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Friday, August 18




Ideas

How Our Brains Got On The Fast Track "In just a few million years, one area of the human genome seems to have evolved about 70 times faster than the rest of our genetic code. It appears to have a role in a rapid tripling of the size of the brain's crucial cerebral cortex, according to an article published Thursday in the journal Nature." Yahoo! (AP) 08/17/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 11:08 pm

College - It's Not What You Learn But How You Learn To Think Ever notice how many college graduates aren't doing the jobs they were trained for in college? Was their education a failure? Not necessarily. College taught them how to think. So is there a danger in demanding that colleges measure the specific results of the courses they are teaching? InsideHigherEd 08/17/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 8:12 pm

Jolt! The Rise Of Unconnected Culture Trivia books have become a publishing phenomenon. "Each tidbit or bound collection of factoids may be so insignificant that calling it trivia is almost an honorific. However, this growing genre signals a profound trend in America: The rise of Jolt Culture, which combines our quest for information -- this is, after all, the Age of Information -- with our lust for immediate gratification." The News & Observer (Raleigh) 08/13/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 7:31 pm

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Visual Arts

That'll Buy A Lot Of Shrubs You know your museum project is going well when you haul in a $5 million gift just for landscaping. "A trustee of the Denver Art Museum [has] donated $5 million for landscaping around the institution's soon-to-open $90.5 million addition... The new civic and cultural space, which, like the addition, was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, links the Golden Triangle and Civic Center and provides a gathering point for visitors to the cultural complex." Denver Post 08/18/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 6:11 am

Beirut Peace Garden Delayed A garden being constructed in Beirut and meant to symbolize peace has been put on hold because of the war. "The 3.5-acre pit zigzags between three churches and three mosques in central Beirut. It had been in the process of becoming Hadiqat As-Samah: the Garden of Forgiveness. It might now be seen as the landscape of a shattered ideal." Bloomberg.com 08/17/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 11:36 pm

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Music

Summertime, And The Music Is Anything But Easy People who don't actually play a musical instrument love to refer to highly skilled players as having a "gift from God," or just a boundless supply of natural talent. The reality is usually far more pedestrian: more important than natural aptitude is a willingness to work long, hard hours in the practice room. For decades now, the art of intensive practicing has had a summer home in upstate New York, and it's called Meadowmount. "Part summer camp, part music school, and part boot camp, the Meadowmount School of Music is strict, austere, and responsible for creating some of the top string players in the world." Business Week 08/21/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 7:02 am

The Revolution Does Not Come With Liner Notes Mark Swed says that the downloading revolution is nothing to be afraid of, and that all we stand to lose is our space-hogging collection of plastic jewel cases. Still, "how the iPod and the Internet will affect music cannot be predicted. We have yet to make the required paradigm shifts in our thinking. At this early stage, you could be forgiven for believing that nothing more than another step on the evolutionary ladder of music reproduction has been taken, and only for the sake of convenience." Los Angeles Times 08/18/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 5:39 am

Is Bayreuth In A Rut? The Bayreuth Festival is still the toughest ticket in Europe during the summer, and the Wagner family have kept the music coming even through their endless (and often embarrassingly public) spats. But critics have not been terribly kind to Bayreuth's new Ring cycle, and some are suggesting that the "stultifying weight of this dreary new [production]" is merely a symptom of a larger malaise afflicting the festival. Bloomberg News 08/18/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 5:34 am

Handel, Haydn, and Hard Work Boston's Handel & Haydn Society was once little more than a struggling concert organization in a city jam packed with music and musicians. Then Mary Deissler came along. 24 years later, H&H, as it's known, has become one of Boston's premier musical organizations, and supports itself with help from a $3 million endowment. Deissler is stepping down from her position as H&H's CEO this week, and she leaves an important legacy for her successor to follow. Boston Globe 08/18/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 5:20 am

How To Play A Symphony With Your Butt "The public has been invited to take part in what has been described as the first virtual orchestra. Plastic cubes, attached to a light and a speaker, have been laid out on a full size orchestra stage outside the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank. Sitting on a cube activates a musical note and as more people sit down, more of the score is revealed." BBC 08/18/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 5:18 am

Met Commissions Marsalis For Opera The Metropolitan Opera has commissioned an opera from Wynton Marsalis. "The opera, which will feature a libretto by American playwright John Guare, has no working title, nor an estimated time of arrival." Opera News 08/17/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 11:19 pm

