Life News (Popular Culture)

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Filmmaker Woody Allen's often tense relationships between art and life and audience and artist are examined in a new book by St. Lawrence University Professor of English.

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Need a John Lennon expert for his 20-year death date anniversary?

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A quick holiday quiz: Name one ancient yet abiding Christmas tradition. If you answered "attacking the institution of Christmas," you would be right.

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Psychological tests are standard for many NFL teams and are a growing trend in college as well as high school sports and corporations.

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Playwright Shelley Russell's latest effort is Holdin' Our Own: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The play opens at Northern Michigan University Nov. 8 -- two days before the 25th anniversary of the tragedy

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A team of University of Rhode Island scientists has found that the cores of Major League baseballs from 1995 and 2000 bounce higher than ones from 1960s and 1970s and that they contain materials that could make them livelier.

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"Baseball's Future: Competitive Balance and Labor Relations" will bring together eight leading figures in sports economics, journalism and management to discuss ways to restore competition and avoid labor strife in America's pastime.

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Halloween tip sheet from Hamilton College professors: Halloween is Not Satanic; Things That Go Bump in the Night; Turnip Jack-O-Lanterns?; Exorcism and the Movies; Thrills and Chills; Hamilton Students Provide Safe Trick-or-Treating for Local Children.

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BERNI Marketing & Design, seeks nominations for its annual BERNI awards for best consumer product packaging introduced in 2000. This year, a branding category has been added for naming, corporate identity, and website/e-commerce.

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Contrary to what many Americans assume, Madison Avenue may not be the only force pumping up the presence and popularity of Halloween in the United States.

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Launching October 12, an innovative program, take the lead!, will empower 33 high school students from around the country to address social issues in their own communities.

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Two world-class track athletes are heading to Sydney to represent the United States. Both are undergraduate students at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

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Baseball has inspired poetry and drawn rhapsodic praise from some of the country's most gifted writers, but this semester a Saint Joseph's University's business professor is taking a more hardheaded look at America's pastime.

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Experts report on: Harpers Weekly engraver Thomas Nast who created and popularized the elephant and the donkey over 125 years ago; relations between the president and Congress being altered by technology; the dynamics of race relations in politics and history.

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Four Purdue University experts are listed who can discuss various aspects of traveling: educational travel, vacation planning, traveling with kids, traveling with pets.

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Without the tuba, we wouldn't have been scared of the water in "Jaws," or have sensed the looming threat of Jabba the Hutt in "Star Wars." An Arkansas musician tracks the tuba's role in making movie magic (TUBA Journal).

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Consumers can improve their odds of topping off Independence Day with the perfect, dewy-sweet watermelon treat if they examine the fruit carefully before buying, says a Purdue University expert.

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Sure, they look good in their swimwear, and they can even be seen working out if you get to Texas Gulf beaches early enough, but the Galveston Beach Patrol emphasizes preventive lifeguarding over dramatic rescues.

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Grace Halsell was a white woman working as a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson, when she decided to leave her White House job and darkened her skin to live in segregated Mississippi and Harlem.

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E-commerce has raised the value of and market for used and rare books; online sales have increased the number of used books sold by an average of 12.5 percent, Ohio University researchers found.

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Drug addicts, alcoholics and criminals--that is how half of the American public report seeing people with mental illness portrayed in the entertainment media, according to a new survey by the National Mental Health Association. In addition, many see people with mental illness portrayed as violent, scary, dangerous, victims of crime, or sad and lonely. The findings were released at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting.

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The online version of USA TODAY has eclipsed its newspaper rivals' Web sites in three key measures -- size of audience, time spent at the site, and profitability -- according to the author of a new book about the national newspaper.

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A memorial service for Peabody Awards Director Barry L. Sherman, who died suddenly in Athens May 2, has been scheduled for 3 p.m. Friday, May 5, in Hodgson Hall of the Performing Arts Center on the University of Georgia campus.

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A Hamilton College religious studies professor studies the portrayal of Jesus in films and is calling the CBS mini-series Jesus (May 14 and 17) "the most amazing and startling selling of Jesus by Hollywood that I have seen."

