The Mind-Reading Machine Scientists say they have been able to monitor with scans what people are thinking. "Our study represents an important but very early stage step towards eventually building a machine that can track a person's consciousness on a second-by-second basis. These findings could be used to help develop or improve devices that help paralyzed people communicate through measurements of their brain activity. But we are still a long way off from developing a universal mind-reading machine." BBC 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 9:59 pm
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Light Where Budddas Once Stood International outrage was sparked in 2001 when Afghanistan's repressive Taliban regime ordered two 1,600-year-old statues of Buddha in the country's Bamiyan Valley destroyed, but despite pressure from Western countries to preserve the massive artifacts, the statues were wiped out. Now, a Japanese artist plans to commemorate the Buddhas with a laser-based installation in the Bamiyan Valley which is drawing funding from the United Nations. "Fourteen laser systems will project 140 overlapping faceless 'statues' sweeping four miles across Bamiyan's cliffs in neon shades of green, pink, orange, white and blue." Toronto Star (AP) 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:59 am
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
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But It Supports Two Daily Newspapers, Right? The Pittsburgh Symphony may end its fiscal year with a deficit of a half million dollars, with the promise of much more red ink to come next season, when the musicians will be due a $17,000 salary increase. Such money woes, combined with falling ticket sales, have convinced one of the city's daily newspapers that it might be time for the PSO to throw in the towel and stop trying to compete with other major American orchestras. "The harsh reality is that a metropolitan area barely ranked among the top 25 in population does not have pockets deep enough to support [an orchestra] the way New York and Chicago support theirs." Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:28 am
Good Numbers In Detroit "Attendance at Detroit Symphony Orchestra classical concerts inched forward last year by 2% and income from the orchestra's classical series leapt 7.6% -- victories in an environment in which many orchestras have seen attendance and income drop. Income from all DSO concerts combined in 2004-05 -- classical, jazz, pops, children's series and special events -- rose 6%. A small increase in ticket prices was partially responsible for the uptick. The revenue increases are a critical step in the DSO's drive to balance its budget for the second straight year after running up an accumulated deficit of $2 million. With three weeks left in its fiscal year, the DSO has met goals for earned income and expenses. But contributed income from individuals and businesses remains a question mark." Detroit Free Press 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:24 am
Two Conductors Quit Everett Symphony Washington State's Everett Symphony Orchestra is losing its music director and another staff conductor as well, after both submitted letters of resignation to the board saying that they could not support "the direction that the current leadership is imposing on the organization." If anyone at the ESO understands what direction Paul-Elliott Cobbs is referring to, they aren't talking, but assistant conductor Ron Friesen's letter said that the symphony leadership "no longer fosters trust, respect, and support." Seattle Times 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:17 am
Rabbi: Boycott Klinghoffer A Rabbi has urged a boycott of a production of John Adams' opera "The Death of Klinghoffer" at the Edinburgh Festival. "The work has evoked anger ever since it first appeared in 1991, and its subject has made it almost unperformable in the US and Israel, where charges of anti-semitism, naivety and of giving a voice to terrorism have been levelled at it." The Guardian (UK) 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 10:52 pm
A Good Summer For Women Conductors Of course there was Marin Alsop's controversial appointment as msuci director of the Baltimore Symphony. In addition "this month Simone Young becomes music director of the Hamburg State Opera; Susanna Mälkki, a familiar conductor of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, is about to become the new music director of L'Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris; and Emmanuelle Haim's reputation as a leading interpreter of the baroque repertoire blossoms by the week." The Guardian (UK) 08/09/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 10:28 pm
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
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German Rappers Going Ghetto, Raising Hackles For obvious historical reasons, the German government likes to keep a close eye on purveyors of extremist language and exclusionary rhetoric, and watch lists have existed for years to monitor the activities of neo-Nazi skinheads and other hatemongers. But lately, Germany's increasingly gangsta-oriented rappers have begun to land on these watch lists as well. "German gangsta rappers have made a strong showing on the charts... and shaken a society not used to hearing ghetto tales of death and revenge in its own language. German parents and the news media have expressed shock at hardcore lyrics, which, they say, glorify a dangerous American ghetto fantasy that doesn't exist in Germany and shouldn't be encouraged." The New York Times 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:16 am
When Can We Go Back To Just Listening To Music? The Supreme Court's Grokster ruling, which held that compaies producing software used for illegal file trading can be held liable for the actions of consumers, has been hailed by the music recording industry and decried by the tech industry. But what does the ruling really mean for a world which in which digital media is obviously the distribution method of the future? "The movie and music bosses didn't get everything they wanted. The justices left the Betamax doctrine intact. That 1984 ruling said that even though a technology - such as a VCR - might be used to infringe copyright, it could still be sold if it also allowed substantial legal uses." And then there's the likelihood that one or both sides in the debate could go running to Congress for relief... Wired Magazine 08/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:02 am
