Good week, Bad week
Good week for: Your ears, Symbolic victories, Minimalism; Bad week for: Too much minimalism, Looking up your ex, Dogs on a plane
Good week for:
Your ears, after Congress passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, forbidding TV advertisers from abruptly raising the volume to startling levels during commercial breaks.
Symbolic victories, after Aaron and Christine Boring, who sued Google in 2008 for invasion of privacy and trespassing because their home on a private road showed up on Street View, were awarded a $1 settlement. “That is one sweet dollar of vindication,” said the Borings.
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Minimalism, after artist Giorgio Sadotti, commissioned to decorate the Christmas tree at Tate Britain gallery in London, left the tree bare. “When you see a tree in the forest you don’t think, ‘That tree’s naked, it needs a bit of tinsel,’” Sadotti said.
Bad week for:
Too much minimalism, after Polish artist Agnieszka Kurant won a $2,338 grant from the British government for an art show that consists of “a painting that hasn’t been painted yet,” an “invisible sculpture,” and “a movie shot with no film in the camera.”
Looking up your ex, after a survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that one in five divorces involve flirtatious messages and affairs arising from the use of Facebook.
Dogs on a plane, after a 12-pound Manchester terrier terrorized passengers on a flight from Newark, N.J., to Phoenix, after it escaped a carrier under her 89-year-old owner’s seat. Yapping wildly, the terrier bit a passenger and a flight attendant before the pilot made an emergency landing in Pittsburgh.

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