Ideas

Does BS Matter? (That's The Truth) "Philosophers have a vocational bent for trying to divine the essences of things that most people never suspected had an essence, and bullshit is a case in point. Could there really be some property that all instances of bullshit possess and all non-instances lack? The question might sound ludicrous, but it is, at least in form, no different from one that philosophers ask about truth. Among the most divisive issues in philosophy today is whether there is anything important to be said about the essential nature of truth. Bullshit, by contrast, might seem to be a mere bagatelle. Yet there are parallels between the two which lead to the same perplexities." The New Yorker 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 8:26 pm

Searching For Better Search Universities are focusing on improving search technologies. "The search problems of today are different from those of five years ago. With books, scholarly papers and television programs being digitized and put online, the technology necessary to search through the material needs to be that much better. People need a way to trust the information they find and to ask more-complex questions with search tools so they can extract knowledge or ideas." CNet News 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 7:03 pm

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Visual Arts

The Dallas Art Collectors A gift of 800 contemporary artworks valued at $215 million by three couples to the Dallas Museum of Art earlier this year, vaults the museum to a new level. But the gift was only part of a remarkable pattern of support by patrons trying to build a civic collection. Dallas Morning News 08/16/05
Posted: 08/16/2005 10:12 am

And Just Who Is Michael Brand? "Brand, 47, a native of Australia, is considered to be a rising star in the museum world and has been on short lists for several other museum directorships. He became the assistant director of the Queensland Art Gallery in Australia at 38, and took the director's job four years later in Richmond, where he embarked on an aggressive mission to build the museum's holdings, shepherd donations of major collections and raise $100 million for an expansion." Brand: "One of the reasons why I've come to the Getty is that it's already a great museum. I'm not coming here saying that it needs to be saved or anything like that." The New York Times 08/16/05
Posted: 08/16/2005 8:13 am

Getty Hires Brand To Run Museum The J. Paul Getty Trust has hired Michael Brand as director of its museum. "The new director has headed the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 2000 and previously served as a museum executive in his native Australia. At the J. Paul Getty Museum, Brand will oversee the acquisition, education, exhibition, service and outreach operations." Los Angeles Times 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 9:05 pm

• Brand Steps In To Getty's Big Job "Michael Brand, a native of Australia and an expert on Indian art and architecture, inherits a museum with a $5 billion endowment and world-class collections of antiquities, photography and illuminated manuscripts." The New York Times 08/16/05
  Posted: 08/15/2005 9:01 pm

Britain's Top Ten Paintings? Radio 4 has posted the top ten contenders in its poll picking the greatest painting in Britain. Any painting hanging in a British collection is eligible, regardless of its country of origin. BBC 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 6:24 pm

• Best Art. Best What? So Britons are picking the best art in Britain. What kind of exercise is this? "Cognoscenti may dismiss the list as the work of a country that does not know much about art but knows what it likes on a nice birthday card. Populists may hail it as a triumph of popular taste over critics, conceptualists and postmodernists. And regionalists may regret that only two of the works on the list are in galleries outside London." The Guardian (UK) 08/15/05
  Posted: 08/15/2005 5:41 pm

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Music

Making Room For Something New (And Good!) So a hot new symphony comes out, wins a big prize, and... nothing. It doesn't get performed. And why? "The issue is whether orchestras can find the will and the flexibility to tap into hot works when they turn up, or whether their idea of exciting programming is simply to group repertory favorites under facile thematic banners, with the occasional premiere thrown in dutifully and the word "exciting" splashed across the brochure." The New York Times 08/15/05
Posted: 08/16/2005 8:32 am

Jerry, The Opera: No Funding Pressure... A tour of Jerry Springer, The Opera is in doubt, and some are saying it's because Arts Council England bowed to pressure from religious groups and denied funding. But a Council spokesperson says: "The decision not to provide funding for the tour was financial, as the musical was already a 'commercial success', and not over fears of a religious backlash. It is nonsense to say that the Arts Council has refused to fund the tour of Jerry Springer over fears of protests from Christian groups, or anyone else." BBC 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 6:07 pm

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People

Oscar Peterson Gets A Stamp The Canadian Post Office has created its first stamp honoring a living person - jazz legend Oscar Peterson. "It was a special 80th birthday tribute to Canada's legendary jazz pianist. Peterson said he always considered himself proud to be a Canadian, "But to have the honour of this stamp issued in my likeness goes beyond my wildest dreams." CBC 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 6:42 pm

