Ticket scalping is illegal in many cities. This is wrong Scalpers more often than not provide a useful service. “At show time, they set up an instant bazaar where the actual value of tickets is haggled into shape; they’re basically stock traders in a secondary market without a dress code. Most of them spend their nights scooping up seats from fans who, for a variety of reasons — friends have bailed, spouse took ill — need to unload them. The scalper then turns around and sells it at the largest markup the market can bear, which is often below face value.”
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Testing, Testing…
Time was you couldn’t get into college without doing well on the standardized tests. Now you almost can’t get out of grade school without excelling at them. Education reform in the US has meant a battery of new standardized testing, and the stakes are high for both schools and students. “Unsurprisingly, test-prep companies see the law, and especially its provision for federal tutoring vouchers, as a vast new opportunity. ‘The market for test preparation is on fire’.”
Random Thoughts (They’re Not So Easy)
In a truly random game – such as rock/paper/scissors – the best winning strategy is to play truly randomly. “But people are notoriously bad at generating randomness on command. They flip back and forth too often, whereas truly random sequences will always contain some runs…”
The Are No Small Movies, Just Small Books…
Where does Hollywood get many of its ideas? Why from books of course. But the pipeline of movie-worthy books seems to have dried up. “For book scouts-those literary eyes and ears of A-list Hollywood bosses like Tom Hanks and producer Wendy Finerman, who plumb the publishing world for movie material-it’s tough going these days.”
Brain Songs
Why does music provoke such powerful emotions and memories? Turns out that part of the brain right behind our foreheads might contain the secret. “The rostromedial prefrontal cortex – has complex functions relating to the link between data and the emotions, and, say the scientists, it may be the reason why melodies evoke memories.”
No Refunds No Returns?
So what do other museums think of the declaration this week by some of the world’s major museums that they shouldn’t return ancient artifacts to their countries of origin? “The British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles was dismissive of the declaration by the museums, which included the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hermitage in St Petersburg, and the Berlin Museum. ‘Such unilateral, absolute ‘declarations’ are not sustainable in the modern world,’ it insisted. ‘Declarations of this kind should be the outcome of discussion and consultation beyond the small circle of self-styled ‘universal’ museums’.”
Why Museums Are Protective
So why did great world museums issue a statement on Repatriation of historic monuments? “The museums’ statement, which never mentioned the Parthenon Marbles, was meant as a collective defense of collections that were put together in another era, before countries like Greece became more protective of their cultural patrimony. The statement argued that museums, as the guardians of artifacts from civilizations around the world, had become international institutions with missions that transcended national boundaries.”
Aristocratic Greed Endangered British Art During WWII Blitz
During World War II, the British worried about the safety of their art. So they devised places to hide it. One of the plans was to hide it in the rich country houses, but owners of the houses were less than helpful. “A forthcoming book discloses that their behaviour led them to be compared to collaborators with Hitler. The attitudes wrecked plans to save art treasures by holding them in such houses. Instead the works had to be stored at high public cost in specially built underground installations in Wales and Wiltshire.”
Free Museums Don’t Attract The Poor
So attendance has soared at British museums that dropped their admission charges last year. But the increased visits aren’t coming from low-income people for whom the entry fees might have been a barrier. “Free admission is a welcome bonus for all those who already appreciate our museums’ riches, but it is not a very effective way of attracting anyone else. Instead, the extra visitors increase museum running costs for the museums, which they have to meet out of grants so limited that their custodianship of our heritage may be compromised.”
Have Western, Will Travel
The American Western is such a staple of the culture, and “so taken for granted that the western novel’s centennial has passed with hardly any fanfare, and little seems planned for the 100th birthday of the film western. But academic critics are not letting the Virginian, and those who followed in his trail, slip out of town unacclaimed.