Producer Takes Shot At Edinburgh Fest A prominent theatre producer has publicly suggested that the sitting board of the prestigious Edinburgh International Festival lacks the expertise and judgment to select a new director for the festival. The current director, Sir Brian McMaster, will depart in another year, and producer Nica Burns is concerned that those in charge of selecting his replacement will be insufficiently versed in contemporary theatrical realities. The Scotsman (UK) 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:38 am
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Roth Joins Elite Company "Cementing his position as one of America's leading 20th century literary voices, Philip Roth will see the nonprofit Library of America publish an eight-volume collection of his novels and stories beginning later this summer. Roth, a two-time National Book Award winner, joins Saul Bellow and Eudora Welty as the only American writers to have their complete works preserved by the Library of America during their lifetimes... Initially backed by the National Endowment of the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the Library of America published its first books in 1982 on a mission to preserve what it considers the most significant of American writing." Los Angeles Times 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:49 am
Black Publishing Pioneer Dies Magazine publisher John Harold Johnson has died of heart failure, aged 87. Johnson was the most influential African-American in the history of American publishing, having created and nurtured the widely influential magazine, Ebony, and he later branched out into radio programs aimed at both black and integrated audiences. He resisted calls from within the black community to make his offerings more militant, and instead chose to work within the white-dominated media world and change it by his very success. Chicago Sun-Times 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:35 am
Court Rules For Stern Family Ever since legendary violinist Isaac Stern passed away in 2001, a vicious court fight has been raging between the executor of Stern's will and the performer's children, who believe that he was taken advantage of on his deathbed and convinced to sign over most of his property to his wife of five years. The deathbed transfer led directly to the semi-secret sale of Stern's priceless violins by the executor, a fact which his children learned about only when tipped off by a musician in the Philadelphia Orchestra. This week, a Connecticut court ruled in favor of the children and ordered executor William Moorhead to pay back $562,000 in fees he had charged to the Stern estate. Strings Magazine 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:43 am
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Roth Joins Elite Company "Cementing his position as one of America's leading 20th century literary voices, Philip Roth will see the nonprofit Library of America publish an eight-volume collection of his novels and stories beginning later this summer. Roth, a two-time National Book Award winner, joins Saul Bellow and Eudora Welty as the only American writers to have their complete works preserved by the Library of America during their lifetimes... Initially backed by the National Endowment of the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the Library of America published its first books in 1982 on a mission to preserve what it considers the most significant of American writing." Los Angeles Times 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:49 am
Black Publishing Pioneer Dies Magazine publisher John Harold Johnson has died of heart failure, aged 87. Johnson was the most influential African-American in the history of American publishing, having created and nurtured the widely influential magazine, Ebony, and he later branched out into radio programs aimed at both black and integrated audiences. He resisted calls from within the black community to make his offerings more militant, and instead chose to work within the white-dominated media world and change it by his very success. Chicago Sun-Times 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:35 am
Court Rules For Stern Family Ever since legendary violinist Isaac Stern passed away in 2001, a vicious court fight has been raging between the executor of Stern's will and the performer's children, who believe that he was taken advantage of on his deathbed and convinced to sign over most of his property to his wife of five years. The deathbed transfer led directly to the semi-secret sale of Stern's priceless violins by the executor, a fact which his children learned about only when tipped off by a musician in the Philadelphia Orchestra. This week, a Connecticut court ruled in favor of the children and ordered executor William Moorhead to pay back $562,000 in fees he had charged to the Stern estate. Strings Magazine 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:43 am
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Theatre Without A Script (Are Playwrights Disappearing From UK Drama? "Traditional plays are losing their dominance. And nowhere is this cultural shift more evident than at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. Flick through the Fringe programme and it hits you. Along with the familiar plethora of one-person shows and revivals of Accidental Death of an Anarchist is a whole body of British-based work that owes more to performance art, the circus and devised, physical and visual traditions than to text-based theatre." The Guardian (UK) 08/09/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 10:15 pm
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How Schools Are Killing A Taste 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
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The Dream(works) Fades When Hollywood legends Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen joined forces in 1994 to form Dreamworks Studios, the company was predicted to become the most important force in the American movie industry in decades. It hasn't exactly worked out that way, and these days, Dreamworks is widely considered to be a prime example of a company that really never lived up to its potential. Los Angeles Times 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:45 am
Where Do The Movies Make Most Of Their Money? "The best-kept secret in Hollywood, especially from Wall Street, is that the movie studios' biggest profit center is not theatrical movies, or even DVD sales; it is TV licensing. If the details of the profits remain clouded to outsiders, it is no accident." Slate 08/08/05
Posted: 08/08/2005 10:48 pm
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
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