“An employee of a philharmonic in western Poland was charged with murder in the double homicide of a young female harpist and a security guard inside the orchestra’s building.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Ai Weiwei’s Next Project: Heavy-Metal Rock
“The burly and bearded Ai said 81 days in secretive detention in 2011, which sparked an international outcry, triggered his foray into music.” The album, titled Divina Commedia and due for release at the end of this month, will be distributed online.
Arthur Conan Doyle Estate Sued For ‘Copyfraud’
Leslie Klinger, an attorney and Sherlock Holmes scholar, has filed a legal case against the (notably litigious) Doyle estate for falsely asserting copyright over material that is actually in the public domain.
Rebuilding The Sites Of Mass Shootings
The Sikh temple in Wisconsin repaired everything but one bullet hole, next to which it placed a plaque reading “We Are One”. The multiplex in Aurora erased the two screening rooms where the murders happened, turning them into an “extreme digital” venue. That Pennsylvania Amish community razed the schoolhouse and planted the site with clover. And the summer camp near Oslo engaged designers to work an architectural transformation.
‘Negro’ Is Dead, Long Live ‘Negro’
Sandy Banks: “The Census Bureau announced last month that the word ‘Negro’ is being dropped from its lexicon. … Erasing the word might seem to census officials politically correct in this racially sensitive time. But it feels like they’re trying to scrub a chapter from a story that is uniquely American, and undeniably mine.”
Disney Studios Gives Up Hand-Drawn Animation
“Disney, the Hollywood titan which brought the world classics such as Fantasia, Bambi and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, has admitted it has no current plans to make hand drawn animated films.”
Another Star Is Born? On Opening Night, L.A. Opera Understudy Goes On At Last Minute
Curtain time was 12 minutes away when soprano Elisabete Matos, set to sing Senta in the company’s new staging of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, realized that she was developing a chest cold and, as conductor James Conlon put it, “was not breathing the way she needed to sing.” Enter the heroine …
China’s Publishing Industry Discovers Literary Agents
“The need for literary agents – a vital third party between publishers and writers – has become a hot topic in Chinese publishing since a February announcement by the country’s first Nobel laureate in literature.”
Kristin Chenoweth Forced To Cancel UK Tour (And Boy, Is She Pissed)
Why? As she tweeted this weekend, “heres why: no tickets, no work permits, and nothing done. Thats why.”
How Dogs Think Like People
“Dogs are the only species that have been identified to date that learn words in the same way as human children – by using inferences. … The second thing is that they make use of human gestures at a similar level of flexibility to young infants.”