“Why is English spelling such a tangle? It all started when Latin-speaking missionaries arrived in Britain in the 6th century without enough letters in their alphabet.”
Tag: 12.21.12
To Protect Sistine Chapel, Vatican Will Vacuum Tourists
“The 5 million tourists who visit the Sistine Chapel every year are to be vacuum cleaned and cooled down before entry in an effort to reduce the pollution damaging Michelangelo’s frescoes, the director of the Vatican museums said.”
James Wood’s Battle With Criticism
“We strangely persist in pretending that books are not ruins, not broken columns.”
Have Digital Maps Killed What Maps Mean?
“Maps have always related and realigned our history; increasingly, we’re ceding control of that history to the cold precision of the computer. With this comes great responsibility.”
Why Doesn’t Spotify Give Composers Credit?
“The issue in question-the lack of a “composer” field in Spotify track data and the lackluster job the company has done so far regarding composer attribution, specifically in their “classical music” categories-has been getting an increased amount of attention due to the dogged veracity of Minneapolis-based composer Abbie Betinis.”
Why Is American TV So Obsessed With Post-Apocalyptic Stories?
“These shows are fantasies, but they highlight anxieties about societal dissolution that are all too real.”
How Twitter Is Changing TV
“With surprising speed, Twitter emerged this year as the engine of a revolutionary change in the way we watch, make and think about TV.”
A Pitched Battle For A Henry Moore Sculpture (And Its Sales Proceeds)
One London council wants to sell the $30 million sculpture, but “lawyers for the Art Fund, a national charity, say they have uncovered evidence that the sculpture – through a complex series of dissolutions and transfers among various London municipal entities over several decades – is actually the property of the Borough of Bromley, in Southeast London.”
No, Virginia, Les Miz Is NOT About The French Revolution
“Although the stage show and the movie suggest that the uprising was fought by a handful of students, it was a larger scale affair. One historian estimates as many as 800 dead and wounded among the rebels” of the Uprising of 1832.
California Taxpayers Don’t Go For Money For The Arts
“The state law that added the grant-making Arts Council to the mix for the two years specified that the box would vanish if the option didn’t bring in at least $250,000 from tax returns filed for the 2011 tax year.” And that’s not going to happen.