Michelle Cottle: “[M]y six-year-old friends and I … were years away from understanding the concept of ‘Jiggle TV,’ much less why it might be a bad thing. We liked the guns and the gowns and the karate kicks and the sight of a bunch of really pretty ladies getting the best of the bad guys. And, oh yes, we loved the fact that, week after week, the chicks dashed out to save the day while their faithful handler, John Bosley, functioned as a genial, glorified manservant.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Oldest Musical Instrument, A 35,000-Year-Old Flute, Found In Germany
“Archaeologists Wednesday reported the discovery last fall of a bone flute and two fragments of ivory flutes that they said represented the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture.” The instrument “was uncovered in sediments a few feet away from the carved figurine of a busty, nude woman, also around 35,000 years old.”
Technology Reveals Parthenon’s Original Colors
Not all the news from the Acropolis is about that brand-new museum. Using new imaging techniques, researchers for the British Museum have finally discovered traces of the pigments which scholars have long suspected were used to paint the Athenian temple’s friezes and sculptures.
Live Nation Looks To Sell Its UK Theatres
“The global live entertainment group, which sold its US theatres in a $90 million deal in 2007, is accepting bids for a package of 17 UK venues. This includes two of the West End’s largest and most profitable sites – the Apollo Victoria and Lyceum theatres. […] A total of more than 30,000 theatre seats across venues in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh, among others, are on offer.”
Michael Jackson Dies Of Cardiac Arrest At 50
“[A] child Motown sensation who grew into a moonwalking megastar … the entertainer sold millions of records, earning worldwide adoration in the 1980s. […] For all his many successes as a child and young man, Jackson’s later life devolved into a series of tabloid headlines, bizarre plastic surgeries, and more courtroom appearances than hit songs.”
‘The Boy Who Knew Too Much’ – Michael Jackson’s Breaching Of Boundaries
Ann Powers: “He always seemed to defy gravity, as a dancer whose signature move was so incomprehensibly graceful that it earned the extraterrestrial title ‘the Moonwalk,’ a singer whose tenor was high but strong, a rhythmic instrument that went as sweet and tender as a clarinet on the long notes – and as a man whose physical presence was first androgynous and then seemingly cyborgian, forcing his astounded public to puzzle over their assumptions about race, gender and age.”
‘What’s A Poor Newscaster To Do?’ The Problems Of Eulogizing Michael Jackson On Television
“How does one eulogize a superstar who, even without the various accusations of pedophilia, was something of a freak? Or was, as several talking heads put it, ‘a troubled individual.’ … It all made the standard news loop eulogy a little … complicated.”
Where Heaven Comes From
“The idea that Christians go to heaven upon dying isn’t found in the oldest books in the New Testament, such as the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Mark. In this excerpt from the new book The Evolution of God, Robert Wright suggests that early Christianity adopted the idea from a competing religion in the Roman Empire.”
NY Public Library Goes Backstage At The Ballets Russes
“While visitors to the NYPL [exhibit] will not see Nijinsky dance, they can see the famous diary he kept as he was going mad. Brilliant set and costume designs by Leon Bakst and Natalia Goncharova, plus photographs, musical manuscripts and old BBC films, place the Ballets Russes’ achievement in context, supplying a perspective that the theatergoers who flocked to its productions never had.”
BBC To Reveal Pay And Expenses Of 100 Top Execs
Presumably in response to the MP expenses scandal, “The BBC is to … publish an exact breakdown of pay, by name, of the top 50 earners in BBC management and the [50] top decision makers – a group that he said has yet to be defined precisely – within the organisation.”