One of the historians charging Dan Brown with stealing key elements of their work for the Da Vinci Code, concedes a major point. “Your castigatory assertion… that Mr Brown reached all the same historical conjecture as you is untruthful,” said Brown’s lawyer. Mr Baigent replied: “I would concede that ‘all’ is far too strong. I would say ‘most’… We over-egged [exaggerated] that one.”
Month: March 2006
Peruvian Prez May Press Bush On Yale’s Machu Picchu Collection
The dispute between Yale University and the nation of Peru over antiquities from Machu Picchu is getting hot, and Peruvian authorities are quite serious about forcing Yale to return objects they claim were illegally looted. “This showdown over national patrimony, private property and academic inquiry comes as Alejandro Toledo, the first indigenous president of Peru, is scheduled Friday to meet with the Yale graduate who inhabits the White House.”
New Toronto Opera House Gets $5m Gift – Finally
A former president of the board of the Canadian Opera Company has stepped forward with a $5 million gift toward the construction of a new opera house in Toronto. “In the tradition of the melodramatic, [Hal] Jackman waited until the final act to make his move. Toronto’s long-awaited opera house at Queen and University is now within months of completion, with opening gala concerts set for June.” The project still needs to raise another $30 million before all is said and done.
NDP Takes On CBC
Canada’s third political party (the New Democrats, or NDP) is calling for changes to the CBC’s governance structure, with the intention of ending the tradition of choosing the broadcaster’s chief executive through patronage.
Montreal’s FilmFest Phoenix: Alive And Quite Angry
The legal battles are continuing between two Montreal-based film festivals, each of which wants to be known as the city’s signature fest. The longtime director of the Montreal World Film Festival alleges a widespread conspiracy to ruin him and kill off the festival, and the fact that he appears already to have won the war hasn’t stopped the seemingly endless parade of lawsuits.
Joffrey Al Fresco
“The Joffrey Ballet and the City of Chicago are teaming up for ‘Come Dance With Us,’ a week of free events in Millennium Park this summer as part of the troupe’s 50th anniversary celebration. The free events, to be held June 13-18, include a Joffrey performance at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, two outdoor concerts with the Grant Park Orchestra at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, a bootdance spectacle in the outdoor Crown Fountain involving more than a dozen high school students, a parade of characters from ‘The Nutcracker’ and a late-night dance lesson to live music.”
Potter Apology Could Fetch Thousands At Auction
“A letter from Beatrix Potter to a young fan apologising for the quality of one of her books, is expected to fetch up to £2,500 at auction in Exeter. The four-page letter to Joy Shapland was written by the Peter Rabbit author in 1913. In it, Potter apologises for her book The Tale of Pigland Bland, explaining that she had been feeling poorly.”
Spitzer’s Anti-Payola Crusade Marches On
“The nation’s fourth-largest radio company, Entercom Communications Corp., traded airtime for gifts and payments in a payola scam that included formalized programs to sell airplay to record labels, according to a suit filed Wednesday by New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer. The suit’s most serious allegations focus on Entercom’s ‘CD Preview’ and ‘CD Challenge’ programs, in which radio executives allegedly solicited payments to improve a song’s position on national airtime charts.”
MN Orch To Offer Free Online Concert Recordings
Following in the footsteps of other American orchestras which have begun to embrace online media, the Minnesota Orchestra has announced a partnership with Minnesota Public Radio, under which some of the orchestra’s live weekly broadcasts will be archived on MPR’s web site, where listeners will be able to listen to them, free of charge, for up to a year. MPR has already been offering live streaming audio of the popular Friday night broadcasts for several years, but the orchestra hopes that the free archived streams will increase its profile outside its home region.
McManus: Latest Louisville Proposal Doesn’t Add Up
The board of the Louisville Orchestra has made a new contract offer to its musicians which it says is less severe than its original plan to move 21 of the orchestra’s musicians from full-time to part-time status. But the plan involves paying $5,000 bonuses to 19 musicians who would subsequently have their salaries cut to part-time levels, and AJ blogger Drew McManus wonders where the board is planning to get $95,000 for bonuses when they claim not to have enough money to continue operating past March 31 of this year.