“A documentary on the influence of American rock ‘n’ roll on the Soviet Union’s collapse and a traveling exhibition about the King James Bible are among 249 recipients of $40 million in grants announced by the National Endowment for the Humanities. … Digital humanities, a discipline that barely existed a decade ago, has been winning additional financing from the endowment.”
Tag: 08.03.11
Bringing Comedy Central To Brazil
The Viacom exec in charge of setting up the new network talks about the sudden flowering of stand-up comedy in Brazil and the mix of local and imported programming he plans to air (including Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and South Park, all in English with subtitles).
Musicians Sue National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences To Reinstate Grammy Categories
In the suit, the musicians say that by cutting categories, the academy breached contractual obligations to its members, and that the loss of the Latin jazz category “could have a severe detrimental impact on the plaintiffs’ musical careers.”
Longtime Powerhouse Australian Museum Director To Retire
“Quite simply, the Art Gallery of NSW is one of the most treasured institutions in Australia, and especially in Sydney, and Edmund Capon deserves most of the credit for that.”
Growing Evidence: We Get Happier After 50
“The growing body of research on happiness shows that as we pass middle age, our sense of well-being improves. Take the 2010 study that looked at more than 340,000 Americans and found that self-reported levels of anger, stress, and worry plummet at 50 and that a few years later, happiness rises.”
Why Haven’t Libraries Figured Out Searching?
“I am struck by the wedge being driven between academia and the rest of the world when it comes to how we know. For those few, those lucky few with an affiliation with a large research library, access to ‘high impact’ literature is routine. For everyone else, it’s a question of how badly you want to know.”
Chicago Firm To Build World’s Tallest Building (In Saudi Arabia)
“A tower designed by Chicago architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill and to be built in Saudi Arabia will be the world’s tallest building if completed, according to plans unveiled today.”
British Government Abandons Plans To Block Copyright-Infringing Websites
“Website blocking was one of the key provision contained in the Digital Economy Act. Internet Service Providers had objected to the idea that copyright owners could compel them to cut off some sites.”
NY City Opera Cuts Music Director Position
“The first shoe dropped quietly. When New York City Opera announced its new season last month, the name of George Manahan, the company’s music director, was conspicuously absent. The second shoe, now hanging somewhere in midair, will be the elimination of Mr. Manahan’s position.”
When An English Director Stages An Arabic Thousand And One Nights
“There came an evening – it was in Kuwait, as Tim Supple recalls – when one of the many people he consulted in his quest to bring One Thousand and One Nights to the stage using a pan-Arabic cast, suddenly got a bit aggressive. ‘You know,’ the man said, ‘at some point someone is going to ask you: what the —- are you doing here?'”