What makes Stradivari violins so good? “One scientist thinks he has finally solved the mystery, and he gives the credit not to famed maker Antonio Stradivari but to a nameless 18th Century drugstore chemist from a small town in Italy. Joseph Nagyvary, an emeritus professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&M University, said several things set a Strad apart, but none more so than the chemicals that hardened the wood and gave each instrument its fiery appearance.”
Tag: 05.03.06
Lost Out Of Translation
Only three percent of the books published in the US are translations, compared with almost 70 percent in Italy. What does that mean for the American reading public? “To reduce translation to this miserable 3 percent is to lose your sense of what is out there.”
Afghanistan Antiquities In Peril
Thirty years of war has decimated Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. And reconstruction money has been spent on rebuilding the country’s infrastructure rather than recovering or restoring damaged treasures…
TV News Magazines Suffer In The Ratings
Broadcast network newsmagazines are at a low ebb — with likely even fewer hours on the air next season — and the popularity of reality television is chiefly to blame.
A Fake Book From A Fictional TV Character
Talk about your product placement. “Lost, in just two seasons, has perfected the art of gleefully leading the audience around by their dangly bits, sending viewers scurrying into chat rooms to hash out possible theories. Are the characters dead? Are they in Hell? Is it all a strange drug-induced experiment? Obviously not satisfied with the self-generated fan obsession, Disney decided to give it a little push with the publication of Bad Twin. Bad Twin is written by a fictitious dead Lost character.”
Rogers At The WTC Site
Architect Richard Rogers will design one of the towers on the World Trade Center site. “Tower 3 is Lord Rogers’s fourth major commission in New York. In addition to the Javits Center, which he is designing with FX Fowle, he is involved in a $200 million project to transform a two-mile stretch of the Lower Manhattan waterfront and a $1 billion expansion of Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens.”
Microsoft Plunges Back Into Multimedia
The company is commissioning new shows and making partnerships in Hollywood. “To harness the Web’s attributes, many of the shows and applications will wrap around them community offshoots, commerce opportunities and the ability to dig deeper for related segments or information. Product placement will also be an integral part of the programming.”
An Endangered Species Program For Playwrights
The Pacific Playwrights Festival struggles to promote playwrights. “The American theater is losing too many talented writers. Aspiring playwrights are getting discouraged, especially as other development programs die off. Emerging playwrights, unable to make a living, are moonlighting in Hollywood and never coming back. Established playwrights are having trouble finding homes for scripts that lack commercial appeal.”
Matt Stokes Wins Beck’s Futures Prize
“Stokes’ winning entry, Long After Tonight, is a seven-minute recording of a group of ‘soulies’ – members of the Northern Soul music phenomena in the Sixties and Seventies – collecting obscure North American soul music, and meeting in venues across the north of England. They are shown dancing hypnotically to a soundtrack as the camera occasionally cuts to ornate religious iconography in a Gothic revivalist church in Dundee.”
Van Gogh Sells For $40 Million
The painting sold at auction in New York Thursday night.. “L’Arlesienne, Madame Ginoux commanded the fourth highest price on record for a work by the renowned Dutch artist. The 1890 painting was one in a series of five created in homage to Van Gogh’s friend, the artist Paul Gaugin.”