“Twenty-five years after they colonized the arcades, the original video games have begun to invade a whole new area: pop culture and high art.” They’re showing up everywhere…
Tag: 07.12.04
Re-Dissertation In A Time Of Plagiarism
A professor discovers that a colleague at another university has plagiarized her dissertation. “Is cheating so pervasive that even someone who seeks a career in academe will violate the fundamental principle of giving other scholars credit for their work? If so, what hope do I have of inculcating that principle in students eager to escape quickly with their B.A. in hand?”
Porter – DeLonely
“Promiscuity and songwriting were Cole Porter’s antidepressants, at once an expression of and a relief from his neediness—the ‘oh, such a hungry, yearning burning inside of me’ that he wrote about in ‘Night and Day.’ Porter seems never to have found the love that he eloquently invoked in song after song.”
Drawing The Line – The Gatsbyesque Collector
The art world has been buzzing about Shipley Miller, “head of the Judith Rothschild Foundation, ever since he hatched a Gatsbyesque plot in the spring of 2003: He would travel the globe for one year acquiring contemporary drawings with several million dollars of the foundation’s money. Then he would usher the collection into MoMA, where he serves on the drawings committee, with a museumwide show.”
Betty Oliphant, 85
Betty Oliphant, founder of Canada’s National Ballet School, has died at the age of 85. Emigrating from England in 1947, she became an icon of the Canadian dance scene. Some of the most celebrated dancers in the company’s history – including dancers Frank Augustyn, Veronica Tennant, Karen Kain and Rex Harrington, and artistic director James Kudelka – are graduates of the institution.”
Broadway Union Agrees To Actors Deal
Broadway actors and producers have reached a tentative deal on a new contract. “The deal settled most of the major outstanding contractual issues between the union, Actors Equity, and the producers, including the knotty issue of non-Equity tours, which threatened to sidetrack negotiations — and Broadway shows — several times.”
A Book Printed, Then Hastily Withdrawn
Why was a book about composer Rebecca Clarke sent to reviewers last month, then quickly withdrawn? “A tangle of alleged copyright infringement and mutual recrimination — hitched to rising scholarly interest in the late Anglo-American composer Rebecca Clarke — lurks behind the dueling letters and the book’s withdrawal from circulation last month.”
Left, Right & Center – The PBS Political Slant?
Is PBS slanting right because it gave conservative Tucker Carlson his own show? “If the debate, then, is whether PBS is allowed to have a conservative on the air, well, that’s the kind of ridiculousness that paints liberals into a corner and makes PBS look bad in the process, as if it knew it was biased all along.”
MacGregor: National Opera Company Is Important
Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, has criticized the Scottish government for its treatment of Scottish Opera. ” ‘If a European country of the size of Scotland cannot support a musical life that encompasses an opera company, that is very serious. It would be ‘unimaginable’ for comparable countries such as Denmark not to have major orchestras, opera houses, ballet companies, as a central part of their national existence.’ Mr MacGregor said the fate of the opera company was not simply a matter of funding, but had elements of a Scottish Calvinist tradition in which music was not seen to be as important as literature.”
Cheap Online Books Worry Publishers
“Publishers, particularly textbook publishers, have long countered used-book sales by churning out new editions every couple of years. But the Web, particularly sites like Amazon and eBay, have given millions of consumers an easy way to find cheap books – often for under $1 – without paying royalty fees to publishers or authors. Mass-market publishers are not certain the used-book phenomenon is a problem worth addressing, but others in the industry have already made up their minds.”