Habits are extremely difficult to break. Why? Turns out there’s a physiological reason. “Important neural activity patterns in a specific region of the brain change when habits are formed, change again when habits are broken, but quickly re-emerge when something rekindles an extinguished habit — routines that originally took great effort to learn.”
Tag: 10.19.05
Columbia U And The Demise Of NAJP
Columbia University says it wants to be a player in the arts. The university’s president said he wanted the Journalism School to study the field of journalism as well as teach it. So why did the J-school ax the National Arts Journalism Program which served both purposes?
Solzhenitsyn Cottage Burns
A cottage where Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote some of his most famous works has burned down. “An official at the local fire department said the dacha burned down on Wednesday night. The newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets said it was being rented by a Georgian man and that faulty electrics had sparked the blaze. It was unclear how much of the writer’s old papers remained there, although the newspaper said there were rare photographs and writings about the writer’s life.”
Steve Kurtz: A Life Under Investigation
A year and a half after his wife died, artist Steve Kurtz is still fighting American prosecutors who accused him of bio-terrorism. He says his persecutors “have to have something to show for the millions of dollars they’ve spent on this. They’re trying to create a kind of hysteria, a horrible kind of vigilantism. It’s right out of Hitler’s handbook. The final goal is to silence and intimidate voices of dissent.”
New Wind At The Baltic
The new director of the Baltic Gallery, the UK’s largest contemporary art space after Tate Modern, is making some changes. “He hopes to instil common sense into the gallery, which until this year lacked simple visitor facilities such as a cloakroom and information desk. ‘We are taking a new approach in our philosophy towards our visitors. The visitors are the reason we are here – with the artist. I was telling our managers earlier today that as a mindset we have to hug each visitor’.”
Christie’s In China
Christie’s has signed a deal to become the first Western auction house in China. “Under the agreement, settled this week, Christie’s will license its name, provide experts and oversee the entire auction process, from the acquisition of works for sale to the printing and design of the catalog. Its first sale – 45 examples of modern and contemporary Chinese art – is scheduled for Nov. 3 at the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel in Beijing and is expected to bring $10 million.”
Average Spending On Music? £21,000
A new study estimates that the average person spends about £21,000 on music during their lifetime. “The figure includes the amount spent on equipment and concert-going as well as music on CDs and records. Music enthusiasts are likely to spend more than double that, parting with just over £44,000 in a lifetime.”
Republicans Take Aim At PBS & NEA (Again)
President Bush has made it very clear that he will veto any tax hike proposed by Congress, even with the cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast spiralling into the hundreds of billions. That means that all that money will have to be shaved out of other government programs or added to the already bloated deficit. Conservatives, of course, are not traditionally fans of excessive deficit spending, so a group of Republican legislators has been meeting to hash out the necessary cuts to divert money to the rebuilding effort. And as you might expect, first on the GOP’s list of programs to be eliminated are government support for public television and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Welcome To Nollywood!
Hollywood? Old news. Bollywood? Been there, done that. The newest frontier in film is emerging in the unlikeliest of places: Nigeria. “Buoyed by a voracious appetite among Nigerians (population: 128 million) for their own stories, and bolstered by the proliferation of video equipment — allowing for less expensive production costs — this developing nation’s burgeoning film business now produces a whopping 1,000 features a year.” The Nigerian scene (known, of course, as Nollywood) has risen astonishingly quickly from its beginnings in the 1970s, and it is beginning to produce huge stars whose profiles will soon be noticeable even from the cloistered U.S.
Penguin Snaps Up Chinese Novel For $100,000
China’s best-selling novel, The Wolf Totem, is coming to the U.S. Penguin Books has purchased the American rights to Jiang Rong’s 2004 work for $100,000, a record sum for a Chinese book. “The meticulously researched, semiautobiographical tale is built around the lives of wolves told through the eyes of a student sent to work on the Inner Mongolian grasslands. It is set during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong emptied the cities of educated youths to have them work alongside peasants and herders. Critics and readers have praised its exploration of the relationship between man and animal, accurate detail and spiritualistic questioning.”