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12-12-07
Arab Initiative To Translate Western Classics
According to a 2003 United Nations report into human development in the Arab world, more books are translated into Spanish each year - 10,000 - than have been translated into Arabic in the previous 10 centuries. Now this situation is being rectified by the sheikhdom of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven Muslim United Arab Emirates, which last month officially revealed its plans to translate 100 epochal foreign-language texts into Arabic by the end of next year. Source: The Globe & Mail.
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12-12-07
Do You Need To See Music To Like It?
For better or worse, we are living in a visually-dominant culture and for music to have meaning within our culture, it needs to be seen to some degree. And in that regard, music is not unique. Source: NewMusicBox.
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12-12-07
Merriam Webster's Word Of The Year
"W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness, topped all other terms in the Springfield dictionary publisher's online poll for the word that best sums up 2007. Source: Boston Herald.
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12-11-07
The Art Of Life
Bioartists create by engineering living tissue and even living beings, sometimes with controversial outcomes. At the forefront of this movement is SymbioticA, a bioart laboratory funded by the University of Western Australia. Source: NPR.
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12-11-07
Japanese Magazines Losing The Power Of Shock
Japan's weeklies and biweeklies, Tokyo Confidential's prime sources, are in deep trouble, victims of changing times, an aging population, and maybe above all a growing immunity among readers to the weeklies' stock in trade -- outrage. Nothing shocks us any more... Source: Japan Times.
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12-11-07
Kid Repellant Proves Popular In UK
The device emits a frequencies that repels young people. Almost 3300 security systems were bought within 18 months of their launch. Around 70% of those were installed in the UK, mostly in England and spread around almost every region in the country. Source: Glasgow Herald .
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12-10-07
TV Is About To Get A Lot Crappier
Think the writers' strike hasn't really damaged your TV viewing all that much? Just wait - January is going to be brutal. "Almost none of the most popular shows on prime time television will be offering new episodes to viewers after the first of the year," and a flood of quick-and-dirty reality shows will likely test viewer patience. Source: The New York Times.
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12-10-07
Every Librarian's Nightmare About The Internet
While Yahoo! Answers is a valuable window into how people look for information online, it looks like a complete disaster as a traditional reference tool. It encourages bad research habits, rewards people who post things that aren't true, and frequently labels factual errors as correct information. It's every middle-school teacher's worst nightmare about the Web. Source: Slate.
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12-10-07
Checkers In A Stalemate
A computer scientist announced that after running a computer program almost nonstop for 18 years, he had calculated the result of every possible endgame that could be played, all 39 trillion of them. He also revealed a sober fact about the game: checkers is a draw. As with tic-tac-toe, if both players never make a mistake, every match will end in a deadlock. Source: New York Times Magazine.
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12-06-07
The Disease Of Perfectionism
New research focuses on a familiar type, perfectionists, who panic or blow a fuse when things don't turn out just so. The findings not only confirm that such purists are often at risk for mental distress but also suggest that perfectionism is a valuable lens through which to understand a variety of seemingly unrelated mental difficulties, from depression to compulsive behavior to addiction. Source: The New York Times.
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12-06-07
Turkish Publisher On Trial For "Turkish Insult"
Ragip Zarakolu is facing up to three years in prison for publishing a book - promoting reconciliation between Turks and Armenians - by George Jerjian, a writer living in London. Source: The Guardian.
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12-06-07
Economists: Violins Are A Good Investment
Investment in violins gives a long-term return after inflation of around 3-4 percent. Its researchers also found that while the overall return for violins is often lower than for other assets, it tends to improve when stocks and bonds are weak, and vice versa. Source: Washington Post.
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12-05-07
Report: Computers As Bad For Global Warming As SUVs
The report states that with more than 1 billion computers on the planet, the global IT sector is responsible for about 2% of human carbon dioxide emissions each year - a similar figure to the global airline industry. Source: New Scientist.
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12-05-07
Cleveland Tax Turns Cigarettes Into Arts Dollars
A cigarette tax approved by Cleveland-area voters to support the arts is about to result in a first payout of $15m for 68 cultural organizations. "Dollar amounts are based on budget size, with proportionately more money going to smaller organizations." Source: The Plain Dealer.
