Popular Elsewhere
16:38 UK time, Tuesday, 19 April 2011
A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.
The New York Times' most read piece looks at scientific research on . Recent scientific research appears to debunk the belief that it is all about major or minor scales and chord progressions. The article says that what really communicates emotion may not be melody or rhythm, but moments when musicians make subtle changes to musical patterns.
More than 1.1 million Australians are in a relationship but living apart according to a popular story with readers of the Australian. They are in what are called - in other words they're a couple but live in different places. Officially 24% of the single population are actually in a relationship however, the Australian Bureau of Statistics records them as single.
"How can they live with themselves?" is the question starting the Daily Mail's most read story. It is referring to . The paper reports that preceding the attack the girl's father had asked the boys to stop kicking a football against his van.
The according to the most popular opinion piece in the Guardian. Charlie Brooker argues that the days of Fleet Street Journalists "making the world a worse place with ease are over". Mr Brooker vents his spleen:
"Chances are you're quite smart. And you probably love to write - or did, once, back then, before...before the fall. Now you're writing nothing but NYAHH NYAHH NYAHH ad nauseum. You use the only brain you'll ever have to puke out endless gutfuls of cheap gossip or crude propaganda. I suppose the best way to cope with the dull, constant, pulsing awareness that you're wasting your life actively making the world worse is to somehow bewitch yourself into believing you're actively making the world better. That by writing about a footballer's bedroom exploits you're fearlessly exposing the ugly truth behind the wholesome public image and blah blah role model blah blah fans' hard-earned cash blah blah sanctimony blah. Hey - whatever works for you, yeah? Dress as a priest if it helps. We all know you're just grubbily recounting a sex act for our fleeting amusement, like a radio commentator describing two pigs rutting in a sty."
