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Thursday, August 3
Your Brain As A Computer Scientists are building a microcomputer meant to mimic functions of the human brain. "The Spinnaker — short for 'spiking neural network architecture' — system will not only help scientists better understand the complex interactions of brain cells, but it could also lead to fault-tolerant computers that, like the brain, work despite malfunctions in tiny circuits." Discovery 08/02/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 11:52 pm
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Ron Mueck: Artist Or Hoaxer? "Ron Mueck is supposedly having an exhibition at this year's Edinburgh festival. I say supposedly because I'm not convinced the artist actually exists. Perhaps a clever novelist made up Mueck just to expose the tastelessness and stupidity of our time?" The Guardian (UK) 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:17 am
Guard Dog Rampages, Elvis's Teddy A Casualty "When Barney met Mabel, there was an instant - and fatal - chemical reaction. On Tuesday night the doberman pinscher guard dog, after six years' blameless service, went berserk: within minutes Mabel, a 1909 German-made Steiff teddy bear once owned by Elvis Presley, more recently the pride and joy of an English aristocrat, lay mortally wounded. Barney went on to rampage through hundreds of rare teddies, all on loan to Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, and so valuable that the insurers had insisted on a guard dog to protect the premises at night." The Guardian (UK) 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:10 am
Philly Art Commission Knocks Rocky Back Down It looked like Rocky was on his way back to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but that may have been a pipe dream. Recently, "the half-ton bronze Rocky Balboa - a prop made for Sylvester Stallone's 1982 movie 'Rocky III'" made it partway through the approval process. "A dedication of the new site was tentatively scheduled for Sept. 8. Stallone ... was ecstatic. But the city Art Commission yesterday threw a bucket of cold water in the face of the whole giddy affair." Philadelphia Inquirer 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 5:37 am
Two L.A. Artworks Destroyed In Pompidou Show "The world-renowned Pompidou Center of Paris, which set out in March to celebrate the work of Los Angeles artists, has accidentally destroyed two of their works — which fell from museum walls. A third piece was slightly damaged. The incidents, all of which occurred during the March-to-July run of 'Los Angeles 1955-1985,' have experts wondering whether a major museum has ever done so much damage in the course of a single show." Los Angeles Times 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 4:31 am
In Seattle: Making Mountains Of Regrades One of Seattle's great urban projects was to flatten one of its many hills to create an urban landscape. Now an artist wants to recreate a portion of the hill in a city park. How high would the replacement hill be? About 60 feet... Seattle Post-Intelligencer 08/02/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 10:32 pm
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Turns Out The Internet Helps Live Music Thrive "The Internet is seizing the spotlight in the live-music business — again. A dot-com-era bid by concert promoters to market live gigs online fizzled out. But now concert Webcasts and vintage performance clips are gaining new currency. An array of players — from independent record labels to major concert promoters — are drawing up plans to capitalize on fans’ appetites for everything from the latest club shows in Hollywood to decades-old film of the Grateful Dead in Copenhagen." The New York Times 08/03/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 11:46 pm
Sell Job - Why Does Classical Music Need It? "We have been told variously that classical music is an indispensable dinner-party accessory (Classic FM), an IQ boost for the newborn (LSO), a deterrent to vandals (London Underground), an MTV substitute (New York Philharmonic), a mating call for gay men (BMG), a readers’ companion (Penguin Books), a come-on for tourists (Republic of Austria) and a cure for the common cold (lab results awaited). What any of this has to do with sampling and enjoying a 300-year heritage of lyric narrative and emotion gets lost in the fever of the sales pitch." La Scena Musicale 08/02/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 11:41 pm
A Little Music With Those Humanities? "A University of Pittsburgh music professor is disseminating a new approach to teaching history, English, social studies and other humanities by including music to be studied like any primary text. The results have been stunning for those teachers who have implemented his program in their curriculums. 'If music is one of the primary ways teenagers identify with each other, why not use it in the classes'?" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/26/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 10:59 pm
Ben Franklin, Composer Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of many things. Now a Pennsylvania professor of music says the founding father was also a composer... Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/30/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 10:45 pm
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An Arts Professional's Case For Voting Tory Simon Reade, artistic director of Bristol Old Vic, explains in a "Dear Tony" letter to the prime minister why he's thinking of voting Tory. "I know we've hardly met, but you have really let me down. I work in the most liberal of professions, the theatre. I am an artistic director, a producer/artist/leader of an innovative creative industry. But now, like luminaries of the arts world who in 1979 voted for Margaret Thatcher, I am thinking of voting Tory. And it's your fault, Tony." The Guardian (UK) 08/02/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:28 am
Dinosaurs And Adam And Eve, Oh My! A $25 million "Creation Museum" is being built in rural Kentucky. It features dinosaurs and Adam and Eve. "Its inspiration is the Bible -- the literal interpretation that contends God created the heavens and the Earth and everything in them just a few thousand years ago. 'If the Bible is the word of God, and its history really is true, that's our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there'." AOL (AP) 07/31/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 10:55 pm
