Art Education Department News

Modernization in China has created a host of problems for farmers -- among them, the loss of farmland to industry and the onset of industrial pollution. The plight of one village illustrates the difficulties.

Modernization in China has created a host of problems for farmers -- among them, the loss of farmland to industry and the onset of industrial pollution. The plight of one village illustrates the difficulties.

Bigger is not better for a growing number of homeowners who live in, or use, tiny homes. The storm-ravaged Gulf Coast -- where much of the housing is gone -- is one place where miniature homes are trying to take root.

I'll admit a strange fascination with the "recommendation engines" scattered around the on-line world, that take lists of things you like (through purchase or claimed preference), and suggest things you'd probably also like. The bulk of these systems seem to use collaborative filtering software to match the patterns of your choices with a database of other user preferences (ie, Amazon's "users who bought this book also bought...").

Pandora Internet Radio uses an altogether different approach...matching artists and songs based on their 'genetics,' or the fundamental qualities of the musical performance and composition. Say the folks at Pandora:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song -- everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records -- it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Each user may not agree with that those fundamental genes are, or how they should be combined. But the discovery process the system allows is rather fun to listen to, and fascinating to explore. Give a listen.

In addition to college students, young children and teenagers are going to school with more electronic gadgets than ever.

In her new double CD “Back to Basics,” the pop diva doesn’t tailor her voice to fit this year’s fashions.

The Nobel Prize winner’s admission of what he did during the war has Germany abuzz.

A bridge goes down as Lincoln Center’s overhaul kicks in.

The Mostly Mozart Festival’s “A Little Night Music” series shows that audiences are tired of being locked into the 8 p.m. concert slot.

Dozens of shelves along the southeastern wall of the quarter-acre Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library stand eerily empty, but please remain calm.

Nawar Sahili is a member of Hezbollah who also sits on the Lebanese Parliament. He shares his views on the U.N. resolution that calls for disarmament of his organization in the south of the country, the potential source of funds for rebuilding after the war, and Israel's right to exist.

Despite fine-tuning its rhetoric for Western ears, Hezbollah is a "very, very radical, anti-Semitic organization," says Jeffrey Goldberg, staff writer for The New Yorker, who spent much of the summer of 2002 in Lebanon reporting on the group. Just back from northern Israel and Gaza, he holds virtually no hope that Hezbollah will disarm.

David Welch, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, says the U.N. resolution is clear: There are to be no armed groups in the south of Lebanon. The critical concern, he says, is whether there is a sufficient security presence, led by the Lebanese army and bolstered by the international force, to assure that the resolution is upheld.

As they start to return home from their positions in southern Lebanon, many Israeli soldiers are disillusioned and disappointed. They believe that the goals of the war -- releasing the two captured soldier and defeating Hezbollah -- were not met. The soldiers blame military commanders and Israeli intelligence for the failures.

A few hours after the two Israeli soldiers were captured on July 12, Israel's military Chief of Staff Dan Halutz took a break from the war room to cash in a stock portfolio worth $27,000. Halutz insists he did nothing wrong, but there are growing calls for his resignation. Even if he broke no laws, critics say his personal finances should have been the last thing on his mind with war imminent.

MRSA, a bacterium that causes skin infections, boils and absesses, is hitting the general public. The bug was previously confined to hospitals and nursing homes, then had spread to prisons, sports teams and other germy environments. The new "community form" of MRSA, while often resistant to the latest antibiotics, is typically susceptible to old-fashioned antibiotics.

Veteran umpire Bruce Froemming works his 5000th major league baseball game tonight in Boston, when the Red Sox host the Detroit Tigers. Legendary Hall of Famer Bill Klem is the only other umpire to reach that milestone. After 13 years as a minor-league ump, Froemming has spent 36 years in the big leagues. He tunes out certain kinds of abuse, but if it's out of bounds -- they're out!

Federal drug agents and the U.S. Coast Guard arrest Mexican drug lord Javier Arellano-Felix, alleged to be one of the world's most notorious drug traffickers. The suspected leader of a violent gang that is responsible for digging tunnels to smuggle narcotics into the U.S., Arellano-Felix is apprehended while fishing off the coast of Baja, California.