Chess: Measuring Artificial Intelligence "Chess has long served as a touchstone for the progress of artificial intelligence. For years, the best human players retained a clear edge over chess-playing computers. Computers appeared to gain the advantage with the 1997 defeat of the reigning world champion, Gary Kasparov, by IBM's Deep Blue. But since then, the top ranks of chess have settled into an unexpected equilibrium between humans and computers. The computers and grandmasters are both getting better (and the grandmasters are getting better at playing computers). This is a disappointing state of affairs for enthusiasts of artificial intelligence." Tech Central Station 04/06/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 6:00 pm
Artist Smuggles Rat Into Museum "The graffiti artist Banksy has managed to smuggle in his latest work, a dead rat in a glass-fronted box, into the Natural History Museum where it was exhibited on a wall for several hours. Staff did not notice that the rat was out of place amid the museum's usual fare of dinosaur bones and artefact from the animal kingdom." The Guardian (UK) 04/08/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 8:45 pm
British Museum - Art Palace Or Coffee House? "Has the British Museum gone a cafe or two too far? Ever since the V&A found itself at the centre of a storm in a teacup with its Saatchi-devised 'An ace caff with quite a nice museum attached' campaign of 1988, museums have taken over where the 18th-century coffee house left off. More than mere icing on the cake, they have become the bread and butter (or perhaps that should be ciabatta and olive oil) of many visits." The Guardian (UK) 04/08/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 7:58 pm
New Dispute Over Shroud Of Turin Archaeologists are upset over a TV documentary that claims the Shroud of Turin might be authentic. "Experts have widely considered the 14-foot-long linen sheet, which has been kept since 1578 in a cathedral in Turin, Italy, a forgery since carbon-dating tests were performed in 1988. Those tests placed its origin at A.D.1300." USAToday 04/07/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 7:28 pm
Daring To Improvise: Jazz As A Life Metaphor Nat Hentoff's public profile is that of a strident left-wing columnist and first amendment crusader, but privately, he's always dreamed of being a jazzer. "Starting when I was eleven, jazz musicians were the adults I most admired, even more than Ted Williams and some of his colleagues on the Boston Red Sox. Their music so lifted me up that at times I'd shout in pleasure and surprise, even though I was a relatively proper Boston boy who did not ordinarily disturb the public peace... And I measured the other adults I knew against these musicians' resilience of spirit. They made their living as improvisers, taking chances in public every night. Challenging themselves was their natural way of life." Wall Street Journal 04/08/04
Posted: 04/08/2004 6:30 am
Detroit Symphony Reduces Its Summer Season Struggling to cope with a multimillion-dollar deficit, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra has cut way back on the concerts it plays at the Meadow Brook Music Festival, where the DSO has traditionally played 15 summer concerts over 5 weeks. In January, the orchestra completed a mid-contract renegotiation with its musicians, who agreed to temporary pay cuts and furlough weeks in an effort to balance the books, but the Meadow Brook cuts will still leave a 3-week gap in the summer schedule, which could be filled by a statewide tour, or an expansion of the DSO's other summer activities. Detroit Free Press 04/08/04
Posted: 04/08/2004 5:47 am
London's Newest Opera Company Debuts Raymond Gubbay's Savoy Opera opens. With cheap tickets, the opera attracts an audience you don't typically see at Covent Garden. "It's a myth that opera is posh; it's the most visceral of art forms, preoccupied with love, sex and death. It's just opera-goers who have given it a bad name. If Gubbay can reclaim it for coach parties who might otherwise go to Mamma Mia!, good for him." The Guardian (UK) 04/08/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 8:55 pm
Music Sales Down Worldwide In 2003 Sales of recorded music sales fell by more than 7% worldwide in 2003 says the International Federation of Phonographic Industries. Germany led the biggest decline with a drop of 19 percent. The organization reported said that "internet piracy was a major factor in the decline. It said sales had fallen 20% over three years." BBC 04/07/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 5:34 pm
- After The Drop: Good Times Ahead For Recording Industry? What's to blame for the worldwide drop in retail music sales (the recording industry still sold $32 billion worth of music in 2003)? The industry blames "rampant piracy, poor economic conditions and competition from video games and DVDs. However, a strong second-half recovery in the United States, Britain and Australia, boosted by top-selling acts such as Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé and rapper 50 Cent, has raised hopes that the worst is behind the beleaguered industry." Wired 04/07/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 5:02 pm
The Vast Right-Wing Morality Crusade As the government debate over clamping down on broadcast 'indecency' ratchets up, John Doyle is getting a bit tired of hearing the crackdown described as a response to a genuine swelling of public outrage, rather than as a private crusade of the American ultra-right. After all, if the public were truly the main concern, why wouldn't the hearings being held to confront the spectre of Janet Jackson's exposed breast and Howard Stern's potty mouth be held, well, in public? "Nothing that happens behind closed doors is genuinely in response to a populist concern. Otherwise, it wouldn't be necessary to go behind closed doors." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/08/04
Posted: 04/08/2004 6:34 am
The Pulitzers - Is Writing About Cars Real Criticism? Many were surprised this week when the Pulitzer for criticism went to someone who writes about cars. Is writing about cars real criticism? "Cars are literally what connects the city of Los Angeles. I'm sure some people will clench their fists and decry the award as the end of our culture, but it seems like a completely reasonable choice to me." The New York Times 04/08/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 9:30 pm