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12-05-07
Ok, It's Illegal Filesharing (But Do The Recording Companies Care?)
The low-profile success of MP3 blogs, and the apparent unconcern of the music industry, is in stark contrast to the aggressive anti-piracy actions taken by the Recording Industry Association of America in other spheres. Source: Wired.
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12-04-07
Chimps Beat College Students In Tests
Three five-year-old chimpanzees have soundly defeated nine university students while playing a computer game that tests numerical memory skills, according to a paper published today in Current Biology. Source: Discovery.
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12-04-07
Iranian Lit Cracks America
While the politics of their native country fills the news, Iranian American writers have been finding enthusiastic audiences since 2003, when Azar Nafisi's wildly successful memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and Marjane Satrapi's innovative graphic novel "Persepolis" hit bookstores. Source: Los Angeles Times.
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12-04-07
Boston Is Losing Its Gay Bars. What Does It Mean For The City?
The disappearance of places like Buddies and Chaps may sound like a problem limited to gay men, but it is part of a much larger trend reshaping American cities. As gay bars vanish, so go bookstores, diners, and all kinds of spaces that once allowed "blissful public congregation," as sociologist Ray Oldenburg described their function in his 1989 book "The Great Good Place." Source: Boston Globe.
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12-03-07
Iran To Crack Down On Rap Music
There is nothing wrong with this type of music in itself. But due to the use of obscene words by its singers this music has been categorized as illegal. Source: The Daily Star.
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12-03-07
Graffiti Of The Rich
What happened to those wealthy philanthropists who used to support arts organizations and other not-for-profit and charitable institutions without requiring that their names be slapped somewhere -- anywhere, it sometimes seems -- on a building. Source: The new York Times.
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12-03-07
Try No Transistor Before Its Time
Ageing may be as important to electronics as it is to good wine. A plastic transistor doubles its performance if simply left to sit at room temperature for a week. Source: New Scientist.
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11-30-07
Bomb Scare At ROM Turns Out To Be Art Project
A student at the Ontario College of Art and Design turned himself into police with his lawyer Thursday night after a multimedia bomb hoax at the Royal Ontario Museum on Wednesday night... He has been suspended from OCAD for non-academic mischief. Two faculty members have also been suspended with pay. Source: The Globe & Mail.
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11-30-07
Power Of The Word
We listen to songs on the radio, but without songwriters they'd be pretty boring; we watch news on the television, but without writers it grinds to a standstill. No matter how many ways the world of the image tries to supersede the word, words and language continually reassert their primacy. Source: The Guardian.
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11-30-07
Of YouTube And Cultural Icons
YouTube won't really change the world until it produces an icon. Unless the site spawns a globally recognized character that endures for decades, it will forever remain a first cousin of America's Funniest Home Videos. Source: London Free Press.
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11-29-07
Iraq Gets Back Some Of Its Looted Art
Piece by priceless piece, artifact by ancient artifact, Iraq is slowly recovering the Mesopotamian treasures that were looted by bandits, militiamen and soldiers after Saddam Hussein was toppled. Source: The Daily Star.
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11-29-07
Jean-Luc Godard: I Stole Money To Finance Films
The acclaimed director says it was the only way he could make his work. I even stole money from my family to give to (fellow French director Jacques) Rivette for his first film. I pinched money to be able to see films and to make films. Source: The Australian.
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11-29-07
Are Spammers Giving Up?
Google won't disclose numbers, but the company says that spam attempts, as a percentage of e-mail that's transmitted through its Gmail system, have waned over the last year. That could indicate that some spammers have gotten discouraged and have stopped trying to get through Google's spam filters. Source: Wired.
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11-28-07
New Urbanists Win Architecture Prize
Miami architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the controversial husband and wife team who lead the traditional town planning movement called the New Urbanism, were named the winners Tuesday of next year's Richard H. Driehaus Prize, which goes annually to a tradition-minded designer and now comes with $200,000 in prize money. Source: Chicago Tribune.
