The Harry Potter books no longer dominate British book bestseller lists. The new champ is Philip Pullman’s prize-winning “His Dark Materials” trilogy. The set is “outselling any Potter title by more than 25% after years in which JK Rowling has towered over her market.”
Tag: 06.04.03
The Last Boys’ Club
Why are there so few women on talk radio? Is it that women are less likely to possess the conservative leanings that dominate the medium? Are they simply uninterested in having their voices heard by the vast talk radio audience? Not likely. “If there is one explanation that seems to resonate, it may be that women are out of fashion in an industry that puts a premium on constant aggression and throbbing neck veins.” Put another way, talk radio’s audience is unapologetically sexist, and has no interest in a female host who acts as boorishly as most of the men currently on the air.
The Human Cost Of Florida Phil’s Fall
When the Florida Philharmonic ceased operations last month, 80 musicians lost their jobs instantly. This is no small thing, since orchestra players must devote months of practice time and hundreds of dollars in travel expenses even to make a stab at winning a new job in another ensemble. Many Florida Phil musicians were married to others, making the shutdown a financial catastrophe for their families. “Some players already have left town. Some are going home to family. Others are turning to teaching or investigating careers outside music. A few cling to the hope that a miracle waits around the bend and resurrection will come in the weeks or months ahead.”
Why Do Foreigners Keep Winning The Orange Prize? They’re Better!
“It’s becoming an interesting feature of the Orange that only two past winners have been from Britain. The rest have been either from the US or Canada. Why should this be? One answer, advanced at the Hay Festival by Hilary Mantel, a judge of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, is that the Americans and Canadians are simply more accomplished.”
RIAA Continues Its Crusade
“The recording industry is playing an old song: It has filed a new copyright-infringement suit against Streamcast, makers of the popular Morpheus file-sharing service. The suit involves a Web radio service never launched by Streamcast.” Streamcast’s chief exec “called the recording companies ‘sore losers’ following U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson’s ruling in a separate copyright lawsuit in Los Angeles against Streamcast Networks.” The new lawsuit is part of an ongoing battle by the industry to shut down companies which enable illegal file-sharing.
Where Science And Humanity Meet
“Scientists are working in the emerging field of biomimetics, in which machines are designed to function like biological systems. They have only the foggiest idea of how the human brain perceives and acts on information from the body’s sense organs, even though they’ve known the mechanics of those organs for many years.” It’s all part of the grander struggle for what is sometimes called Artificial Intelligence – the seemingly Quixotic quest to build a machine that can think, learn, and react like a human – and it’s as not as much about building robots as it is about understanding basic functions of humanity.
Liverpool, Culture Capital. No, Seriously.
“Liverpool has been named European Capital of Culture 2008 by UK Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell. The city beat five other hopefuls – Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Newcastle-Gateshead and Oxford – to win the coveted prize… The renewal of its waterfront, a World Heritage site, and cultural centres like Tate Liverpool strengthened its credentials. It is also home to the recently opened Film Arts and Creative Centre, FACT, the UK’s only exhibition and performance space dedicated to film, video and digital art.” The award is likely to generate some much-needed tourism dolllars for Liverpool, which is promising to mount a year-long festival of the arts.
Louisville Inches Closer to Shutdown
The Louisville Orchestra’s board of directors has scheduled a meeting for next Monday, at which it is expected that they will vote to file for bankruptcy, though no one in the organization is specifying whether it would be Chapter 11 or Chapter 7. The orchestra’s management missed its last payroll on May 30, and musicians are still refusing to reopen negotiations on an ongoing contract, insisting that they make too little money to be able to weather any further salary cuts.
Exit Interview: Toeplitz Leaves Pittsburgh
Gideon Toeplitz leaves as manager of the Pittsburgh Symphony. “I made two major mistakes in big chunks. One is something everyone else in the world made, not only the orchestral world. Look at the airlines. We thought the good times would last. And nobody thought the downturn would last as long as it has, and some people are saying it will last eight years. Maybe I pushed too hard, first with myself and therefore with others, to get where I wanted to get. I was ambitious for the Pittsburgh Symphony. We did 15 tours. Maybe 12 would have been enough. Some things I pushed artistically would have come two years later, anyway. So what?”
The Old Milwaukee Shell Game
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra may be looking for a temporary home away from home after the 22,000-pound ceiling of the onstage shell that the orchestra uses at its downtown concert hall fell during a routine storage move, and bounced off the stage. No one was hurt in the accident, and tech crews are working to determine whether the stage will be usable for the MSO’s scheduled Beethoven Festival this weekend.