The Bystander Effect People who are in a group are much less likely to help someone in need than if they're by themselves. "Research at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich suggests even when accompanied by another person, individuals are more likely to intervene if the situation is dangerous or violent.
Physorg.com 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:26 pm
A Story To Go With That Big Mac? Disney and McDonald's could be teaming up to offer digital entertainment with your Happy Meal. "Patents filed by Disney reveal plans to drip-feed entertainment into a portable player while the owner eats in a restaurant. You only get the full programme by coming back to the restaurant a number of times to collect all the instalments. McDonalds could use the system instead of giving out toys with Happy Meals, suggests Disney’s patent." New Scientist 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:22 pm
Click here for more Ideas stories...
Ideas stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story
Nex Thing You Know, The Scream Will Turn Up On eBay "The folks at [Germany's] Pirmasens Museum had long given up hope that a cache of paintings by that city's most famous 19th-century painter, Heinrich Burkel, would ever be found... Then this fall Heike Wittmer, the museum's director and archivist, saw what looked like three of the missing Burkels on a Web site advertising an art auction in Concordville, Pa., outside Philadelphia. Wittmer contacted cultural officers in the German government, who in turn contacted the FBI's new Art Crime Team... The paintings, valued at about $125,000, found their way in the 1960s to a New Jersey man who bequeathed them to his daughter about 20 years later." Washington Post 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 7:08 am
On Further Reflection, The New MoMA Does Not Suck New York's Museum of Modern Art may have gotten an unprecedented wave of publicity when it opened its new home last year, but that doesn't mean that the critics spared MoMA their sharpest critiques. It seemed that nearly everyone had some quibble or other with the new building, but after a year to get used to the new setting, no one seems to be complaining any more. Washington Post 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 7:04 am
Ukraine's New Wave of Political Art The so-called "Orange Revolution" that gripped Ukraine in 2004 and carried opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency had a profound impact on every facet of existence in the former Soviet republic. One side effect of the month of protests and confrontations was the emergence of a newly energized political art movement. "[The revolution] announced a new wave of Ukrainian artists, several of whom pulled off the neat postmodern trick of simultaneously appropriating, satirizing and extending the conventions of Soviet-style poster art from Stalin to Gorbachev." Chicago Sun-Times 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 6:41 am
London's Affirmative Action Plan For Curators Less than 6% of London curators are from ethnic minorities, compared with 29% of the city's population. So a new initiative plans on placing five minority trainees at the city's major museums. BBC 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:09 pm
Click here for more Visual Arts stories...
Visual Arts stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story
Sponsor
New Atlanta Hall Waiting On Public Funding The Atlanta Symphony is continuing to rack up private contributions towards its planned new concert hall in the city's downtown district. But the space-age hall, designed by Santiago Calatrava, still faces an uphill battle, because the ASO's request for $100 million in city and state funding has yet to result in any action. Both Atlanta's mayor and Georgia's governor have paid lip service to the project, but the governor won't reveal whether he is including any funding for the project in his 2006 budget proposal, and the mayor says that the city doesn't have "even a fraction" of the $50 million the orchestra wants. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 5:50 am
Musicians Wanted - Democracy Promised The Pittsburgh Symphony is having a busy audition season, and the trend of open positions is expected to continue in the coming year, thanks to a buyout offered to 15 senior musicians in the orchestra. Additionally, the PSO recently tweaked its hiring process when it decided against hiring a single conductor as music director. Whereas, in most major American orchestras, the music director has absolute power to hire whom he wishes (while a committee of musicians serves in an advisory capacity,) the rule at the PSO is now an ultra-democratic system of one man/one vote. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 5:44 am
Nashville Hall On Track The Nashville Symphony has raised all but $6 million of the private funding it needs to fund construction of its $120 million new concert hall, and the Kresge Foundation is promising $1.5 million more if the orchestra finishes the fundraising process by next September. Meanwhile, construction of the new hall is in full swing, and the new pipe organ (to be installed one year after the hall opens) is being built in San Francisco. Nashville City Paper 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 5:33 am