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11-28-07
Norman Mailer Wins Bad Sex Writing Award
The award most dreaded by authors was established in 1993 by the late Auberon Waugh when he was editor-in-chief of The Literary Review. Previous winners have included U.S. writer Tom Wolfe and British author Sebastian Faulks. Source: The Globe & Mail.
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11-28-07
An Aging Problem: Old Have Difficulty Ignoring Information
A chart mapping the performance of older people at memory tests shows they didn't do as well. 'The old have a problem with this. They don't modulate as much ... they have a harder time ignoring information. Source: Wired.
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11-27-07
Guerilla Restorers Break In, Fix Historic French Clock
For a year, under the nose of the Panthéon's unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid 'illegal restorers' set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome. They pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves. Source: The Guardian.
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11-27-07
Western Rockers Turn To China
Once largely closed to foreign music, the country has gradually loosened restrictions and -- at a time when record sales in the West continue to plunge, and new sources of revenue have become essential -- emerged as a crucial territory on pop's global map. Source: International Herald Tribune.
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11-27-07
Neurological Overstep - What The Artists Didn't Do
Neurological breakthroughs attributed to turn-of-the-century artists range from the maddeningly vague to the absurdly specific. We now know that Proust was right about memory, Cezanne was uncannily accurate about the visual cortex, Stein anticipated Chomsky, and Woolf pierced the mystery of consciousness; modern neuroscience has confirmed these artistic intuitions. Source: Slate.
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11-26-07
Arts & Dollars
Some artists grumble at 'support the arts for the sake of commerce' strategy, saying that by trumpeting the economic-engine argument, the arts-for-aesthetics-sake notion gets rudely pushed aside. But those who make the economic argument are convinced that they've hit on the best way to get commerce-obsessed Americans to pay attention. Source: Louisville Courier-Journal.
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11-26-07
What Chance Do Small Indie Films Have?
Good reviews can help smaller films, especially foreign ones - but compared to the millions of pounds Hollywood blockbusters scoop up at box-offices, we're talking peanuts. What earthly chance do smaller films have in this market? Source: The Telegraph.
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11-26-07
France Passes Tough New Anti-Piracy Law
French web users caught pirating movies or music could soon be thrown offline. Those illegally sharing files will face the loss of their net access thanks to a newly-created anti-piracy body granted wide-ranging powers. Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune.
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11-23-07
Dennis Wilson solo album rivals Brian's legendary 'Smile'
The legendary mythos surrounding Brian Wilson's 'Smile' has been challenged in a fascinating article by veteran music journalist Richard Williams. Writing in The Guardian, the writer declares "Pacific Ocean Blue, the epically adventurous 1977 solo album (never reissued on CD), was a multifaceted masterpiece to rival Brian's celebrated Smile." The article also reports that Dennis' "talent began to emerge once Brian's genius faltered and the hits began to dry up." Flasher.com's premiere of the excellent Billy Hinsche documentary on Dennis is also reported in the article. Flasher spoke today with Jack Rieley, who collaborated in some song writing with Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, and commented, "Richard Williams remains the best writer on music anywhere. He has written what many of us have long believed". Read the full Guardian piece here.
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11-23-07
Japanese Art Auctions Get Surge Of Interest
As in the stock market, winners seek out the unknown and buy low. Smart Asian collectors who are getting into the Japanese market like it now because, compared with China, it is undervalued. Source: Japan Times.
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11-23-07
Modernism - A Good Long Run
Modernism was propelled by two main impulses: the urge to overturn established hierarchies and break rules and a compulsion to explore the artist's interior world. These primal drives produced 'a single aesthetic mind-set,' a 'climate of thought, feeling and opinion,' unifying what might appear to be a scattering of disconnected artistic revolts. Source: The New York Times.
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11-22-07
The Outsider
Orhan Pamuk might be Turkey's most celebrated writer, with a Nobel Prize and multiple bestselling books to his credit. But despite his fame, he's never felt welcomed on the international literary scene, just as Turkey feels shoved to the outside of Europe, and alienation is a theme to which he has returned often. Source: The Globe & Mail.
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