Category: today’s top story

Why is it that Americans embrace the idea of elitism in sports and movies, but disdain it in politics and the arts? “We want our rock ‘n’ roll heroes to be guitar gods, we want our movie stars to be brilliant actors, we want our surgeon to be tops in his or her field — but we want our president to possess average intelligence?”

“A new X-ray technique has revealed a previously unknown portrait of a woman by Vincent van Gogh, which was painted over by the artist… The powerful X-ray bombardment caused atoms in the picture’s layers of paint to emit “fluorescent” X-rays of their own, which indicated the chemicals they originated from. That enabled a colour map of the hidden picture to be produced.”

“Although New Orleans’ biggest theaters have been shuttered since Katrina, the theater community is thriving. New companies have sprouted up. Actors and directors are moving into the city. And — especially for smaller companies — attendance is on the rise.”

“Author Sir Salman Rushdie has emerged as the frontrunner to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, adding to his three existing Booker awards… He faces competition from 13 other writers including Aravind Adiga, Joseph O’Neill, Linda Grant and Tom Rob Smith.”

“The £6,000 sculpture was part of an exhibit in a display at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition curated by Tracey Emin, who described the work as a star of her show… A visitor fell into the cordoned off piece on Saturday, sending it to the floor and smashing into hundreds of pieces.”

The debate over online reading, and whether it actually represents a step away from overall literacy, may be missing the point, says Paul Wallis. “You may have to become an expert at filtering out garbage. Intellectual development, however, is far more complex, particularly for younger people whose brains are still wiring themselves up.”

“The arts are both elitist and non-elitist, and so is popular culture. The arts are seen as for the select few — too expensive, too inaccessible, too chichi for the general public devoted to movies, pop music, television and sports. In fact, the reverse can just as easily be true.”

“With contract talks with musicians going nowhere, Columbus Symphony management said yesterday that the 2008-09 classical concert season won’t begin as usual in October, and that at least 10 performances through early December have been canceled.”

“The extraordinary scale of the metropolis – a 1,001-metre skyscraper, wildlife reserves, and homes for 700,000 people – is matched by a plan to also build an international rail network linking it to Damascus, Baghdad, Iran and China. Inspired by Dubai’s spectacular growth, the Madinat al-Hareer, or Silk City, is intended to create a trading future and a diversified economy in a city which would become a crossroads of the Arab world.”

“The show isn’t, as its title might suggest, just another wacky Fringe wheeze devised by attention-seeking theatre-makers. It’s orchestrated by Pot Noodle themselves, in cahoots with the ad agency Mother – who together have decided that putting on a show in Edinburgh is the next step in selling dehydrated snacks to the masses.”