"pearls before breakfast"

a fascinating article about an experiment on beauty and context.

a violin virtuoso played his $3.5 million violin in a washington dc subway tunnel for 43 minutes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html


and very few people stopped. six in all i think. but every child craned their neck until they were shuffled away by an adult.

i particularly like the description of how his parents discovered he was a child prodigy:

One biographically intriguing fact about Bell is that he got his first music lessons when he was a 4-year-old in Bloomington, Ind. His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.

but read for yourself.