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1- Sports psychologist talks about the importance of team chemistry and whether the Philadelphia Flyers want Eric Lindros and Roger Neilson to return; 2- The Vietnam War profoundly affected pop culture, especially the depiction of war in film, says film studies prof.

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Easter is a special time for Kathleen Delaney because it is reminiscent of her first introduction to marshmallow Peeps; the University at Buffalo librarian and archivist has been collecting these marshmallow Easter treats for more than 25 years.

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Mercedes de Acosta, the poet and playwright who wrote of her affair with Greta Garbo, left the letters she received from the film star to Philadelphia's Rosenbach Museum and Library; now that the ten-year waiting period is almost over, two Swarthmore College English professors are eagerly awaiting their unsealing.

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Judging by last year's turnout, Roger Ebert's upcoming -- and ironically named -- "Overlooked Film Festival" promises to be anything but overlooked.

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Six Purdue University experts can discuss various aspects of gardening and landscaping.

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Entertainment awards help us to validate our own opinions, says an Agnes Scott College professor of theater; when our favorite movies, actors or television shows receive nominations, we know that experts have considered them among the best in the field.

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Communicating with extraterrestrials will be more difficult to resolve than has been envisioned so far, says Hamilton College professor of anthropology Douglas Raybeck at CONTACT 2000 in Santa Clara, Calif., March 3-5.

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Scripts, story lines, photographs, bios, reference works and other memorabilia that document the television series "The Young and the Restless" are on display through March 20 in the University of Illinois Rare Book and Special Collections Library.

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Were Americans on a fitness craze from Jane Fonda in the mid-1980s to "Just Do It" in the '90s? a University of Illinois sociologist says it never happened.

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The very adult members of Slow Food see the pervasiveness of American fast food as the enemy, and themselves as champions of meals as communal and social gatherings.

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A documentary on the rise of the American gangster during the first half of the 20th century and his enduring influence on American culture through Hollywood will air on The Learning Channel.

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Best-selling novelist John Grisham, a devout Baptist and baseball fan, will combine those passions when he visits Baylor University on Friday, Feb. 25.

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Just in time for Valentine's Day, an Arkansas researcher offers a no-frills look at the history of lingerie.

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Top 10 healthy ways to show your pets the affection they deserve this Valentine's Day and every other day are offered by a team of animal experts and alumni from Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

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"Bee" movie lovers will have a honey of a time Sat., Feb. 26, at the 17th Annual Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois, where the focus for the entomological film extravaganza will be one of nature's most helpful but frequently feared creatures -- bees.

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Valentine's Day has become the traditional day to celebrate love by exchanging gifts and kisses.

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For romance, candy can be dandy, but if you overdo it, the effort to remove those love handles can be anything but sweet.

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Among film genres, parody is probably the least appreciated, but a new book by a Ball State University professor gives the genre its due.

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Elvis Presley sang the most historically significant rock song during the genre's first 20 years, says a Ball State University pop culture expert.

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1- Psychologist worries that game shows promote idea of getting something for nothing; 2- Philadelphia mayor can help fight obesity; 3- Warm temps won't hurt your trees and shrubs, says horticulture prof.

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A University of Maryland chess team claimed its third national chess championship in four years by beating the University of Toronto in the 1999 Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship.

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From where (and why) you'll shop online to how you'll connect to your computer, Boston University professors have a range of predictions for the new millennium.

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The only public personality as popular as Santa Claus this time of year is Martha Stewart. An Arkansas sociologist's study of the domestic maven finds that Stewart has built her success by breaking social stereotypes.

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A staff member with the Arizona Health Sciences Library educational services group, knows plenty about gathering information. Her Web site of peculiar doctors' names careens toward legendary status.

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Awaiting an opening ceremony in the year 2000 is a time capsule from 1900 left for the graduating class of 2000 at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

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Too often, well-meaning family members and guests injure pets with kindness or simple oversight during the holidays. The Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine offers 10 pet tips to prevent a costly trip to your veterinarian during this festive season.