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Monday, August 8




Ideas

Urban Design As A Video Game "Today, thanks to ever more sophisticated software, urban planning itself has increasingly come to resemble a SimCity-style public-policy game. Since the game's debut, the maturing technology known as Geographical Information Systems (GIS)--software for synthesizing database, mapping, and modeling data--has supplanted the paper blueprint roll as the urban planner's dominant tool, enabling planners to map over a geographic region everything from gas lines to transit systems to weather patterns. But it's not just professionals who have their hands on the technology." Boston Globe 08/07/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 8:39 pm

Wireless Broadband - Just Basic Civic Infrastructure Two remote rural counties in Oregon offer free wireless broadband internet service for everyone. "Broadband is just the next step in expanding the national infrastructure, comparable to the transcontinental railroad, the national highway system and rural electrification. Indeed, we need to envision broadband Internet access as just another utility, like electricity or water. Often the best way to provide that will be to blanket a region with Wi-Fi coverage to create wireless computer networks, rather than running D.S.L., cable or fiber-optic lines to every home." The New York Times 08/06/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 8:19 am

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Visual Arts

The New Highrise - Homes, Not Offices Los Angeles is seeing a boom in tall buildings. "In all, 32 towers are on the horizon for downtown, though some still need city approval as well as financing. Twenty are considered skyscrapers because they climb more than 240 feet, or about 20 stories. From 1986 to 1992, almost two-thirds of towers 20 stories or more built in the U.S. were for office use. But recently this has really flipped. "Between 2003 and June 2005, about 84% of new towers were for residential, multifamily use ? an indication of investor and consumer appetite for multifamily condo development. Luxury high-rises are what's being demanded." Los Angeles Times 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 9:45 pm

The Egyptian Museum's Sorry State "When the Egyptian Museum was built about 100 years ago, it was host to only 10,000 artifacts. The architecture was French colonial, with a lush, cozy garden and a Nile view. Today, the museum is surrounded by a concrete jungle of overpasses, skyscrapers, five-star hotels and an endless stream of cars. Moreover, it holds at least 150,000 antiquities from Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic civilizations. The rooms in the King Tut exhibition area were brushed up and supplied with air-conditioning a few years ago. But many others still lack ventilation and humidity control, and some even have their windows open wide, allowing the noise and smoke of the streets to pour in." Los Angeles Times 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 9:26 am

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Music

Live And Online "In recent months there's been an explosion on the Internet of what used to be called tape trading. This is not the illegal copying of commercially available music that is being fought by the major record companies. This is the free, generally legal exchange of fan-made concert tapes, radio broadcasts and material that was never officially released ? by the Dead and just about anybody else. It's a world that is growing daily at an exponential rate ? and has its foundation in the community of tapers and traders that initially coalesced around and was nurtured by Garcia and the Grateful Dead." Los Angeles Times 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 9:12 am

New Vivaldi Discovered A Melbourne musicologist has found a piece by Vivaldi written in 1754. The find is being described as the biggest Vivaldi find in 75 years. "The work is an 11-movement Dixit Dominus based on Psalm 109 for choir and orchestra, intended to be played in church. But Dr Janice Stockigt suspects that because of a lack of additional notation on the score, this might be its first performance ever." Sydney Morning Herald 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 7:22 am

In Sacramento - Battle Of The Orchestras Nine years ago the Sacramento Symphony went out of business. Now there are two orchestras competing for the affections of the city. The question: will competition be good for the orchestras, or will it dilute resources? Sacramento Bee 08/05/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 7:05 am

Chinese Pianist Wins Cleveland International Chu-Fang Huang, a 23-year-old Chinese pianist who studied at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music, was named first-prize winner of the 2005 Cleveland International Piano Competition... The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 08/07/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 9:57 pm

Where Are The Women? In Orchestras (And Running Them) "The competition for spots in major orchestras is fierce, and the path for women has its bumpy patches. Female orchestral players tend to be clustered in string sections, and brass sections are still largely a male preserve. Female conductors are still a tiny minority. But ambitious, talented female musicians just keep coming. Like their counterparts in the business world, some of them are now reaching the profession's top ranks." Chicago Sun-Times 08/07/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 8:46 pm

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Arts Issues

Selling On Stage (Product Placement Gears Up) "Product placement is such a growing phenomenon that Nielsen, the ratings arbiter, has started keeping track of the extent of its growth. Here's their distressing discovery. In the first three months of 2005, there were 12,867 instances of placement in the Top 10 prime-time programs on U.S. television." Now theatres are getting in to the product placement game... Toronto Star 08/07/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 10:22 pm

All By Myself... (Is This Art?) "Sea Forts, which is billed as a study of isolation, will cost £93,000 in lottery cash and taxpayers? money and is the brainchild of Stephen Turner, a Kent-based artist who describes his work as being 'concerned with aspects of time and the dialectics of transience and permanence'. He will spend six weeks living in one of a complex of observation towers built during the Second World War to provide early warning of German attacks on the Thames estuary, where he will communicate his thoughts about loneliness in an internet journal." The Times (UK) 08/05/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 7:43 am

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People

Mel Gibson Asked To Recreate Passion Live Mel Gibson has been asked to stage the Stations of the Cross live in Sydney. "Gibson's staging the Stations of the Cross is part of Sydney's pitch for Catholicism's World Youth Day, which a leading Vatican observer claims has already been secretly awarded to the city. According to bid documents sent to the Vatican and obtained by the Herald, Gibson would be asked to create the Stations of the Cross as he did in his film The Passion of the Christ." Sydney Morning Herald 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 7:25 am

