVD sales and licensing products than on theatrical releases for some time. Now, technologies like TiVo and video-on-demand are keeping even more people at home." The New York Times 05/29/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 1:11 pm
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Colorado Ballet Won't Buy New Home The Colorado Ballet has given up plans to buy a new home. "The decision comes a little less than two months after the ballet disclosed that it would not present the $800,000 to $1 million premiere of a ballet version of "Alice in Wonderland." The work was to be part of the opening of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in the fall." Denver Post 05/28/05
Posted: 05/30/2005 12:02 pm
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