“Some of the most sinister historic monuments in Britain, a set of hardened concrete bunkers built to shelter American nuclear bombers, are to be protected and preserved.” Government planners and the English Heritage agency have decided “that the site is one of the best preserved Cold War landscapes in Britain.”
Tag: 01.28.10
Why Do Late-Night Talk Show Hosts Always Sit On The Right?
“Because it makes them seem powerful. In Western culture, we read from left to right, and we watch theater and television that way, too. … In the theory of stagecraft, it’s understood that a rightward placement telegraphs royalty. So no matter how famous the guest may be, sitting to the left makes him or her seem subservient.”
Competition, National Happiness, And The Bagging Of Groceries
What the National Grocers Association’s Best Bagger Championship “illustrates most is how the recognition for doing something well, and the desire to do it even better that that recognition prompts, enriches [the competitors’] lives on an everyday basis.” And a “country cannot be great without great grocery store baggers – their speed, courtesy, and ability to keep our spaghetti sauce from crushing our hot dog buns is crucial to maintaining public morale.”
Will The NY Times Paywall Be Revenue-Neutral?
That’s what the newspaper’s top execs reportedly think. So why bother with it? “The answer is that a paywall comes with a certain amount of option value. Once it’s implemented, nytimes.com will have two revenue streams rather than one, and diversification in and of itself is quite a good thing.”
Vancouver Symphony Keeps MD Bramwell Tovey For Five More Years
“After a decade of Tovey’s directorship, the VSO is a confident, key player on the arts scene. This has happened at a time when things have never been worse for orchestras … By contrast, the once-troubled VSO is a well-run organization with a secure subscriber base and committed patrons.”
A Mashup Of Live Theatre And Video Gaming
“An audience of 200 people sits in the Historic Theatre at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Each audience member is given a hand-held gaming controller and, on a big screen, an avatar – a small symbol – that’s specific to you. Then the questions come, and your replies will determine your avatar’s fate.”
An Independent Music Store Tries To Compete
“Amoeba Music will this year take its boldest stride yet into the online world, launching a digital download store this spring or summer. Amoeba will join the likes of Other Music in New York and ThinkIndie.com, a digital outlet that represents a consortium of the nation’s top indie stores, including Fingerprints in Long Beach, as one of the few independent retail outlets trying to claim a slice of the digital marketplace.”
Huge Surge In Book Business In India
“The success of Jaipur’s book bash, now the biggest literature festival in Asia, is in part thanks to India’s burgeoning appetite for the written word. As the country’s economy has boomed, and its middle class has grown, book sales have shot up. Most books in India are still sold in small family-run shops, but book chains are moving into malls and airports.”
‘The Best Story Salinger Ever Wrote’
It “runs about 120 pages and has no appreciable form, reading like an unedited, freewheeling character description. I know several avowed Salinger fanatics who have never made it through the thing, and I don’t blame them … I see the messiness of ‘Seymour: An Introduction’ as Salinger’s final confrontation with all the strains of his earlier fiction: sentimentality, depression, Eastern philosophy, isolation, and the guilt of being happy.”
Philadelphia Orchestra Signs With Digital Distributor
“The orchestra will work with IODA, a San Francisco digital distribution firm, … to bring its live recordings to iTunes, Amazon.com, and other heavily visited retail sites for download.”