Total video game sales (hardware and software) through October was $10.5 billion, compared with $7 billion for the same period last year.
Tag: 12.14.07
The Architect At 100
Oscar Niemeyer, the last surviving founder of architecture’s Modernist movement, turned 100 on Saturday. The grandfather of Brazilian architecture is a living legend, and plans to remain so for a while.
St. Louis Symphony Gets A New President
He’s Fred Bronstein, president of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra since July 2002. “In his time in Dallas, he has held down increases in operating expenses, overseen a 47 percent increase in endowment assets from $70 million to over $100 million in five years.”
Amazon.com Says It Bought Rowling Book
The giant online retailer paid a record £1.95 million for “The Tales of Beedle the Bard.” “The price is the highest achieved at auction for a modern literary manuscript, a record for a manuscript by JK Rowling and a record for a children’s book. All sale proceeds will go to The Children’s Voice, a charity set up by Rowling to help vulnerable children in Europe.”
Catholic Church: “Atheism For Kids”?
Is the ferment about Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” just Harry Potter vs. Fundamentalists redux, a clash that generates heat but no light? Probably not.
Why We Think Time Slows When We’re In Danger
When a person is scared, a brain area called the amygdala becomes more active, laying down an extra set of memories that go along with those normally taken care of by other parts of the brain. In this way, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories. And the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe it took.”
FCC Head Refuses To Delay Media Consolidation Vote
“Facing growing criticism of his agenda and tactics, a defiant Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, refused senators’ requests Thursday to delay a vote next week on his plan to loosen restrictions on owning a newspaper and broadcast station in the same city.”
Why Serious Films Aren’t Making It At The Box Office
“Some argue that the true culprit this fall was the overabundance of serious films, rather than their content or marketing strategy. The problem with this argument is that it’s statistically untrue.”
The Downside Of The Daily Me
“As a result of the Internet, we live increasingly in an era of enclaves and niches — much of it voluntary, much of it produced by those who think they know, and often do know, what we’re likely to like. This raises some obvious questions. If people are sorted into enclaves and niches, what will happen to their views? What are the eventual effects on democracy?”
Italy’s Grand Funk
“These days, for all the outside adoration and all its innate strengths, Italy seems not to love itself. The word here is “malessere,” or malaise, and it implies a collective funk – economic, political and social – summed up in a recent poll: Italians, despite their claim to have mastered the art of living, report themselves the least happy people in Western Europe.”