Oliver Sacks talks to Jon Stewart about the fundamental impact of music on the brain. Rhythm, he says, is a purely human trait...only humans can listen and respond to music by dancing to the beat. Makes it all the more tragic that music programs and education are getting cut from public schools, doesn't it?

Check it out.

"Among other things, Chinese officials have worried that online currencies could ultimately serve as an alternative to China’s official currency, the renminbi, and have an impact on the country’s financial system." --NYTimes on China's limiting virtual goods trading and sales.

Wowza. It says something about the confidence in the official currency that the government is worried about getting destabilized by a virtual currency.

Of course, it also says something about how many people are playing online games!!

NYTimes article on the suppression of information on a Wikipedia page neatly encapsulates a dilemma of democratic nations at war. A cornerstone of a free society is an unfettered press, serving the public's right to know; on the other hand, global politics is a dangerous game that sometimes requires sleight of hand and control of information.

In an interesting essay (thanks Jen Bekman for the link!) by Jonathan Jones argues, essentially, that he is right as a critic because he "feels it in his bones."

While that's a rather clumsy way to put it, it's true. Reactions to art are subjective, and critics are right mostly, solely, because they believe they are. But what's interesting to me is not their final judgment but the path by which they arrive there. And there for to say "I'm right because I am" is utterly uninteresting.

Jones is right that there is a need for criticism and judgment in art. There *is* good and bad; although we might disagree over which fits in what categories. But even "bad" art can tell us volumes about various fascinating forces at work in society, in the art world, in the artists' personality and mind, even in how we decide to judge art.

My approach to criticism is, I think, not really about identifying good and bad for the benefit of the consumer or the future of the art; I think I prefer criticism that takes a more sociological approach: why is this art bad, why is this good, what values do our judgments reveal? Why is this piece popular? Why does this apparently crappy piece of art resonate so powerfully with mainstream culture?