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Publishing

Your Name Here (As Long As You Pay) "Next month, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Lemony Snicket, Nora Roberts, Michael Chabon and 11 other best-selling writers will sell the right to name characters in their new novels. Profits from the auction (at www.ebay.com/fap) will go to the First Amendment Project, whose lawyers go to court to protect the free speech rights of activists, writers and artists." Chicago Sun-Times 08/16/05
Posted: 08/16/2005 9:54 am

Magazines - What's Hot/Not What's hot in the magazine world? Celebrity magazines. The star-obsessed glossies are seeing huge circulation gains. What's not? News magazines, which are seeing readers peel away to the internet... The New York Times 08/16/05
Posted: 08/16/2005 8:00 am

The Subtle Art Of Literary Hoaxes "In recent years, scholars have begun pursuing a more nuanced approach to discussing literary hoaxes than the knee-jerk disgruntlement of a reader scorned. Instead, literary scholars like Ohio State University professor Brian McHale and the Australian critic K.K. Ruthven are concentrating on the productive and beautifully unpredictable effects of hoaxing. Are all hoaxes the same? Should they all be judged by the same ethical standards? Do some hoaxes rise above being trifling pranks or bogus facsimiles to become serious acts of cultural criticism? What of an author's intentions?" Boston Globe 08/14/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 7:55 pm

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Media

When Did Sex Become A Liability At The Movies? "Nowadays, nudity is a decided liability when it comes to the commercial success of the movie. In 2004, none of the six major studios' top 25 grossing films, led by Spider-Man 2, Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and The Incredibles, contained any sexually oriented nudity; only one had a restrictive R rating?Warner Bros.' Troy?and that was mainly due to the film's gory violence, not its sexual content. The absence of sex?at least graphic sex?is key to the success of Hollywood's moneymaking movies." Slate 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 7:18 pm

TV Turns To Podcasting "Podcasting is turning conventional wisdom about TV broadcasting on its head as thousands of people sign up to download and listen to free, audio-only versions of their favorite shows or special MP3-only programming." Wired 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 6:58 pm

Kentucky Public Radio Station Restores Keillor To Air A Kentucky public radio station has returned Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac to its schedule after pulling it from the air two weeks ago. WUKY General Manger Tom Godell dropped "The Writer's Almanac" after questioning the language in some of the poems Keillor had been reading on the show over the last year. "It's not like he's behaving like Howard Stern, but the FCC has been so inconsistent, we don't know where we stand," Godell told the Lexington Herald-Leader about the initial decision to drop the show. "We could no longer risk a fine." Cincinnati Post 08/13/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 6:52 pm

Where Canadians Spend Their Media Time (Internet Up, TV Down) A new study "suggests internet use among Canadians is up about 46 per cent to 12.7 hours a week from 8.7 hours in 2002. That increase comes while radio listening has dropped an average of five hours to 11 hours per week. Television still remained at the top of the list of most-used media sources, according to the poll, with Canadians watching an average of 14.3 hours of TV per week. But younger internet users spent 14.7 hours online a week, about three hours more than they did on radio and television. Teens spent only 2.5 hours a week reading newspapers." CBC 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 6:35 pm

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Dance

Hip Hop Nation (In Its Many Forms) Think you know all about hip-hop? Think again. Different styles have evolved since hip-hop's '70s origins in the African American neighborhoods of the Bronx and later the Latino enclaves of Queens, and they get lumped together, says Rennie Harris. What makes the Illadelph festival unique is that many of his 15 teaching colleagues are originators of the form; these "Legends" provide the specifics of hip-hop history, theory and technique. "That's why we stay on the foundation," Harris says, so students can "take it, build on that, and do their thing." Philadelphia Inquirer 08/16/05
Posted: 08/16/2005 8:07 am

Reinventing The Bolshoi "When the Soviet Union fell, much of what the Bolshoi had in the way of evening-length ballets was pre-revolutionary classics revised according to Soviet dictates and post-revolutionary ballets created according to those dictates, tales of brave underdogs besting?or piteously defeated by?corrupt, powerful folk. How was the company to replace, or even augment, this material? How, after seventy-five years, do you unlearn the artistic lessons of Communism: the bombast, the corniness, the texturelessness? Not easily..." The New Yorker 08/15/05
Posted: 08/15/2005 8:11 pm

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