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People

Report: Ebert A Long Way From Full Recovery "Film critic Roger Ebert suffered another health setback earlier this month, but friends and co-workers of the 'Ebert & Roeper' co-host remain guardedly optimistic about his condition. Ebert, who has been hospitalized in Chicago since June, underwent his third surgery in as many months on Aug. 6... Media insiders are buzzing that doctors removed at least part of his jaw and that the critic's recovery could take many months." Los Angeles Times 08/18/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 6:18 am

The 14-Year-Old Composer: Brilliant, Yes, But How's The Music? Jay Greenberg has been seemingly everywhere this week, his shy-looking face standing in stark contrast to his accomplishments: still just 14, Greenberg has written five symphonies and countless other works, and his latest have just been recorded by the London Symphony and the Juilliard Quartet. But does the label of "genius" really apply here? Tim Smith says it does: "The orchestration is remarkably assured, showing a keen ear for how sections of instruments can complement and play off each other. There's a clear sense of direction and purpose to the work, a build-up of drama and tension that ends with a blaze of high-spirited energy." Baltimore Sun 08/16/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 5:26 am

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Theatre

Ebb's Final Curtain Call A Smash With Critics Curtains, the final show collaborated on by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb before Ebb's death in 2004, is currently running in Los Angeles, is already ticketed for a Broadway debut next year, and "judging by the reaction of audiences and critics, Ebb's faith in his final show was not misplaced." New York Post 08/18/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 6:26 am

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Publishing

ChiTrib Announces Literary Prizes "Joyce Carol Oates, a writer known for exploring the margins of society in richly imagined novels shot through with sometimes lurid violence, is the winner of this year's Chicago Tribune Literary Prize," a lifetime achievement award. Other Tribune prizewinners this year include Louise Erdich (for her novel, The Painted Drum); Taylor Branch for At Canaan's Edge, his examination of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement; and children's book author Kate DiCamillo. Chicago Tribune 08/18/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 6:06 am

Stop! Why Wikis Work "Wikipedia and its contributors are excruciatingly self-aware. Wikipedia has developed many charming quirks and in-jokes in its five short years of existence, nearly all self-reflexive, including a habit of obsessively linking to its own articles. But, far more interesting, it has also collectively developed a robust sensibility about what is permissible in its own pages. Nearly every Wikipedia user has occasionally come across a little tag at the top of an article: 'Stop!' it says, 'The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.' This little tag, I'm convinced, is the secret to Wikipedia's success." Reason 08/15/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 8:07 pm

Grass Autobiography Flying Off Shelves Orders for Gunther Grass' new autobiography have almost doubled since the Nobel author revealed he had been a member of the Hitler SS. Yahoo! (AFP) 08/17/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 7:40 pm

Barnes & Noble: Sales Down, Profits Up Barnes & Noble reports profits were up 23 percent in the second quarter. The increase wasn't because of bigger sales, though. "Sales decreased 1 percent to $1.16 billion from $1.17 billion last year, largely due to year-ago sales of best-seller Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Yahoo! (AP) 08/17/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 7:36 pm

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Media

Wait. Hollywood Stars Pay Taxes? Those increasingly valuable gift bags that are handed to Hollywood celebrities attending awards shows are certainly extravagant, but the IRS would like to remind the recipients that they are most decidedly not tax-free. Like any other gift, their value is taxable, and thanks to the horde of entertainment reporters in attendance at any awards show, the IRS knows exactly what the gift bags are worth, and who got one. "The value of the gifts must be reported on a celebrity's tax return. They count as income because the IRS does not believe the gifts are given 'solely out of affection, respect or similar impulses.'" The Globe & Mail (AP) 08/18/06
Posted: 08/18/2006 6:15 am

Study: TV As Anaesthetic A new study says that TV has a numbing effect on children. "Researchers confirmed the distracting power of television - something parents have long known - when they found that children watching cartoons suffered less pain from a hypodermic needle than kids not watching TV. Especially disturbing to the author of the scientific study was that the cartoons were even more comforting than Mom." My Way News (AP) 08/17/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 6:59 pm

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Dance

The New Brazilian Dance "In Brazil dance has emerged from religion and folklore within the heart of the community or from outsiders: teachers or visitors drawn there by the opulence of the Carnival or other cultural events. They stayed and influenced the culture with their ideas and teaching methods. In staying and sharing, they, too, were influenced by the culture." Dance Magazine 08/06
Posted: 08/17/2006 11:25 pm

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