Librarians in two Mississippi counties have banned Jon Stewart’s best-selling “America (The Book)” because of a picture in it depicting the Supreme Court justices naked. “The book by Stewart and the writers of ‘The Daily Show,’ the Comedy Central fake-news program he hosts, was released in September. It has spent 15 weeks on The New York Times best seller list for hardcover nonfiction, and was named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the industry trade magazine.”
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TV Right To Your Cell Phone
“With viewers increasingly abandoning TV for the Internet and video games, studios, and other media outfits are rushing to jump into the fledgling market for cellular video. In just the last month the likes of Fox, Warner Bros. (TWX ), and ESPN have all signed deals to bring everything from sports highlights to comic books to super-small screens.”
Looking For The Great Scottish Musical
“Sir Cameron MackIntosh has joined the Scottish Executive in funding the Highland Quest, a competition to find a piece of musical theatre to mark the Highland Year of Culture in 2007. The winning entry will be staged at a new 250-seat studio venue at Eden Court Theatre in Inverness, which is undergoing a £15 million refurbishment, before going on tour, possibly as far as London’s West End.”
Architects Rush To Help
Architects around the world are volunteering to help in the tsunami-affected region. “Many feel that sitting at a screen sweating over the design of handrail details for the next cute downtown boutique hotel just doesn’t make sense when more than 150,000 people have lost their lives, more than five million people have been made homeless and whole towns have been swept away.”
MoMA Neighbors Unhappy With Museum Views
“In a case of life imitating art, the renovated museum, with a clear glass floor-to-ceiling wall looking out onto West 54th Street, gives its 10,000 daily visitors a bird’s eye look into the upmarket apartments across the road. Even in a city where gazing into other people’s apartments is an acceptable pastime, the residents of West 54th, who include the former Beatle Paul McCartney, have had enough.”
Goosing Book Sales – Two Authors’ Saga
A couple of scholars write a book, then watch as it languishes near the bottom of the Amazon sales rankings. How to get it higher? How about visiting Barnes & Noble stores and placing it in more prominent position? Begging producers for interviews? Taping your own readings complete with laugh tracks?..
Louvre, Pompidou To Open Branches
Two big French museums are opening satellite branches. “The Louvre is to open a $100 million satellite in the northern French city of Lens, near Lille, in 2009 and will occupy a new annex at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta for three years from 2006. Still, the Louvre’s director, Henri Loyrette, has said he considers Britain’s Tate to be a closer role model than the Guggenheim. The Tate, founded a century ago on London’s Millbank, now runs three other museums in Britain, but it has no permanent presence abroad. In contrast, while the Pompidou will inaugurate a new $68 million branch in the northeastern French city of Metz in 2007 it is also looking beyond France.”
Da Vinci Code Fans Endangering Chapel
Fans of The Da Vinci Code are endangering the historic Roslyn Chapel in Scotland. So many are visiting that the chapel is showing wear. “The fragile carvings in the 15th-century Midlothian church risk being damaged by people brushing against them and the humidity from their breath.”
Major Painting Theft In Netherlands
A number of 17th Century paintings worth 10 million euros were stolen from a Dutch museum Sunday. “Up to 20 Dutch paintings and numerous silver items were taken during the Sunday night break-in at Westfries Museum in Hoorn. ‘The heart of our collection is gone, including top artworks of national importance’.”
Is Science Being Undermined By Religion?
“As a student of the history and philosophy of science, I have been watching with concern how modern science itself — perhaps the single most powerful force for secularisation — is being re–coded as sacred, either as affirming the Bible or the Vedas, or as ‘lower knowledge’ of ‘dead matter’, in need of spiritualisation. As an old–time partisan of the Enlightenment and scientific temper, I have been watching with concern as my fellow intellectuals and activists, in the United States and India, who identify themselves with social justice, anti–imperialism, women’s rights and sustainable development, have themselves paved the way for re–enchantment or re–sacralisation of science.”