A massive blaze that destroyed part of the back lot at Universal Studios was accidentally ignited by workers using a blowtorch on the roof of a movie set building facade, fire officials said.
Month: June 2008
The High Cost Of Dance On A Body
According to a recent study in the Journal of Orthopaedic Sports Physical Therapy, the annual injury rate at classical ballet companies ranges from 67 percent to 95 percent.
Building-Sized Music
“David Byrne, who interprets the term artist with marvelous expansiveness, doesn’t actually play the building in Playing the Building; it’s visitors who make the sounds. He made the architecture orchestral–feeding air into flutelike heating pipes, triggering hammers on cast-iron columns, and vibrating motors against ceiling beams as if drawing a bow across the strings of a giant fiddle.”
A Call To Reform Dancers’ Pay On London’s West End
“If you stay in a show, you get a percentage rise every year, that’s what they do. They give you so much for staying a second year or third year. But as dancers get older and older, every time they go to a new show, they start off at square one again. It is quite hard for them. There does not seem to be any provision for experienced dancers as they get older.”
Ten World Problems That Can Be Fixed
“Eight leading economists, including five Nobelists, were asked to prioritize 30 different proposed solutions to ten of the world’s biggest problems. The proposed solutions were developed by more than 50 specialist scholars over the past two years and were presented as reports to the panel over the past week.”
A Future In Which Technology Will Fix Everything
Ray Kurzweil “sees biology, medicine, energy and other fields being revolutionized by information technology. His graphs already show the beginning of exponential progress in nanotechnology, in the ease of gene sequencing, in the resolution of brain scans. With these new tools, he says, by the 2020s we’ll be adding computers to our brains and building machines as smart as ourselves.”
The Book Collection That Ate Me
“I recognize that we now have many ways to convey, store, and reproduce the sorts of matter that formerly were monopolized by books. I like to think that I’m no bookworm, egghead, four-eyed paleface library rat. I often engage in activities that have no reference to the printed words. I realize that books are not the entire world, even if they sometimes seem to contain it. But I need the stupid things.”
Second City Founder Paul Sills, 80
Paul Sills, one of the founders of the improvisational comedy group “The Second City,” which has turned out some of America’s best-known comedians, died Monday. Second City helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Stephen Colbert and Mike Myers.
When The Recording Company Is Your Agent Too (Oh, Oh!)
So Universal wants to be both the recording company and the artist manager. But “it is worrisome for presenters and management to be the same. Managers always think they’re the artist. They think they own the artist, which they don’t. They work for the artist. The artist has free choice. The artist can leave. The commercial interests want the stadium appearances, the glamour. They don’t want the artist to do what the artist does.”
The Decline Of Radio?
“Just when radio cries out for creative revival, it is instead slipping into a disgruntled decline. Today, hardly anyone turns on the radio expecting to be lured into intimate obsessions with voices that return each night, baring their souls and insisting on a relationship with the listener.”