French Author's Plane Turns Up At Sea "A French scuba team has discovered parts of the missing warplane piloted by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince and one of France's most beloved writers, an Air Force official said yesterday. The French aviation hero disappeared during World War II while flying a reconnaissance mission for the Allies over the Mediterranean. Until now, nobody knew where the plane went down. Two pieces — from the landing gear and engine — of Saint-Exupery's Lockheed P-38 aircraft were pulled from the Mediterranean near the southern France city of Marseille, said Capt. Frederic Solano." Toronto Star 04/08/04
Posted: 04/08/2004 7:05 am
Culture Capital Crusader Quits "The head of Liverpool's Capital of Culture team has resigned from his £100,000-plus role after just two months. Kevin Johnson, the chief operating officer, cites personal reasons for his decision to leave the post," and sources say that he was simply tired of commuting from his home in Scotland. Cultural leaders in the city are expressing surprise and disappointment, but with the next Europe-wide Capital of Culture competition nearly four years away, no one on the Liverpool team is panicking. Liverpool Daily Post (UK) 04/08/04
Posted: 04/08/2004 5:34 am
How Great (Really) Was Wynton Marsalis? Was Wynton Marsalis ever really all that good? He's a legend, sure, write Fred Kaplan, but he disappoints. "Marsalis, who's now 42, is a superb trumpeter and a brilliant educator. (His schoolhouse lectures on music, which aired on PBS a few years ago, are the best of their kind since Leonard Bernstein's telecasts in the '60s.) But he has never been a great bandleader or a composer. He's written and recorded scores of compositions, but I defy anyone to hum a few." Slate 04/07/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 5:55 pm
NLRB Ruling On Live Broadway Music A new ruling by the National Labor Relations Board is being hailed by the American musicians union as supporting the union's fight to keep live music on Broadway... Backstage 04/07/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 7:44 pm
The Great Ontario Book Bust A bad book fair is a horrible thing to witness, says Russell Smith, and the organizers of the Great Ontario Book Break (you'd think the acronym alone would have been a danger sign) should have seen that they were creating a bad book fair. "Events like these make one come close to despair about the state of the arts and the worth of public funding. Conservatives could easily point to a debacle like this and proclaim that the free market should just take over like a cleansing rain. This is like the sponsorship scandal on a smaller scale: advertising money squandered on a non-event." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/08/04
Posted: 04/08/2004 6:44 am
A High-Tech Solution To Plagiarism "For years, educators at colleges and universities have marshaled software tools to ensure that their students' work is original. Now, tainted by scandals or leery of the Internet's copy-enabling power, a growing number of newspapers, law firms and other businesses are using data-sifting tools that can cross-check billions of digital documents and swiftly recognize patterns in just seconds." CNN.com 04/07/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 7:51 pm
David Beckham, Award-Winning Author "David Beckham has won a special prize at the British Book Awards for his book My Side, the fastest-selling biography or autobiography of all time. Lynne Truss' bestselling grammar guide Eats, Shoots and Leaves picked up the book of the year award, while Alexander McCall Smith was named best author." BBC 04/07/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 5:23 pm
Telefilm Head: Synergy Will Be Good For Canada "A deal between Telefilm Canada and Creative Artists Agency will help 'speed up' Ottawa's plan to see Canadian films score 5 per cent of the total domestic gross box office by the end of 2006, the head of Telefilm says... The deal, which sees Telefilm pay CAA a 'very modest retainer fee,' allows a Canadian producer with a sufficient track record to access CAA's talent pool (at present there are an estimated 2,200 registered Canadian-born actors, directors and writers in and around Los Angeles) and for CAA representatives to approach a Canadian producer with relevant scripts and/or talent." The arrangement has been widely criticized by actors' and writers' unions as compromising Canadian creativity. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/08/04
Posted: 04/08/2004 6:40 am
Easter: The Ultimate Hollywood Tie-In Mel Gibson's controversial film, The Passion of the Christ, continues to steamroll its way through the top-ten list of highest grossing movies of all time, and to do so with relatively little traditional advertising. In fact, the word of mouth attached to Gibson's feast of religious ultraviolence has been so strong that it's changing the way some Hollywood types think about PR. With pastors, priests, and preachers around the world exhorting their followers to see the movie, this weekend's Easter celebrations can be seen as the ultimate marketing tie-in, as Passion aims for thate loftiest of moviemaking goals: a $1 billion payday. Denver Post 04/08/04
Posted: 04/08/2004 6:11 am
Movies - Now The Real Digital Revolution Takes Hold As this year's Sundance Festival showed, digital technology is finally taking over the movies. "Recent breakthroughs have already demonstrated the ability to make movies with the same clarity as 35-millimetre film using high-definition video cameras, and then project them digitally in theatres with no loss in image quality. In 1998, the number of digital video films presented at the film festival could have been counted on one hand. This year, more than 40 per cent of the festival's 200-plus films were either shot on digital video or projected digitally. The audience has barely noticed the difference." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/07/04
Posted: 04/07/2004 5:47 pm
But Can Jeff Gordon Pirouette? Classical dance is not necessarily an easy sell in rural America, and you could make a strong case that a dance which is immediately gripping and enticing in New York might have no relevance to audiences in the Bible Belt. So how to get regional audiences excited about the form? If only you could combine ballet with... with... oh, let's say, NASCAR racing? Toronto Star 04/08/04
Posted: 04/08/2004 7:02 am
