Monday, December 5
Why Publishers' Obsession With Short Attention Spans?
There's research to say that's what people are afflicted with. But "the data that exist come from people with short attention spans, the kind who participate in focus groups and telephone surveys relied on by corporate research. Guess what? SAS in, SAS out. Well-educated, successful people with good incomes and long attention spans don't waste time on focus groups or telephone marketing surveys. They're too busy reading books, serious magazines, and long-form journalism."
Philadelphia Inquirer
12/04/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 10:05 am
Tallest Building May Be Causing Quakes
The world's tallest skyscraper - in Taiwan - specially built to withstand earthquakes, may be causing more quakes because of its immense weight. "The pressure of the building's 700,000 tons on the ground may be leading to increased seismic activity. The tremors could be a direct result of the loading of the mega-structure."
Wired
12/04/05
Posted: 12/04/2005 8:11 pm
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City Journal 11/05
posted 12/05/2005 @ 9:36 PM
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A Scottish tate Modern? Hmnnnn...
The Scottish government is studying an idea of transforming an old building into A Scottish version of Tate Modern or the Guggenheim. "Arts insiders say the 15,000sqm building could become a Scottish version of the Tate Modern or the Guggenheim." But Sir Timothy Clifford, the flamboyant director general of the National Gallery of Scotland, has told culture minister Patricia Ferguson that the project smacked of "regional towns in England."
Glasgow Herald
12/04/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 10:10 am
Milwaukee Has A Public Art Problem
"How is it possible a city now defined around the world by its art museum could suffer such a drought when it comes to public art? This is a question that is raised perennially, with lots of strong opinions voiced and little change resulting."
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
12/04/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 8:19 am
Peru Makes Claim On Yale Artifacts
Peru is threatening to sue Yale University, demanding return of artifacts from Machu Picchu. "Peru has notified [Yale's president] Richard Levin that a lawsuit is prepared if its rights to the archaeological pieces are not recognised," the Peruvian foreign ministry said in a statement.
The Guardian (UK)
12/05/05
Posted: 12/04/2005 9:58 pm
Classical Ideals - Still Relevant?
"Epic tales, attributed to the Greek poet Homer, aren't just adventure stories, although on that level alone they deserve to have endured for centuries. They're also instructive moral and ethical allegories about virtues such as courage, fidelity and honor. European artists of the 17th through the 19th centuries were inspired by these sagas, which attests to their durable appeal. But now we're in the 21st century. Do paintings and sculptures that propound classical ideals still have anything to say that today's museumgoers would find meaningful?"
Philadelphia Inquirer
12/04/05
Posted: 12/04/2005 9:25 pm
Art Basel Miami's Gold Rush Business
The world's largest art fair does great business. But many collectors who swept in on the first day and reserved art, later canceled. ?Last year we had more South Americans and Europeans. This year there were more Americans and institutions.?
The Art Newspaper
12/05/05
Posted: 12/04/2005 7:43 pm
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Commentary 12/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:43 PM
BBC 12/03/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:10 PM
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 Sponsor
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Second Thoughts About Denver's New Opera House
Denver's Ellie Caulkins Opera House opened to lots of praise this fall. "But it didn't take long for the positive to turn negative. Suddenly, according to certain music critics and members of the public, this, that or something else is wrong with the same building that was so effusively extolled just weeks earlier. Everything from the angle of the seats to the shortage of drinking fountains to even the positioning of the Dale Chihuly chandelier came under attack."
Denver Post
12/04/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 8:14 am
Bernheimer: A Tragedy That Wants (Cautiously) To Be A Masterpiece
Martin Bernheimer writes that Tobias Picker's "American Tragedy" gets a good production at the Met. But "Picker's score is undeniably crafty, also cautious and well-mannered to a fault. It deals knowingly in second-hand operatic devices, cranking out good mood music and gutsy cliches at every turn. There are no surprises here, no shocks, and very few dissonances. The first-nighters seemed grateful. An American Tragedy may be the perfect modern opera for people who hate modern opera."
Financial Times
12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 7:50 am
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New York Observer 12/01/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:48 PM
Financial Times 12/02/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:34 PM
Newsday 12/02/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:32 PM
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Kennedy Center Honors
Actor Robert Redford, singers Tony Bennett and Tina Turner, the actress Julie Harris and the ballerina Suzanne Farrell were feted for this year's Kennedy Center Honors Sunday night.
Posted: 12/05/2005 8:44 am
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InsideHigherEd 12/02/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:51 PM
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Brubeck At 85
He's still performing 80 concerts a year. "While Tatum, Louis Armstrong and others were inventing jazz, Brubeck was hoping to learn it. Now, some 70 years later, he's the most successful popularizer in postwar jazz history."
San Francisco Chronicle
12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 10:22 am
Pinter In Hospital
Playwright Harold Pinter, who had canceled going to his Nobel ceremony this week, has been taken to a London hsopital. "Pinter, who was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in December 2002, was born in Hackney, east London."