Assessing SF Opera: The Rosenberg Years Pamela Rosenberg, who will step down as general director of the San Francisco Opera this month to take a job with the Berlin Philharmonic, was as prominent a figure as an opera company can have at its head. A true music lover, Rosenberg nonetheless found herself battling financial troubles throughout her 5-year tenure in San Francisco. "Beset by a post-Sept.11 free fall in ticket revenues and contributed income, the sobering contraction of a local economy reeling from the dot-com collapse and a dangerously thin endowment fund, Rosenberg was forced to mandate one of the largest cutbacks in the company's history... Embattled by financial woes and trying labor negotiations, Rosenberg was routinely blamed for problems that were largely beyond her control." San Francisco Chronicle 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 5:12 am
Christmas Gifts For The Gullible Audiophile Audiophiles are famous for their devotion to pure, undoctored sound, and for being willing to spend big money to hear it. But that devotion doesn't mean that every overpriced piece of stereo equipment is worth its salt, and clearly, some companies are deliberately practicing upon the credulous simplicity of their audiophilic customers. How about $6,820 for a volume control? Or $2,100 for a power cable? $30,000 for speaker wire? Or for a real bargain, how about $200 for a CD mat that promises to "create a very specific energy spectra that mechanically dithers the laser"? ILikeJam
Posted: 12/07/2005 5:09 am
Norway's Golden Age Of Jazz "As jazz heads into its second century as an international language, it's in Oslo that its conversation is now at its most animated and productive. Thirty years ago, when the saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the guitarist Terje Rypdal became the first Norwegian jazz musicians to make an international impact, no one could have predicted that their country, with its population of 4.5 million, would now be enjoying such pre-eminence." The Guardian (UK) 12/07/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:32 pm
A La Scala First On Opening Night "No first night at La Scala is ever without its dramas, demonstrations and exaggerations, even now, when Italian opera is in historic decline. This year is likely to be no exception, since the first night of the 2005-6 season, a performance of Mozart's Idomeneo, is thought to be the first time an Englishman has had the honour of conducting on this grandest night of the Milanese year." The Guardian (UK) 12/07/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:30 pm
Click here for more Music stories...
Music stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story
Cleveland Arts Prize Eyes A Comeback "The Cleveland Arts Prize took a powder and is coming back strong. Or so the organization hopes: After a year's hiatus in which leaders rethought the award's mission and approach, the 45-year-old prize will return in 2006 with an emphasis on emerging artists and public input... Created in 1960 as a project of the Women's Club of Cleveland and now an independent nonprofit organization, the prize has for decades recognized the achievements of established, often renowned, Northeast Ohio artists and arts leaders... Established artists will continue to be saluted with two prizes of $2,500 each. But the organization's largest award now will be a $5,000 prize for an emerging Northeast Ohio artist." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 5:59 am
Displaced NO Musicians To Get Their Own Village "City officials and artists who call New Orleans home announced Tuesday that they would team with Habitat for Humanity to build a village for musicians chased from their homes by Hurricane Katrina. The alliance, which includes the Marsalis family and Harry Connick Jr., will use $1 million in seed money generated by two recent concerts in New York to launch the development. Plans call for as many as 200 homes surrounding a cultural center named for Ellis Marsalis — a patriarch of New Orleans jazz and the father of three accomplished musicians: saxophonist Branford, trumpeter Wynton and trombonist Delfeayo." Los Angeles Times 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 5:30 am
The Christmas Conundrum The Christmas season may be a boom time for retailers and a joyous occasion for families, but it's become a giant headache for public schools. Vague court decisions and virulent disagreement over the extent to which religion must be kept out of schools have resulted in a patchwork of rules governing what is and is not allowed in a school's "holiday" concert and celebratory display. "Schools often fall into two camps: They quietly avoid religious songs in favor of more generic tunes such as Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells. Or they offer a sprinkling of songs from different religions and fill much of the concert with secular holiday songs." Arizona Republic 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 5:25 am
Newspapers Waste Ink On TV, Pop Culture Newspapers are in a tizzy about declining circulation. But maybe part of what's wrong is that newspapers "drive readers away, either through clueless attempts to woo people who have no interest in newspapers at all, or by mocking community standards that most of its customers hold dear. Television and celebrity coverage is a waste. People who prefer television simply watch more television -- they don't and won't read papers. Why chase them?" Dallas Business Journal 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 9:59 pm
Click here for more Arts Issues stories...
