“Italian engineers have completed work to prevent the collapse of the cliff niches which house the remaining fragments of Afghanistan’s ancient Bamiyan Buddhas which were destroyed by the Taliban.”
Blog
Cold Weather Equals Good Violins
The wood used by the old master Italian violin makers was special – the product of a mini ice age in Europe. “Trees grow slower in colder weather, producing denser wood for that season. So, narrower tree rings grow in cold weather than rings grown in warmer seasons. Narrow tree rings would not only strengthen the violin but would increase the wood’s density, the researchers said. The change in climate therefore made a difference to the violins’ tone and brilliance, they said.”
What Becomes A Plinth
There are four plinths in Trafalgar Square, but one of the pedestals has been empty since 1837. Now there’s a plan to rotate art onto the plinths, and the artists have been selected and their projects chosen. So what’s going up? Their work includes “a car covered with bird droppings, a statue of a handicapped, pregnant woman, a sculpture of anti-war demonstrators and a pigeon hotel.”
Fun With Plinths
Proposals for Trafalgar’s empty plinth are startlingly different from one another. “By 7.54am yesterday somebody had posted a plea on the Fourth Plinth website seeking the public’s reaction: ‘Put something fun there’.”
Class Warfare Meets The Digital Divide
The gap between countries with ready access to information technologies and the internet, and those without, is rapidly becoming the next likely staging ground in a global class war of haves and have-nots. A summit in Geneva is attempting to identify some potential solutions before the problem explodes into an open conflict which could result in the have-not countries setting up their own semi-global networks in an effort to sidestep American ‘net dominance. But the major obstacle to finding an equitable solution appears to be that the countries with all the clout – most notably, the U.S. – have little to no interest in sharing their power.
Comeback In St. Louis?
Two years ago, the smart money in the orchestral world said that the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra would be lucky to exist in 2004, and that even if it survived, its downward spiral of debt and disorganization would cost it its place in the top ranks of American orchestras. Since that dismal time, the SLSO has scrambled back from the fiscal precipice, shored up its organization, and, this week, hired one of the most celebrated young conductors of his generation, David Robertson, as music director. With Robertson on board, the orchestra is convinced that it will shortly complete one of the great comebacks in industry history.
Mixed Results For Ontario Theater Fests
What with the down American economy and the SARS scare keeping many tourists out of Ontario, the last couple of years have been a struggle for the Shaw and Stratford festivals, southern Ontario’s duelling theater showcases. The numbers on the latest season are out this week, and Stratford posted a modest surplus, while Shaw announced its first deficit in a decade. Still, Stratford exceeded 600,000 ticket-buyers for the fourth year in a row, even after having to cancel six shows as a result of the massive power outage which hit the northeast in August.
TIFF Picks A New Director
“Noah Cowan, who began his cinematic career at age 15 selling tickets for the Toronto International Film Festival, was crowned the fete’s new co-director yesterday. This self-described ‘child of the festival,’ was one of 12 American and Canadian candidates who applied for the job, one of the top film-related postings on the planet.” Cowan was previously associate director of programming for TIFF, before leaving in 1997 to head up a distribution company in New York.
Battle Of The Network Stars At The 49th Parallel
Canada has always been concerned about the risk to its homegrown culture from the American pop culture juggernaut. But these days, the situation, particularly in the television realm, seems dire: the public funding upon which Canadian TV writers and producers rely is at record low levels, and Canadians seem increasingly willing to abandon homegrown product for American shows. With most Canadians now able to receive all the major American broadcast networks on cable, and many additional American programs being rebroadcast on Canadian channels, Canada’s TV industry is at a loss as to how to recapture its audience.
Filmmakers For Global Peace
Global peace may sound like an awfully lofty goal, especially for a group of artists with little to no political clout, but no one has ever accused filmmakers of allowing harsh reality to stand in the way of idealism. “This week through Sunday, Orlando is host to a cultural event that would seem much more happily scheduled in the 1960s, and maybe better in Woodstock, N.Y.: the first Global Peace Film Festival. It’s the creation of Shaikh Abdul Alishtari, a genuine Moroccan sheik and founder and CEO of the Orlando-based GlobalProtector.net Web filter company, who came up with the idea just before the latest Iraq war.”