A Plan To Remake Brooklyn Culture Brooklyn is booming, and with the boom there are plans for an extraordinarily ambitious cultural district. "Over the next decade, on four sites covering about 10 city blocks, the BAM LDC wants to build several large developments that will, if realized, drastically alter the landscape of Fort Greene and abutting parts of Downtown Brooklyn." Village Voice 08/01/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 10:42 pm
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Baudrillard To Speak In London "The controversial French writer Jean Baudrillard, notorious for his essay 'The Gulf War Did Not Take Place' and his trenchant views on the symbolism of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, will make a public appearance in London in the autumn for the first time in six years." The Guardian (UK) 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:22 am
Julian Schnabel Dips Into Decorating Artist, filmmaker, hotel decorator? Julian Schnabel has just designed the interior of Ian Schrager's Gramercy Park Hotel. "Ever the rebel, Mr. Schnabel rejects the obvious term for someone who does what he has just done at the Gramercy Park Hotel. 'I’m not a designer, but I’ve always built things,' he said. 'Basically I’m a painter, and this is something that really isn’t that hard to do.'" The New York Times 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 4:11 am
The Young Lawyer And The eBay Fake At the age of 30, Kenneth Walton had a boring job as an attorney with a big Sacramento law firm, spending his days staring out of the windows of his 28th-floor office and surfing the internet when he should have been preparing briefs for corporate clients. He had the beginner's salary, with the promise of riches to come, and a successful lawyer girlfriend with a coveted job in a judge's chambers." And then he faked a painting and sold it on eBay... The Guardian (UK) 08/02/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 11:57 pm
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British Theatre, Decade By Decade "Want to find out about British history? Look no further than its theatre. As the National Youth Theatre celebrates its 50th anniversary with six new plays marking every decade since the 1950s, Michael Billington examines the concerns - and the blindspots - of Britain's postwar dramatists." The Guardian (UK) 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:03 am
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A Cataloguing Embarrassment At Library And Archives Canada "If anything shows how Library and Archives Canada needs to upgrade its cataloguing systems, it could be the fact that staff realized that they had not one but two originals of a valuable 16th-century map only when they read about it on July 27 in The Globe and Mail. ... Outside archivists and researchers say these problems result from too little care being taken in translating, cross-referencing and proofreading entries when putting catalogues on-line." The Globe and Mail (Toronto) 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 6:51 am
HarperCollins Expands Web Presence The publisher will give readers internet access to "the first three pages of most chapters in 135 titles by 10 authors, including well-known writers like Michael Crichton, Lisa Scottoline, Bernard Cornwell and Paulo Coelho." The New York Times 08/03/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 11:48 pm
For The Kids - Seattle Children's Bookstore Hangs On "The travails of independents in today's market are well-known, but for specialty children's bookstores, survival is even more precarious. Kids' books are priced lower than adult fare, yet the overhead is the same. And the young clientele has a pesky way of growing up and moving on." But Seattle's oldest children's book store is doing fine... Seattle Post-Intelligencer 08/02/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 10:49 pm
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Why An Unregulated Internet Is Better For Consumers "It’s tempting to believe that government regulation of the Internet would be more consumer-friendly; history and economics suggest otherwise. The reason is simple: a regulated industry has a far larger stake in regulatory decisions than any other group in society. As a result, regulated companies spend lavishly on lobbyists and lawyers and, over time, turn the regulatory process to their advantage." The New York Times 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:54 am
YouTube Seeks To Translate Popularity Into Profit "YouTube, the popular but unprofitable video-sharing site, is going after the big ad dollars. The Internet phenom has inked deals with major advertisers from Hollywood studios to sneaker makers and is busy lining up more in a bid to become a viable business." New York Post 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:50 am
Spike Lee Documents Katrina Stories After Hurricane Katrina hit, Spike Lee took his cameras to New Orleans to make a four-hour HBO documentary about the disaster. "Like him or not, Mr. Lee, 49, is an artist many people feel they know. People, black and white, approached him and the 'Levees' crew here, he said, imploring: 'Tell the story. Tell the story.' 'It becomes like an obligation we have, he said. Mr. Lee’s reputation helped get his camera crew into the city’s water-soaked homes, he said. It allowed him to stretch out a complex story, with themes of race, class and politics that, he said, have too often been sensationalized or rendered in sound bites." The New York Times 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 3:59 am
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San Francisco Ballet's Contemporary Act San Francisco Ballet has built relationships with some of America's leading choreographers, and this in turn has given the company a distinctive look. "With his long-standing commitment to Forsythe, Morris and Wheeldon, he has steeped his dancers in the working process of masters. They have responded with what amounts to a house aesthetic." San Francisco Chronicle 08/02/06
Posted: 08/02/2006 11:04 pm
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