Arts Issues stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story
And No, He Didn't Have Syphilis It's official: Beethoven died of lead poisoning, according to scientists studying hair and tissue samples from the famous composer, and the deadly metal probably also caused his deafness. Still unknown is just exactly how old Ludwig came into contact with so much lead, but one theory involves his heavy drinking, for which lead goblets would have been a likely accessory. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 6:53 am
Buddy Guy - Greatest Bluesman Standing? "The major blues album is a vanishing artifact. Along with Robert Cray and Corey Harris, Buddy Guy himself is one of the few living humans with more than one." Village Voice 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:37 pm
Click here for more People stories...
People stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story
Dumping More On Color Purple "Sincerity isn't skill, and it isn't knowledge. The feelings that The Color Purple may arouse in you don't disguise the fact that they've been gotten in a comparatively crude and unimaginative manner. The disheartening lack of quality in the material dilutes the quality of feeling with which it's being put over and makes the meanings behind it look questionable as well." Village Voice 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:41 pm
What To Do With All These New Actors? More colleges are producing more actors than ever and the job market is stagnating. So schools are adapting. "Instead of the pure education-of-an-artist approach that dominated in undergraduate acting programs through the 1980's and 90's, there is now a growing emphasis on helping students find work in a famously competitive field. The result is something of a confounding dilemma both for educators and for some professionals, who fear, on the one hand, that vocational training robs student actors of necessary artistic exploration and, on the other, that schools have to do a better job of preparing actors for the grim realities of professional life." The New York Times 12/07/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:15 pm
Click here for more Theatre stories...
Theatre stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story
Publishing Industry In A Slump "A look back at the fall publishing season, when publishers typically release their biggest books hoping to cash in on the holidays, reveals that the publishing industry is still struggling. The Association of American Publishers reported last month that sales of adult hardcover books, sluggish for several years, have fallen by 2 percent so far this year. Similarly, the American Booksellers Association, a trade group representing bookstores, said that overall bookstore sales in the first nine months of 2005 declined 2 percent from a year ago." The New York Times 12/07/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:12 pm
Is Print-On-Demand The Salvation Of University Presses? "The new digital technology eliminates the need for printing plates, which are so costly to create that many copies of a book need to be produced to justify the expense. Now publishers can go more directly from a computer file to the printed page — a technological process not so different from using a high-quality copy machine. The data can also be stored digitally indefinitely, allowing for quick reprints down the road. The same systems, however, allow anyone to publish, using so-called vanity presses that have sprung up to print books with little or no editorial review, a trend that worries some academic publishers." Chronicle of Higher Education 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:04 pm
Click here for more Publishing stories...
Publishing stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story
Making A Point As Well As A Movie "Message" movies, once thought to be box office poison, are all the rage in Hollywood at the moment, thanks to the emergence of a few specific companies that specialize in making films that engage the public in a specific cause. Of course, crusading filmmakers are nothing new, but the establishment billionaires backing them are quite a novel twist... The New York Times 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 6:30 am
The Ivy League Music Buster The recording industry, obsessed as it is with putting an end to illegal trading of its product, has spent the last several years coming up with scheme after technological scheme to make such piracy impossible. And yet, somehow, no matter how complex and ambitious the industry's copy-protection tactics become, they keep getting beaten. So who's beating them? Well, a 24-year-old grad student from Princeton, mainly. Wired 12/07/05
Posted: 12/07/2005 6:02 am
Kids Movies On Top Kids movies are hot. Kids movies made from classic stories are right on top. "They make great gobs of money when they work. Pretty decent money even when they're just passable. And that's why movies that would have once been seen as kid stuff have become the toast of Tinseltown." Rocky Mountain News 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:02 pm
Satellite Radio Comes To Canada "Sirius and XM Canada, two competing U.S. services newly launched in Canada, offer a plethora of music divided by minute genre distinctions, along with talk-radio, news, sports and comedy channels. The question now is whether Canadians will find this a fascinating new world of digitally transmitted radio or, as with cable and satellite TV, a vast array of nothing." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 9:57 pm
Click here for more Media stories...
Media stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story
ABT Brings Nutcracker To White House "The president and first lady sat on a love seat near the back of the room while performers playing the roles of little Clara, the Prince and dancers from around the world put on a 25-minute show. Three children climbed up to sit with them, but they did not seem distracted by the first couple after the music began and all eyes were on the dancers." ABCNews.com 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 10:49 pm
Click here for more Dance stories...
Dance stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story
