The uproar over James Frey’s misrepresentations in his best-selling memoir is not “just a case about truth-in-labeling or the misrepresentations of one author: after all, there have been plenty of charges about phony or inflated memoirs in the past, most notably about Lillian Hellman’s 1973 book ‘Pentimento.’ It is a case about how much value contemporary culture places on the very idea of truth.”
Blog
Duffy Wins Eliot Poetry Prize
Carol Ann Duffy wins this year’s TS Eliot Prize for poetry. The Poetry Book Society, which awards the prize, said: “This year’s TS Eliot prize highlights a (some would say) rare moment of agreement between the critics and the booksellers as to what constitutes great poetry.”
The Computer That Can Predict Hits
“The computer can go out on the internet and read a bunch of weblogs and record reviews and get a grasp on trends and buzz and hype and that sort of thing. At the same time, it also can listen to the music – do some signal processing to figure out stuff like dominant key and pitch and rhythm and structure. For record company executives, this raises the tantalising possibility of knowing in advance whether their latest pop act will hit the charts at a strong position. Hit prediction is possible.
Should Ottawa Orchestra Shed Itself Of Unprofessional Zukerman?
Is it time for Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra to part ways with music director Pinchas Zukerman, who ditched the orchestra in mid-season? “At his best, Zukerman’s a wonderful violinist. We’ve occasionally heard him at his best, too, but, just as often, he just seems to phone in his performance, apparently bored by the music or the audience.”
Austrian Court Awards Klimt Paintings To Californian Woman
An Austrian court has ruled that Austria should give back five paintings by Gustav Klimt to a California woman says were stolen from her Jewish family by the Nazis. “The Austrian arbitration court determined the country is legally obligated to give the paintings to Maria Altmann, the heir of the family who owned them before the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, the Austria Press Agency reported.”
Rate This! Director Takes On The Ratings Committee
An independent filmmaker gets fed up with the way the secretive movie industry’s ratings board does its work. So he tracks down its members and makes a film about its deliberations…
Rebuilding New Orleans – Start With Culture
A New Orleans commission says that rebuilding the city ought to start with rebuilding its culture. “After the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina in late August, “no one doubts that the first order of business for New Orleans is to rebuild the levees and address the enormous need for shelter,” the report says. “But it is New Orleans culture, our musical, visual, culinary, architectural, literary and graphic arts, that has always drawn people to visit, to live in, and to invest in our city. And it is our culture that will bring back the city that we love.”
Science – The Trust Problem
“We trust it. Should we? John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist, recently concluded that most articles published by biomedical journals are flat-out wrong. The sources of error, he found, are numerous: the small size of many studies, for instance, often leads to mistakes, as does the fact that emerging disciplines, which lately abound, may employ standards and methods that are still evolving. Finally, there is bias, which Ioannidis says he believes to be ubiquitous.”
More Students Opt For Online Courses Over In-Person
“At some schools, online courses — originally intended for nontraditional students living far from campus — have proved surprisingly popular with on-campus students. At least 2.3 million people took some kind of online course in 2004, and two-thirds of colleges offering ‘face-to-face’ courses also offer online ones. But what were once two distinct types of classes are looking more and more alike — and often dipping into the same pool of students.”
If You Tell A Lie And Nobody Cares, Is It Still Wrong?
Literary controversies rarely generate much national debate these days, but the dust-up over James Frey’s alleged fibbing in his memoir exploded into something larger this week when Oprah Winfrey, who had selected Frey’s tome for her famed on-air book club, weighed in with the opinion that Frey’s manufactured truth just isn’t that big a deal. The controversy is bigger than Frey, of course, and even bigger than Oprah. The issue is that major lies seem to have lost their power to outrage us as a nation. “Are we so used to being duped that over time, our outrage muscles have gone all slack and gooey? … Softened up by relentless hyperbole and the hot air of advertising, it’s easier for us to roll over and play dead when confronted with an actual lie.”