“The turning point is hard to pinpoint. But after 30 years of growing popularity, rap music is now struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture’s negative effect on society.”
Tag: 03.05.07
Publishing, For What It’s Worth
“We, the people, have been empowered. We can send what are basically free telegrams to people around the globe, create and distribute photographs and video at little or no cost, broadcast our ruminations through blogs, and browse many of the world’s greatest art museums and library collections — all from our own desks. Public libraries and Internet cafes around the world assure free or cheap access to those still without home computers. If that isn’t progress, if this isn’t empowerment, what is? Yet there is a catch.”
Swamped By Authority?
“What qualifies as intellectual authority today is changing fundamentally. People are much less prepared to defer to the acknowledged experts in various fields. At the same time, however, we are being swamped with data and information — a glut that cries out for analysis and summary. So there is a dilemma: Whom do we turn to?”
Foreign Storm – But Is Hollywood Ready?
This would seem to be the best of times for foreign movie makers in Hollywood. But “while Hollywood history is full of outsider success stories, from Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder to Ang Lee and Alfonso Cuarón, it is also littered with failures and flame-outs, though the disasters rarely get as much attention as the triumphs. In fact, a number of gifted foreign directors have struggled trying to make the transition to Hollywood.”
UK’s Blair Hails British Arts Renaissance
Tony Blair argues that the country has been reborn in part because of high arts funding. Blair has “argued that the mixed economy of improved public spending and rising private philanthropy was leading to institutions such as Tate Britain becoming the biggest arts attractions in the world, outstripping even the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His advisers are also arguing that the arts must find ways to bring a politically alienated younger generation into public life.”
Protections For UK Heritage Sites
Britain’s 24 World Heritage sites are to get new protections. “The new laws will create ‘buffer zones’ around the country’s most treasured sites to prevent their being degraded by nearby high-rise buildings. More stringent powers will be given to public inquiries to block insensitive development, and the move will make it easier for controversial building schemes to be ‘called in’ by ministers to protect world heritage sites.”
Danger, Warning: Iran Heritage Imperiled
“Four years ago Dr John Curtis was warning that war in Iraq would be a disaster for some of the oldest and most important sites in the world. He has since seen his worst fears confirmed: the site of ancient Babylon became an American military base; thousands of objects are missing from the national museum at Baghdad; and looted artefacts have been illicitly excavated and smuggled out of the country. Now Dr Curtis dreads seeing history repeated.”
The Movies’ New Narratives (Pay Attention)
No doubt about it, movies are getting more complicated. “In the past, mainstream audiences notoriously resisted being jolted. Are moviegoers bringing some new sensibility to these riddling movies? What are we getting out of the overloading, the dislocations and disruptions?”
Scientists Try To See Inside The Brain’s Decisions
“In the past, scientists had been able to detect decisions about making physical movements before those movements appeared. But researchers at Berlin’s Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience claim they have now, for the first time, identified people’s decisions about how they would later do a high-level mental activity – in this case, adding versus subtracting.”
Movie Theatres Go To On-Demand?
Plans are underway to allow movie theatres in America to download their movies from the internet. “The process, still in the early stages of development, would use satellite and broadband delivery systems to beam digital films directly to theaters, rather than have them copied onto hard drives and delivered by hand, as for the most part they are now.”