Yahoo! (AP)
12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 7:23 am
Suzanne Farrell At 60
"At 60, after more than 2,000 performances with the New York City Ballet (and a few hundred with the Bejart Ballet), the dancer who now directs will receive the Kennedy Center Honors tonight, right across the street from the apartment she calls home."
Washington Post
12/04/05
Posted: 12/04/2005 9:03 pm
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CBC 12/03/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:12 PM
12/01/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:11 PM
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"Purple" Overamplified, Overheated, And Overhyped
John Lahr writes that "The Color Purple" fails on a number of levels. "Marsha Norman?s libretto is a kind of color-me-purple comic-book outline: it gives us the externals of the plot but not, in any meaningful sense, the internal life of the characters, who function more as anecdotes than as dramatic influences on Celie. As a result, what is earned sentiment in the novel becomes mere sentimentality in the musical. Everything is as literal as a street sign, and sometimes not as interesting."
The New Yorker
12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 8:53 am
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The New York Times 12/03/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:39 PM
Yahoo! (AP) 12/03/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:23 PM
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The Teen Pulp Connection
"Teen pulp, which evolved out of children's books and rebelled against their supposed strictures, appears to take up far more real estate on the shelves of bookstores than books of more subtle literary bent for the pre-adult set. The genre also reflects a different set of expectations about how books are read and why."
The New York Times
12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 10:32 am
Are Lit Teaching Standards Failing Students?
Nine years ago Britain institutes a national literacy framework for teaching English. "But the framework has now become a double-edged sword ? it provides schools with a common programme to ensure that children have a broad diet of fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. It has helped us think about the way in which words, sentences and texts weave together. However, for many teachers the framework has become a strait-jacket that limits children?s progress. It has trapped us into 'delivery' mode with teachers trotting through objectives without thinking about whether these are relevant to children?s needs."
Times Education Supplement
12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 9:02 am
Harper's Without Lapham
"These days, a decade is a long time to be editor of one magazine, and Lewis Lapham has been editor-in-chief at Harper?s for 28 of the last 30 years. But now he is handing the job to his deputy, a man whose byline?Roger Hodge?I once assumed to be a twee Canterbury Tales pseudonym. It turns out Hodge is not only real but intelligent and thoughtful. He grew up on his family?s ranch in Texas and started at Harper?s as an intern at 29, in 1996."
New York Magazine
12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 8:59 am
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The Age 12/02/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 8:40 PM
New York Observer 12/01/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:49 PM
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Actress Drought For Oscar
It's been such a bad year for actresses in Hollywood, that it's difficult to find worthy nominees for Oscar. "There are names being bandied about, but they're the product of desperation rather than honest cultural buzz, and they go to the heart of what's wrong with Hollywood at the moment. More than ever, male movie stars sell movies. Consequently, more than ever movies are built around male roles. Increasingly, the pickings for women aren't just slim but nonexistent." Boston Globe
12/04/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 8:25 am
Hollywood Discovers God (Again)
"The story of the current rise of Christianity in Hollywood is a tale of the lion, the nun and the billionaire. The movie industry has become a big time born-again believer after experiencing the power of faith-based marketing." Toronto Star
12/04/05
Posted: 12/04/2005 9:08 pm
Movie Theatres Equip For Blind, Deaf
"Nationwide, more than 150 movie theaters have added special systems to help the deaf, hard of hearing, blind or visually impaired, according to the nonprofit National Center for Accessible Media. Most of those theaters are in major cities that made the move voluntarily, but states are now putting pressure on theater chains to spread the technology much farther or risk discrimination lawsuits." Yahoo! (AP)
12/04/05
Posted: 12/04/2005 8:28 pm
Texting Your Concert
Artists are finding ways to communicate with their fans in concerts with text messages. "Fans attending these concerts were invited to text messages to a pre-set code that let them post messages to large screens near the stage, as well as compete in trivia contests for the chance to win better seats or VIP backstage passes and to buy concert merchandise." Backstage
12/04/05
Posted: 12/04/2005 7:55 pm
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The New York Times 12/03/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:41 PM
Yahoo! (AP)
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:16 PM
Yahoo! (Reuters)
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:15 PM
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The Reinvented Baryshnikov
"It would be difficult to find a better exemplar of career reinvention than Mikhail Baryshnikov. Of course, he started with a few little advantages, like being one of the most idolized ballet dancers of all time, like being seductively handsome, like having multiple talents and the fame to capitalize on them. He has starred on film and on Broadway and on television. He has choreographed and been artistic director of American Ballet Theater, and founded and starred in his own White Oak Dance Project. But most of his efforts so far have been extensions of his dance career, rather than a transition from it. Now he is overseeing something else, the much-bruited, still almost stealthy Baryshnikov Arts Center."
The New York Times
12/04/05
Posted: 12/04/2005 9:55 am
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New York Observer 12/01/05
posted 12/03/2005 @ 6:47 PM
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