Fascinating stuff: the Washington Post hired a world-famous violinist to play for spare change outside a D.C. Metro station to see if anyone would notice and how much he'd make. "In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?" (thx, karan)
Update: A NYC subway musician's take on the article: "The thing is Joshua Bell is a great violinist but he doesn't know how to busk." (thx, greg)