Ibrahim Ferrer, 78 "Among a group of older Cuban performers recruited by U.S. musician Ry Cooder, Ferrer performed on the "Buena Vista Social Club album" that won a Grammy in 1999, and was among those appearing in the film of the same name." New York Daily News (AP) 08/07/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 10:38 pm

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Theatre

Now On Broadway (Whose Career Did I Steal?) Totonto actor Adam Brazier wins an audition and finds himself whisked off to England to star in an Andrew Lloyd-Webber production. Then he wins the lead in ALW's new "Woman in White" on Broadway. It's all a little difficult to imagine, he writes, "and if you see the guy whose career I stole, tell him I'm taking it to Broadway with me." Toronto Star 08/07/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 6:50 am

A Theatre Showcase Pays Off "The first Playwright's Showcase of the Western Region, held in Denver last August, attracted 168 entries from 18 states, making the fledgling effort, which returns Friday to the Arvada Center, one of the largest of its kind in the United States - at least geographically." It's not nationally prominent, but there are plenty of success stories coming out of last year's showcase to pump up optimism for this year's event. Denver Post 08/07/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 8:51 pm

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Publishing

How Schools Are Killing A Tastse For Reading High school reading scores haven't improved since 1999. Why? "Faced with declining literacy and the ever-growing distractions of the electronic media, faced with the fact that ?Harry Potter fans aside ? so few kids curl up with a book and read for pleasure anymore, what do we teachers do? We saddle students with textbooks that would turn off even the most passionate reader." USAToday 08/05/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 9:53 pm

Quills - Publishers' Pawns The Quill Awards were supposed to enjoy some populist panache. "Designed as a kind of People's Choice Awards to the National Book Awards' stuffy Oscars, the Quills promise to put readers themselves in charge, 'to reflect the tastes of the group that matters most in publishing - readers.' A closer look at the Quill Awards, however, shows that they are really designed to serve a different constituency: publishers themselves." New York Sun 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 9:22 pm

In Praise Of The Memoir Genres may come an go, but the memoir is an enduring form. "The well-written memoir has continued to promote the not-entirely-outrageous view that a properly interesting life is a worthwhile thing to read about. It also plays with the notion that sometimes (just sometimes) people might want to read about a life whose values are not like theirs. More often than not, innovation comes before a fall, but not so in the memoir game, where some of the best British writing finds its audience." The Telegraph (UK) 08/07/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 6:56 am

Prison Reading Group Wins Competition, Then Is Disqualified A contest in the UK to find the best reading group had to disqualify the group originally chosen as winner. "The High Down Prison Group from Surrey was judged to be the best in the competition, but its members were prevented from accepting the top prize as it involved spending two days and a night in Edinburgh." The Scotsman 08/07/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 6:39 am

Judge: Da Vinci Code Didn't Steal From Earlier Book An American judge has ruled that "The Da Vinci Code" did not infringe on the copyright of a book published in 2000. "Although both novels at issue are mystery thrillers, 'Daughter of God' is more action-packed, with several gunfights and violent deaths. 'The Da Vinci Code,' on the other hand, is an intellectual, complex treasure hunt, focusing more on the codes, number sequences, cryptexes and hidden messages left behind as clues than on any physical adventure." Yahoo! (AP) 08/07/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 6:34 am

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Media

The Summer Action Movies Ran Out Of Steam Action movies - long a summer Hollywood summer staple - have been dying at the box office this summer. "In this year of the missing moviegoer, perhaps no genre has proven as perilous as the old stalwart of action, where the failures tend to be colossal, and the red ink runs in rivers." Los Angeles Times 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 9:39 pm

Why Bad Movies Are So Fun "As far as I can tell, film is one of the few artistic mediums to rejoice in utter failure. No one revives hack 18th century opera or hangs paintings by Rembrandt's butcher. But just try to rent a copy of "Battlefield Earth. The cult of bad movies doesn't revolve around big-budget disasters so much as the penny dreadfuls of mid-century American cinema, the discreditable, low-budget horror movies peopled with attacking 50-foot women, killer shrews and aliens with zippers down their back. You've got to love any film in which Martians wear Timex watches. What makes these films so watchable?" Los Angeles Times 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 9:16 pm

When Giants Rose The Movie Studios (And Now They're Gone) Many thought a decade ago that the big movie moguls of the day would be running the world by now. "They shipped billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of millions in profit to their parent companies, but, with the notable exception of Michael Eisner, they did not have much to show for it in return. Instead of using the leverage of cash flow and profit to take over their owners, they were leaned on year after year to come up with still more. They created a new version of Hollywood, but failed to master the corporate intrigues that would let them rule not just the studio lot, but also the business world beyond." The New York Times 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 7:17 am

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Dance

The Live Factor Last week Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre announced it was cutting live music from its performances. What does this mean for the company's artistic fortunes? Most major ballet companies use live music... Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 08/07/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 9:48 pm

  • Pittsburgh Ballet Musicians To File Complaint The musicians union representing Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre orchestra musicians is filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board over PBT's decision to use recorded music during the 2005-06 season. "We believe their decision to go with recorded music should have been negotiated with the union before the decision was made." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 08/05/05
    Posted: 08/07/2005 9:35 pm

The Bolshoi - Homeless And On The Road "Still unsettled after a series of directorship changes, still reinventing itself as a successful Western-style enterprise, still reeling from the hostile reception that greeted last year's radically modern presentation of "Romeo and Juliet," the Bolshoi remains the Bolshoi ? arguably the most majestic ballet company in the world ? and the troupe is determined to remain a force even on its home turf here in Moscow, where it will be performing on secondary and borrowed stages for the next three years." Los Angeles Times 08/07/05
Posted: 08/07/2005 9:14 am

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