Orhan Pamuk is Turkey’s most famous writer. Turkish authorities now say he will “not face charges over saying in an interview with a German newspaper that Turkey’s military was sometimes a threat to democracy. “He is already on trial under Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code for remarks made to a Swiss newspaper earlier this year about the massacre of Armenians and Kurds. Article 301 makes it an offence to insult the ‘Turkish identity’ or state institutions, including the armed forces.”
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The REALLY Small Screen
“The next 12 months looks set to be the year mobile TV takes off. While the buzz around it is similar to the hype for 3G services, there is much greater optimism that TV will live up to its promise.” Some expect “about 50 million users of mobile TV by 2009, generating an estimated £3.5bn in revenue. Content that feeds off existing shows or offer extra behind-the-scene video is likely to be widely available initially but eventually there will be bespoke made-for-mobile shows.”
Why Hollywood Doesn’t Cast Women Over 40
There are few if any parts for them, and that’s always been how the industry works. “It worked out that by the 1930s a woman could be a star into her mid 30s or even her mid-40s. As we progressed past World War II and up to the present time it got to be a pretty standard rule of thumb that once a movie actress got to be over 40 then supposedly, psychologically, America’s young kids didn’t want to see her playing leading roles so they wrote fewer parts for them.”
Music Biz Moving Online
Sales of CDs dropped seven percent in 2005, but downloads more than doubled. “Sales stood at 602.2 million during the year, down from 650.8 million in 2004, report analysts Nielsen Soundscan. Downloaded music reached 332.7 million for 2005, an increase of 148% on the previous year. More than 95% of music is sold in CD format, with Mariah Carey and 50 Cent proving the year’s biggest sellers.”
A Quantum Experience
“Nary a week goes by that does not bring news of another feat of quantum trickery once only dreamed of in thought experiments: particles (or at least all their properties) being teleported across the room in a microscopic version of Star Trek beaming; electrical “cat” currents that circle a loop in opposite directions at the same time; more and more particles farther and farther apart bound together in Einstein’s spooky embrace now known as “entanglement.” At the University of California, Santa Barbara, researchers are planning an experiment in which a small mirror will be in two places at once.”
The Culture Of Texting
“About 7.3 billion text messages are sent within the United States every month, up from 2.9 billion a month a year ago. Compared with an ink-and-paper letter, messages may seem disposable. The relative inconvenience of typing out words using a numeric keypad — the letter “c,” for example, requires three presses of the “2” button — and the brevity of the message may seem a hostile environment for heartfelt discussion. But the discipline of having to distill thoughts into short bulletins, then waiting to receive the response, allows users to pour more meaning into the writing, some text-message users say.”
Understanding Israel’s Book Market
“Israel leads the world in per-capita new titles per year – more than 4,000, or about 70 a week. ‘I think that there is no need to publish more than 1,500 to 2,000 new books a year in Israel, tops. In France, 25,000 new books are published every year, but its population is 10 times the size of Israel’s. In other words, they publish about half the quantity that we do, and France is a cultural superpower. Everyone there reads books on the streets and in the Metro’.”
Why You Should Put Off Till Tomorrow…
“Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it. But this is, strictly speaking, impossible. There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you’re not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.”
You Just Can’t Find Good Help These Days
“In the face of a national shortage of skilled technical staff, one leading regional [UK] theatre has launched a more traditional apprenticeship scheme to train the wig makers and lighting designers of the future. The Birmingham Repertory Theatre is giving six people, aged 16 to 21, training for 18 months in many departments including sound, lighting, make-up, wardrobe and stage management.”
Rats Die In The Name Of Art
An anti-animal cruelty group in Northern Ireland is up in arms over the suffocation of 90 white rats in a supposed piece of performance art in Belfast, and a decision by authorities not to prosecute the perpetrator. “Blood stains indicated that the animals had turned on each other after being dropped [into a see-through but airtight case.] The design made escape impossible.” Prosecutors announced this week that they lacked sufficient evidence for a prosecution.