“Over the past two decades, Ohio has become an important venue for innovative buildings by star architects from around the world. Public agencies, museums and universities have used edgy, forward-looking buildings to change perceptions, to erase regional isolation and to broadcast optimism about the future. The newest sign of the trend is the nearly completed Campus Recreation Center at the University of Cincinnati.”
Tag: 02.19.06
Digital Music Choice: Rent Or Buy?
“One sign that the selection out there is maturing is that you’ve now got two choices when you go to buy music downloads: You can rent them by the month, or buy them and keep them forever. Some services offer both options.”
Women In The Movies – MIA
Where have the good women’s movie roles gone? “For the most part, the current fare seems to be channeling the 1950s, with female characters offered up only as accessories — ornamental but unnecessary. And so, in the movies with muscle, we see them as nurturing friends (“Capote”), neglected wives (“Brokeback Mountain,” “Syriana”), pregnant helpmeets (“Munich”), and objects of lust (“Match Point,” “King Kong”). Has even one heroine turned up this season who is as compelling as, say, a penguin?”
Wheeldon – Redefining Classical Ballet?
Choreographer Christopher “Wheeldon may well, like George Balanchine, expand the boundaries of what is considered classical ballet. Taken as a whole, Mr. Wheeldon’s ballets are like the rooms of a mansion. Some are grand, some simple, and most of them are inviting. The rooms of ‘Liturgy,’ ‘Klavier’ and most of all ‘After the Rain’ look out not only on the gentle hills and craggy precipices of classical ballet, but also on the wide-open sea of a ballet that is rooted in classicism, as Balanchine’s innovations were, but also enriched and transformed by modern dance of the 20th and 21st centuries.”
ENO’s Winter Of Discontent
“The English National Opera has just staggered through a firestorm of conflict and upheaval, including the apparent dismissal of its artistic and executive director, the bitter resignation of that chairman and the departure of a new music director before he had even started. It was all played out in public, and in excruciating detail. Grinning and bearing it has, of necessity, become the house style.”
Math So Complex It Can’t Be Proved
Mathematical proofs are getting so complex, they’re becoming difficult to verify. “I think that we’re now inescapably in an age where the large statements of mathematics are so complex that we may never know for sure whether they’re true or false. That puts us in the same boat as all the other scientists.”
Boys Choir of Harlem Struggles After Eviction
“After the eviction at the beginning of February, it has moved into the Metropolitan United Methodist Church on 126th Street in East Harlem. The choir was $5 million US in debt, and founder Howard Turnbull admits he mismanaged relations with the public school two blocks away that was The Choir Academy of Harlem for more than a decade.”