“There will never again be public access to the paper records, the index to where in the country all the births, marriages and deaths were registered, but – as so often with government IT projects – the timetable for the online version intended to replace them has collapsed. According to a spokesman for the Office for National Statistics, which is responsible for the General Records Office, ‘the present target is to have the online index available by mid-2009’. In the meantime, researchers are invited to use microfiche, which means, one furious researcher said, that ‘not even God himself is going to be able to find most of this stuff’.”
Tag: 10.30.07
Fool’s Gold – Stamping Out The Copyright Violators
“It’s all the rage these days: crackpot proposals to automatically police the internet for copyright violations, stopping them even before they occur. From YouTube’s promise to find and stamp out copyright infringing uploads to the counterproposal from the motion picture studios and Microsoft to find and stamp out infringing uploads, everyone is getting in on the act. The problem is, it’s all lies, wishful thinking and irresponsible promises.”
Was George Plimpton A Lit Giant?
Uh, no. “Just to be clear: Plimpton was neither a font of brilliant social commentary nor a composer of sentences so perfect that, like P.G. Wodehouse, he elevated silliness to art. Nor did he, in his patrician modesty, ever pretend to be. He was a guy who wrote pretty good magazine stories, some of which he expanded into pretty good books.”
NBC Prez: Apple Has Ruined The Music Business
While being interviewed by The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta at a benefit for Syracuse University, NBC chief Jeff Zucker “claimed that Apple has made millions on its iPod ‘off the backs of our content’ and that the software maker ‘destroyed the music business in terms of pricing’.”
Do Porn Laws Apply To Mainstream Hollywood Films?
The US Supreme Court hears arguments about whether a law barring child pornography could be applied to popular award-winning movies like Lolita, Traffic, American Beauty and Titanic. “The justices appeared to support the pandering provision of a 2003 federal law that makes it a crime to promote, distribute or solicit material in a way intended to cause others to believe it contains child pornography.”
Robert Goulet, 73
The singer died Tuesday morning in a Los Angeles hospital while awaiting a lung transplant.
The Atlantic Turns 150 (Is This Any Way To Do It?)
“Next month, the Atlantic turns 150, which is a stupendous feat. The life span of the average magazine is somewhere between that of a fruit fly and a dachshund. Magazines that live 150 years are almost as rare as humans that live 150 years. And the venerable Atlantic, which seemed old and stodgy a decade ago, is plenty vigorous these days in its new home in Washington. To celebrate, the Atlantic has published a special ‘150th anniversary issue.’ And that, alas, is where things went horribly wrong.”
Orhan Pamuk’s Manifesto
The Nobel laureate spoke of the power of words to change culture. “Pamuk talked of the ‘literary globalization of the world’ and outlined the way the novelist’s imagination — when employed to evoke ‘the other, the stranger, the enemy that resonates inside each of our heads’ — can be a powerful, liberating force.”
Miami Performing Arts Center Changes Horses
Miami’s trouble Carnival Performing Arts Center fired CEO Michael Hardy monday and hired Lawrence J. Wilker. “The change in leadership came as little surprise to members of the PAC Trust, some of whom had privately expressed displeasure with Hardy’s financial stewardship of the $473 million center, which is owned by Miami-Dade County.”
Which Artists Will Be Famous 105 Years From Now?
Artnews has a list. But “Jeff Koons, whose collectors include billionaire Eli Broad, and Damien Hirst, whose shark is owned by hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen, failed to draw a vote from museum curators nominating artists who’ll be famous in 105 years’ time for U.S. magazine ARTnews.”