“While online video streaming in the U.S. has shown that the Internet can be effectively monetized by film and television, the fear of piracy in Russia has limited the spread of such services here. Only now, a few companies are taking the plunge and offering online streaming services, and The Moscow Times spoke to three of them to get a sense of the online video market in Russia today.”
English Speakers Are Bad at Identifying and Describing Smells
“But is this a problem with our noses, or with English?” Or simply a matter of practice, compared with hunter-gatherers?
Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam Help Save Detroit’s Art
“Foundations seeking to protect Detroit’s public pensions and its art museum in the city’s bankruptcy process raised their pledge total to $370 million on Tuesday with the addition of a $40 million commitment from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.”
When Social Scientists Study String Quartets
“Scientists have come up with a way to reveal the pecking order within a string quartet. A team from the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Birmingham found that analysing how individual musicians vary their timing to follow the rest of the group can indicate a hierarchy.”
Alain de Botton’s Idea To Fix The News
De Botton thinks news should be more like novels, but what does he think news is? “The determined pursuit of the anomalous,” he writes at one point, before deciding that he wants to leave the definition “deliberately vague”.
Spotify King – This Songwriter Records 20 Songs A Day
Over the past six years he has composed and digitally released over 14,000 songs. In a single day, he says, he records between five and 100 tracks, though he averages 20.
Ticket Pricing Error Hurt Met Opera, Led To Drop In Sales
“Last February, Met officials announced a reversal of the price increase, acknowledging that their foray into dynamic pricing had had unintended consequences. The financial disclosure, filed as part of the requirements of a $100 million bond offering in 2013, shows average attendance fell to 79% of the opera house’s capacity—even lower than officials projected last February.”
Who Knew? Poets Are Hot (So Say Advertisers)
Poets are being used to sell things. Poets are celebrity endorsers whose endorsements seem to mean something.
What Shakespeare Knew About Science
Scholars are examining Shakespeare’s interest in the scientific discoveries of his time – what he knew, when he knew it, and how that knowledge might be reflected in his work.
Do We Really Need Commas?
You “could take [the commas out of] a great deal of modern American texts and you would probably suffer so little loss of clarity that there could even be a case made for not using commas at all.”
2013 Costa Book Award to Nathan Filer’s ‘The Shock of the Fall’
Filer, a mental health nurse, takes the £30,000 prize for his the first novel, narrated by an English boy who recounts his descent into schizophrenia following his younger brother’s death.
Minnesota Dance Theatre Board Resigns En Masse
A statement signed by the board said “the organization remains solvent and critically successful. We hope that the company and school will continue to succeed in the hands of a new board and the artistic director.”
‘Sensory Fiction’ – Researchers Develop Wearable Book
“It’s straight out of the pages of science fiction: a ‘wearable’ book, which uses temperature controls and lighting to mimic the experiences of a story’s protagonist, has been dreamed up by academics at MIT.” (includes video)
London Theatres Report Their Tenth Year In A Row Of Record Box Office
This means London box office receipts have more than doubled since the turn of the century. In 2000, total box office across SOLT members was £286.6 million.
Strad Stolen in Milwaukee Mugging
“A 300-year-old Stradivarius violin on loan to Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond was stolen during an armed robbery after a performance by Almond at Wisconsin Lutheran College.”
When Pete Seeger Faced Down the House Un-American Activities Committee
“I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions … make me any less of an American. I will tell you about my songs, but I am not interested in telling you who wrote them, and I will tell you about my songs, and I am not interested in who listened to them.” (includes complete transcript)
Complete Works of Ben Jonson Now Available Online
“The new Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online, produced by a team of 30 scholars and available partly on an open-access basis, presents the texts of all his plays, masques, poems, letters and criticism in an interactive digital format, along with hundreds of supporting documents and musical scores and a bibliography.”
Social Activist Dance Company Gets $3M From Agnes Varis Trust
The estate of the late pharmaceuticals mogul and philanthropist “will give $3 million to Gibney Dance, the formerly all-women dance troupe that is known for its social activism and is about to expand its operations to 280 Broadway in Lower Manhattan.”
José Emilio Pacheco, World-Renowned Mexican Author, Dead at 74 After Fall
The Cervantes Prize winner “emerged in the 1960s as one of a group of socially concerned poets and authors who addressed burning issues like pollution, poverty and governmental bureaucracy.”
Northern Ireland Town Council Unbans Play Banned for Blasphemy
“A Northern Irish borough council has reversed its ban on the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Bible: the Complete Word of God (Abridged), allowing scheduled performances in Newtownabbey’s Theatre at the Mill later this week to go ahead as planned.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.28.14
Introducing Culture Crash
Source: CultureCrash | Published on 2014-01-28
Source: CultureCrash | Published on 2014-01-28
Asking A Lot From Visual Art
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2014-01-29
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2014-01-29
Don’t say it’s dead
Source: Sandow | Published on 2014-01-28
Source: Sandow | Published on 2014-01-28
Live Versus The Machine (Let’s Not Take The Live Experience For Granted)
Source: diacritical | Published on 2014-01-28
Source: diacritical | Published on 2014-01-28
Power of protest: Scotsman reinstates classical reviews
Source: Slipped Disc | Published on 2014-01-28
Source: Slipped Disc | Published on 2014-01-28
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Why No One At All Pays Any Attention To The Canadian Screen Awards
“At a glance, there are about 4,000 nominations. Little wonder it takes about a week of events to hand them all out (the gala event happens in March, during March Break, naturally, when a bunch of people have fled the country) and it takes loads of time to read and assess them. As a result, days later, broadcasters begin issuing press releases announcing that they have garnered hundreds of nominations. Nobody reads these releases because, you know, life is short.”
Pete Seeger, 94
“For more than 50 years, Mr. Seeger roamed America, singing on street corners and in saloons, migrant labor camps, hobo jungles, union halls, schools, churches and concert auditoriums. He helped write, arrange or revive” some of the best-known folk and protest songs in modern American history.
A Squirrel Takes the Newbery Medal, A Train Engine Takes the Caldecott
Kate DiCamillo’s Flora and Ulysses, the story of a young girl’s friendship with a magic squirrel, and Brian Floca’s Locomotive, about the beginnings of the transcontinental railroad, have won this year’s John Newbery and Randolph Caldecott Medals, America’s highest honors for children’s literature.