Ideas Is Technology Progress Threatened? "The defining political conflict of the 21st century is shaping up to be the battle over the future of technology. Fortunately, technological progress doesn't just have opponents; it also has boosters. The rise of neo-Luddism is calling forth self-conscious defenders of technological progress. Growing numbers of extropians, transhumanists, futurists and others are entering the intellectual fray to do battle against the neo-Luddite activists who oppose biotechnology, nanotechnology, and new intelligence technologies." Reason 08/13/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 11:13 pm The Forgotten Everyday Details "Biography of the long-lost past poses special problems. The most basic knowledge proves elusive, often never recorded in the first place. It's one thing never fully to know your subject's thoughts and dreams. It's another to visit a room, intact after 350 years, where a beam of sunlight shining through a prism produced the most famous optical experiment in the history of science, and still fail to find out whether there had been glass in the windows." The New York Times 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 2:43 pm Visual Arts I'm Feeling All Empty Inside... Toronto, like many cities, is caught up in the big museum-building craze. But what about what goes on inside, wonders Philip Marchand. "For the past 10 years, at least, there has been a drastic decline in such research and expertise in museums throughout Ontario. This decline has hit historical and regional museums the hardest, but it has also affected institutions such as the AGO. Libeskind's Crystal and Gehry's AGO expansion will not solve this problem, and may, in fact, aggravate it." Toronto Star 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 1:48 pm Damien Hirst, Butterfly Killer Animal rights groups are furious at artist Damien Hirst, who is using the wings of thousands of butterflies for his new project. "The man who made his name sawing up cows, pickling sheep and suspending sharks in tanks of formaldehyde has been busy over the summer plucking the wings off thousands of tropical butterflies. Animal rights activists, who have previously taken a dim view of his stark meditations on life and death, are not amused." The Guardian (UK) 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 12:52 pm Music US Senate To Investigate Recording Industry Tactics A US Senate subcommittee will investigate the tactics of the Recording Industry Association of America's to go after music downloaders. The committe will "look at not just the scope of that campaign but also the dangers that downloaders face by making their personal information available to others. Senator Norm Coleman said he would review legislation that would expand criminal penalties for downloading music." Wired 08/15/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 2:55 pm Your Music Future - Coming Soon The way we get and consume music is changing. Fast. "We are now on the edge of an entertainment revolution. It's all driven by technology, like the Internet 2.0. First, it established new ways of communication - e-mail and Web sites. The next wave will be about entertainment and its distribution. By year-end, it will be here." Newsday 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 2:46 pm People Tracey Emin Sues Critic Tracey Emin is suing critic Hensher. "The feud began in the Independent when Hensher wrote a damning critique of Emin, claiming she was too stupid to be a good conceptual artist. 'Is it possible to be a good conceptual artist and also very stupid?' he asked. He doubted it. Emin, he wrote, was a half-witted dullard with no inquiring intelligence. She was, he added, too thick to explore the few interesting concepts she had hit on by chance, and concluded: 'There's no hope for Tracey Emin. She's just no good'." The Observer (UK) 08/17/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 11:03 pm Ingmar Bergman: I'm A Loser Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman has a very poor opinion of his own talents, according to diaries in his personal archive, opened this week. "Somewhere in the depths of my foolish soul I nurture one conceited notion: "One day, perhaps - one day - something shining will be prised out of all this wretchedness," he wrote of himself in 1938. The Guardian (UK) 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 1:28 pm Theatre Playing On DVD Movies of plays have not always conveyed a satisfactory experience of the play. DVD's offer more. "In the last few years, several companies have begun issuing play collections on DVD, often with name directors and stellar casts. What distinguishes these collections is that, unlike a stereotypical Hollywood adaptation, there is as much respect for the original work as there is for the film's end result." The New York Times 08/17/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 10:30 pm Taking A Reading Readings of new plays have become an ubiquitous part of the process of getting a new play to the stage. "Readings have become, if not the name of the game, at least a very important part of the game when it comes to the art and business of the theatre. And the topic also raises the hackles of many playwrights and actors, who feel readings have, in many cases, become an abusive substitute for salaried rehearsals or even productions. At the same time, it's generally agreed that when done with proper intention, readings can be invaluable for writers and performers." Backstage 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 2:28 pm Broadway Star Pay Is Low How much do stars earn on Broadway? Not much. "If Arnold Schwarzenegger can make $30 million for the latest "Terminator" flick and cast members of television's "Friends" each pull in $1 million an episode, what is eight performances a week in a Broadway show worth? Let's start with the basics. According to the latest Actors' Equity figures, the minimum salary for a performer in a Broadway play or musical is $1,354 a week and it goes up from there. How high depends on how good a performer's agent is or how many tickets a producer thinks a star can sell." Backstage (AP) 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 2:25 pm Broadway Back After Blackout Broadway was closed Thursday during the blackout, but Friday was back to business. "Theater box offices were open, as was the ticket agency Telecharge. Ticketmaster was experiencing some technical difficulties. The TKTS half-price ticket booth opened as scheduled Friday afternoon. Lines of would-be ticket buyers snaked a block south of the booth, located on Broadway and 47th Street." Boston Globe (AP) 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 2:21 pm Publishing Booker Nominees Martin Amis and Margaret Atwood lead the nominations for this year's Booker Prize. Amis has been nominated "for his novel Yellow Dog - not published for three weeks - while Atwood is recognised for her Orwellian tale Oryx and Crake. Big-name authors such as JM Coetzee and Graham Swift have also been selected, despite speculation that top literary stars would miss out." BBC 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 10:50 pm Influential Canongate Editor Steps Down Judy Moir, editorial director of the small but innovative Edinburgh publisher Canongate, has decided to leave. She says "that she was 'exhausted' after a decade and a half of working miracles on a shoestring. She also admitted having difficulties with Canongate's Byronic owner, Jamie Byng, who brought his unique style and taste to the company after bailing it out with a £100,000 loan." The Guardian (UK) 08/14/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 1:35 pm Media Is Radio Drama Making A Comeback? "For its passionate fans, radio drama is a radical performance mode, a near-telepathic transfer of audio cues from the speaker to the listener's brain, intensely visual because the hearer supplies the images and completely different from the more communal experience of movie or television viewing." The New York Times 08/17/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 10:38 pm DVD's Rule "For the movie industry, the DVD has become so important that the tail now appears to be wagging the dog. The studios — and the rest of us — have realized that nothing they put on screen will ever go away again. As a result, features that were created to appeal to connoisseurs, and that were once available only on large, unwieldy and expensive laser discs, are now routinely enjoyed by mass-market film fans. The esoterica of film culture, formerly consumed by a moneyed geek elite, is now aimed directly at — and snapped up by — the broader public." The New York Times 08/17/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 10:28 pm Coming To America -(The New Creative) Immigrants A new wave of immigrants is making its mark on Hollywood. "Of course, Hollywood, built by immigrants, always has taken the world's best: Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Evelyn Waugh, Ernst Lubitsch, to name just a few from the 1930s and 1940s. But this latest wave comes from Asia, Latin America, Australia, as well as from Europe, reflecting contemporary immigration patterns and some of the globe's hottest movie-making regions. Unlike previous generations, this group tends to be well-educated, show-business-savvy young men and women with a hunger to learn from the world's leading exporter of entertainment." Toronto Star 08/16/03 Posted: 08/16/2003 1:52 pm