A woman’s dog poops in the subway and she refuses to clean it up. A fellow passenger takes her picture and posts it on the internet. Soon an internet mob forms, ferreting out details of her life, including where she lives and what she does… “Increasingly, the Internet also is a venue of so-called citizen journalism, in which swarms of surfers mobilize to gather information on what the traditional media isn’t covering, or is covering in a way that dissatisfies some people. But what happens when the two converge, and the Internet populace is stirred to action against individuals?”
Tag: 07.07.05
BBC Ratings Share Drops
The BBC has spent £100 million more on programs in the past year, but saw its debt reduced. “The reports suggest the BBC’s four main TV channels saw their combined viewing share drop from 36.5% to 34.6% in the last 12 months. The BBC said it would not comment until the report is published on 12 July.”
London Shows Canceled
Concerts and all of London’s West End theatres have been closed after the Thursday bombing as police advised residents not to travel to central London. “The theatre closures are thought to be unprecedented since World War II, apart from the days of state funerals.
Charlotte Church Gone Wrong
Everyone loves the teenage singer. But her latest album of rock songs just plain doesn’t work. “She is obviously prodigiously gifted, but the rigours of classical training have left her unsure how to tackle a rock song. Eventually, she settles for a jarring mid-Atlantic accent. She keeps threatening to walk out of something she refers to as the “dowh”. The reason she is going to walk out the dowh is because she has been hurt befowh. She thus can’t take any mowh, a sentiment with which the listener may quickly concur: the whole thing is becoming a bit of a bowh.”
Security Concerns Run Amok
It’s tough to get past the irony of calling a monolithic, fear-inspired fortress the Freedom Tower, and John King says that the revamped design is not only a disappointment, but a betrayal of the resilient spirit shown by New Yorkers in the days and weeks after the 9/11 attacks. “In the 45 months since terrorists slaughtered 2,749 people and toppled the tallest towers in New York, the 16-acre site has mirrored too closely the national response to the changed world scene. The first year brought a resilient courage that suggested New York and the United States might rise from the tragedy in stirring new ways. But since then, the original impulses that united people across cultural and political spectrums have been muddied beyond recognition.”
Price Hike In Philly
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is hiking its admission prices as much as 29%, beginning in August. The general admission fee will rise to $12, which puts the museum in the same range as the Art Institute of Chicago, but still well below higher fees at major museums in New York and Boston.
Does Crime Really Give You Cred? Probably Not.
Hip-hop culture has often been said to be inextricably bound together with thuggery and crime, and the genre’s biggest stars are also frequently the ones with the longest rap sheets. It’s all about the mysterious notion of “credibility,” a measure of personal and professional success considered vitally important to American rappers. But the conventional wisdom probably misses the point about hip-hop’s crime connection, and so, too, do many rappers: “if your rhymes don’t ring true to begin with, an arrest will probably just make matters worse… For a rapper, having your name printed in the police blotter is likely merely to reinforce whatever perceptions fans already have.”
Proposed “Freedom Museum” Changes Its Tune
Plans for a “freedom museum” on the site of the World Trade Center have changed. The museum will now focus more on victims of the 9/11 attack. “Some victims’ relatives have protested for weeks that the International Freedom Center museum would be anti-American and disrespectful to the dead. The museum, criticized for its intent to focus on global freedom movements, now will place the victims of Sept. 11 alongside the ‘freedom heroes of history’ in its main concourse.”
Music On The Brain
A study of violinists has shown that mastery of a musical instrument actually causes the human brain to rewire itself to better deal with the demands of the activity. It doesn’t mean that musicians are somehow smarter than the average adult, merely that their brains have been wired for greater manual dexterity than non-musicians. The findings can likely be extended to include other specialized areas of human endeavor, such as athletics.
Plays Rarely Require 63 Acres Of Stage Space, Anyway
Shakespeare & Company, a summer troupe based in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, is selling half of a 63-acre parcel of land it bought in 2000 in an effort to wipe out a $2.2 million debt and give the company a modicum of financial stability. “The sale also means that company founder and artistic director Tina Packer’s stalled campaign to re-create on the site London’s Rose Theatre, where several of Shakespeare’s plays were mounted, can move forward again.”