A stage in Birmingham, England, collapsed, injuring 15-20 people. “The audience was taking part in a ‘sing song’ before the show. Members of the audience who were dressed as nuns were asked to get on the stage and take part in a sing song. There were about 30 or 40 people on the stage and as they walked forward to the area which covers the orchestra, the stage collapsed.”
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Study: If You’re Smarter, You Live Longer?
As the body ages, so does the brain, and as it does, some people lose their mental ability. This loss can become especially pronounced as we reach our seventies and beyond. Because the quality of life in old age is influenced by how well mental ability is maintained, considerable research is now being carried out on how aging affects our ability to think, reason and remember.” A new study reports that “the 70-somethings scored quite a bit better than they did at age 11; second, that mental ability differences are pretty stable from age 11 to age 77; with some interesting exceptions, the high scorers did well and the modest remained so.”
In Between Nature And Nurture
Is it nature or nurture? It’s an old debate. But maybe it’s both. “Recent genetic research has shown us not only how genes influence behaviour but also how behaviour influences genes. Genes are designed to take their cue from nurture: the more we lift the lid on the genome, the more vulnerable to experience genes appear to be. Gene expression can be a consequence as well as a cause of what we do. The adherents of the ‘nurture’ side of the argument have scared themselves silly at the power and inevitability of genes, and missed the greatest lesson of all: the genes are on their side. We pick the nurture that suits our nature: having ‘sporty genes’ makes you want to practise sport; having ‘intellectual genes’ makes you seek out intellectual activity. The genes are the agents of nurture.”
America: Tallying Up State Arts Cuts
In America, state budget season has ended for another year, and the arts didn’t make out very well. “State art spending dropped from $409 million in fiscal year 2002 to $355 million in 2003, and, with State deficits projected to balloon from $60 million to $80 billion this year, arts funding will fall another 23%, bringing the 2004 total to around $274 million.”
Danielle Steel Opens A Gallery
Mega-selling author Danielle Steel is opening a gallery in San Francisco. “She plans to favor work by lesser-known and younger artists. ‘Not necessarily chronologically young, but those who are really struggling with something.’ Steel anticipates skepticism and even ridicule in her new venture. ‘The first thing that was said about us came from San Francisco Magazine. We hadn’t even put the carpet in yet and they wrote, ‘Can you spell dilettante’?”
Florida City Bans Suicides At Concert
The St. Petersburg, Florida city council passes an emergency ordinance making it “illegal to conduct a suicide for commercial or entertainment purposes, or to host, promote or sell tickets for such an event.” The council was responding to plans by a local heavy metal band to feature the death of a terminally ill person at a concert this coming weekend. “I’m sickened that we even have to entertain such an ordinance. While I’m reasonably sure this is just a publicity stunt, we can’t just sit idly by while somebody loses their life.”
The Ken Burns Effect
PBS’ Jazz series two years ago was a big success. Will the same happen for the new Blues series? “The dust from Ken Burns’s Jazz has settled enough after 2½ years to allow some consideration of its impact – its successes and its consequences – now that Martin Scorsese’s The Blues is on the air. Foremost among those successes are the sales for the Burns series CDs on the Verve and Columbia/Legacy imprints – a five-disc boxed set and 22 single releases devoted to individual artists…”
Detroit Newspaper Kills Negative Book Review Of One Of Its Own
The Detroit Free Press has killed a review it had commissioned of a book by Mitch Albom, the newspaper’s star sports columnist, because the review came in negative. The paper’s executive editor “confirmed that she decided not to run the review by freelance writer Carlo Wolff simply because the reviewer didn’t much like the book. She said Albom was not involved in the decision. The book is titled ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven.’ ‘I was not really comfortable with disparaging one of my employees that way. Yes, it’s because the review was negative’.”
Adventures In Retailing – Museum Shuts Down For-Profit Retailer
Two years ago, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts was the first American museum to create a private company to “run its gift shops, publish its glossy mail-order catalog, and hawk posters, T-shirts, and jewelry on the Internet.” But “with the company losing $2.9 million its first year and $3 million for the fiscal year that ended June 2002, the museum could no longer support it,” and so the company is being closed.
Charge: Government Starving UK’s National Gallery
Manager’s of London’s National Gallery charge that the government is starving the museum of cash. “The difficulties faced in making big acquisitions had almost reached ‘crisis proportions’, and the decline in the annual grant left ‘nothing to spare’. Taking inflation into account, the gallery would need an extra £2.5m on top of the 2002-03 government grant of £20.4m to match the support offered, say, eight years ago.”