“If books are not the most perishable products of human civilization, they have, throughout recorded history, attracted the homicidal attentions of every conquering army. In large-scale versions of the penalty the Romans called damnatio memoriae, a punishment for individuals found guilty of committing crimes against the state which involved erasing every reference—whether on stone, in a monument or on parchment— to the person in question, invaders have settled not just for mass murder of the local citizenry, but have indulged in the wholesale disappearance of every written trace of a culture (as the Taliban did to non-fundamentalist Afghans), a language (as the Normans did to the Saxons), a people (as the Romans did to the Etruscans).”
Tag: 12.09.03
Christians Against Ridicule
Clive Hibbert is the president of Christians Against Ridicule. He writes that “over the last few decades there has been a shift in the way that Christianity is portrayed in the media that needs to be challenged. Rarely a day goes by today without underhand and insidious mockery of the Christian faith. It’s nothing specific or too damaging in its own right, but the cumulative effect is more harmful than any one-off headline grabber. It is as if Christians have become the convenient and silent whipping boy for the sound-bite generation.”
Should America Get To Control The Internet?
Many Americans probably aren’t aware that their country controls the global Internet, and the vast majority of information technologies which make it up. But the rest of the world is well aware of it, and many other countries aren’t happy about it. “Some developing countries, including China, South Africa, India and Brazil, want control out of the hands of a private organization selected by the United States and instead with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations.”
Robertson To St. Louis
David Robertson, a 45-year-old American who has been among the rising stars of the conducting world in recent years, has been appointed the new music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, beginning in fall 2005. The SLSO has been without a chief conductor since last April, when Hans Vonk was forced to step down because of severe health problems. The appointment is something of a public relations coup for the orchestra: the SLSO came close to bankruptcy last year before making a good recovery, and Robertson had been on the reported shortlist of nearly every major orchestra searching for a music director over the last few years.
The Shaw Festival’s Disastrous Season At The Box Office
Ontario’s Shaw Festival saw revenues and attendance plunge this season. “Total attendance at the Niagara-on-the-Lake theatre festival in 2003 was 269,407, compared with 315,477 in 2002 and 331,001 in 2001. Revenues from theatre operations slumped to $13.2 million, compared with $16.9 million in 2002. No one was available last night to comment on how deeply the festival will be in the red. One previous estimate in the Star put the total at about $2 million.”
Who Really Invented The Telephone?
Did Alexander Graham Bell really invent the telephone? “Documents marked ‘confidential’ that recently were found buried in the archives of the Science Museum in London suggest British telephone executives covered up the fact that a German science teacher invented a working telephone 13 years before Alexander Graham Bell created a somewhat similar device.”
Pew’s Barnes Connection…
John Anderson wonders if the Pew Charitable Trust’s recent change in legal foundation status is a positive thing for the Barnes Collection. “If indeed under its new identity the Pew can control the Barnes’s purse strings, it will put a whole new complexion on the proposed plan should it be approved by the court. It makes it look less like the ‘rescue’ it has been portrayed as and more like the “takeover” critics (such as myself) have called it. For in controlling the money, the Pew would have de facto control over the Barnes Foundation itself, with a powerful role in determining the future character and direction of the Barnes.”
Screaming At Volcanos
For more than a century art historians have wondered what event inspired Edvard Munch’s most famous painting “The Scream.” Now some astonomers in Texas have come up with a theory based on a major natural event…
The Detroit Symphony’s $2 Million Deficit
Hot off the opening of a new $60 million home, the Detroit Symphony “will announce an operating deficit of nearly $2 million on a $28-million budget at its annual meeting of members on Wednesday, according to people with knowledge of the orchestra’s finances.”
Our Expanding Shelves (Too Many Books?)
Are too many books being published? Well, that depends whether you’re a reader or a publisher. “The most recent figures show that in 2002, total output of new titles and editions in the U.S. grew by nearly 6 percent, to 150,000. General adult fiction exceeded 17,000 – the single strongest category. Juvenile titles topped 10,000, the highest total ever recorded. And there were more than 10,300 new publishers, mostly small or self-publishers. No wonder we’re all running out of shelf space.”