There’s a new game that is controlled by brainwaves. “The game is supposed to measure each player’s brain activity with a band of electrodes worn above the eyes. These pick up the faint electrical signals that emanate from inside our heads. Mindball’s designers at the Interactive Institute in Sweden configured their system to register only a few of these signals–the low-frequency components known as alpha and theta waves. Alpha and theta, they tell us, are generated when the brain is ‘calm and relaxed.’ To win a game of Mindball, then, you have to out-calm your opponent.”
Tag: 12.26.06
Broadcast Pioneer Frank Stanton, 98
“In a career at CBS that spanned his early days as a researcher for the radio division in the 1930s until his retirement as president of CBS Inc. in 1973, Stanton won five Peabody Awards for distinguished achievement and public service in broadcasting and made several lasting contributions to the industry.”
Cyprus To Get National Theatre
“The new building, which will be situated in Nicosia, at the old GSP stadium premises and will cost 9,4 million Cyprus pounds, aspires to give a new momentum to the theatre activities on the island. The building will include two state-of-the-art stages (550 and 150 seats), offices, an exhibition area, a foyer, a bookshop, a restaurant and a cafeteria.”
The Stupendous Anna Netrebko
“Is she truly trying to live up to her sobriquet as ‘the Russian Maria Callas’ by taking on two of the major bel canto roles associated with her predecessor? Can her voice really be as fantastic as the worshipful reviews that have described it as “dark gold on red velvet’, ‘miraculous,’ ‘lustrous’ — fantastic enough to justify the debut of her latest CD, ‘Russian Album’ at No. 8 on the German pop charts?”
Remembering The Internet (Historically Speaking)
“The average life of a Web page is 100 days. If we don’t aggressively go and archive these materials that we’re depending on, not just for scholarship but for cultural fun and trivial pursuits, they will be gone forever.”
One Dance Critic’s Standard Issue
“Like her passion for dance, Laura Jacobs’s writing is immoderate. A sentence may begin with a lovely image, embroider it three times, and make a sudden leap to a related (but distant) idea. To read these essays is to tag along on the free-associative jaunts of a quick thinker.”
The Tangled Tangled Web
“For one naive, shining moment in the ’90s, the assumption was that on the Web, popularity would be democratic, earned one enthusiastic click at a time. Pure. Simple. Untainted by Billboard, Hollywood, Nielsen or other mainstream media usual suspects. But that was before clicks meant cash, and before a flood of tools and communities brought millions of new, mainly nonprofessional content providers online, jostling to get their videos watched, audio clips downloaded and blogs and Web pages linked to bigger, more popular blogs and websites.” Now the name of the game is gaming the system.
Monsters Of Publishing
A couple of new novels about monsters in the publishing business have publishing insiders speculating on the identities of the real-life figures…
Playing With “Audience-eliminating” Movies
Veering too far off the classic movie story formula is thought to reduce the wide appeal of a film. But “there sure seem to be a lot of movies out this fall – big-budget, high-profile Hollywood productions, as well as smaller art films – that toy with or completely embrace these ‘audience-eliminating’ styles.”
Boom Times For Brits
British movies are having a great run right now. “Why has this happened, and why now? It’s not immediately apparent. Overwhelmingly, British films are still financed by a combination of tax and lottery money via the UK Film Council or by two broadcasters, BBC Films and Film Four. Yet significantly all these bodies are on a winning streak at present.”