“Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg can now claim to be No. 1 in a category he cares deeply about: giving his money away. Mr. Bloomberg, the self-made billionaire founder of the Bloomberg financial information firm, donated $235 million in 2008, making him the leading individual living donor in the United States, according to a list released online on Monday by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.”
Tag: 01.27.09
Distributor’s New Policy May Winnow Comic Book Field
“Is this the end of independent comic books? That was the fear around the comics blogosphere last week when word spread of a policy change from Diamond Comic Distributors, the world’s dominant distributor of English-language comic books. The company has decided to raise the minimum advance order it needs from comic-book stores before it will agree to distribute a title.”
Rescuing Mendelssohn, Even Now, From Nazis’ Harm
“A rival’s envy and the Nazis combined to turn Felix Mendelssohn from a hot 19th-century composer to a pariah and left hundreds of his scores unpublished. Real rescue operations began only a dozen years ago. Thanks largely to the Mendelssohn Project, which has been working since 1996 to redress decades of neglect, the composer’s works are being recovered and performed.”
Neil Gaiman Wins Newbery Medal For The Graveyard Book
“Neil Gaiman, a renowned author of science fiction, fantasy, graphic novels and comics aimed at adults, won the John Newbery Medal for the year’s most outstanding contribution to children’s literature on Monday. Mr. Gaiman, 48, won for ‘The Graveyard Book,’ a story about a boy who is raised in a cemetery by ghosts after his family is killed in the opening pages of the novel.”
Gatekeeper Editors May Shake Wikipedia’s Foundation
“Until now, Wikipedia has allowed anybody to make instant changes to almost all of its 2.7m entries, with only a handful of entries protected from being altered. But under proposals put forward by the website’s co-founder Jimmy Wales, many future changes to the site would need to be approved by a group of editors before going live.” Users aren’t happy about the prospect.