BBC4 is where most of the BBC’s cultural program now ends up. It is a popular target of critics from all sides. “It does not like to describe itself as highbrow – ‘We always try and avoid that word,’ says a BBC press officer – but it is pitched squarely at the class Keynes referred to as ‘the educated bourgeoisie’.”
Blog
Who Really Invented The Telephone?
Did Alexander Graham Bell really invent the telephone? “Documents marked ‘confidential’ that recently were found buried in the archives of the Science Museum in London suggest British telephone executives covered up the fact that a German science teacher invented a working telephone 13 years before Alexander Graham Bell created a somewhat similar device.”
Pew’s Barnes Connection…
John Anderson wonders if the Pew Charitable Trust’s recent change in legal foundation status is a positive thing for the Barnes Collection. “If indeed under its new identity the Pew can control the Barnes’s purse strings, it will put a whole new complexion on the proposed plan should it be approved by the court. It makes it look less like the ‘rescue’ it has been portrayed as and more like the “takeover” critics (such as myself) have called it. For in controlling the money, the Pew would have de facto control over the Barnes Foundation itself, with a powerful role in determining the future character and direction of the Barnes.”
Screaming At Volcanos
For more than a century art historians have wondered what event inspired Edvard Munch’s most famous painting “The Scream.” Now some astonomers in Texas have come up with a theory based on a major natural event…
The Detroit Symphony’s $2 Million Deficit
Hot off the opening of a new $60 million home, the Detroit Symphony “will announce an operating deficit of nearly $2 million on a $28-million budget at its annual meeting of members on Wednesday, according to people with knowledge of the orchestra’s finances.”
Our Expanding Shelves (Too Many Books?)
Are too many books being published? Well, that depends whether you’re a reader or a publisher. “The most recent figures show that in 2002, total output of new titles and editions in the U.S. grew by nearly 6 percent, to 150,000. General adult fiction exceeded 17,000 – the single strongest category. Juvenile titles topped 10,000, the highest total ever recorded. And there were more than 10,300 new publishers, mostly small or self-publishers. No wonder we’re all running out of shelf space.”
Andrew Davis To Pittsburgh?
Is Chicago Lyric Opera director Andrew Davis shopping for a new job? “Last weekend, the 59-year-old Davis squeezed Friday night and Sunday afternoon performances with the Pittsburgh Symphony into a schedule that included conducting Wagner’s five-hour “Siegfried” in Chicago Saturday night. Pittsburgh’s music director, Mariss Jansons, will be leaving his post at the close of this season after seven years, and last week in an interview with a Pittsburgh newspaper before the concerts, Davis candidly admitted being interested in the position.”
Books On Sale In London
London book stores are slashing prices as Christmas approaches. “The stores usually try to restrict discounting to slower-selling books, keeping chart-toppers at the full price, particularly in the peak month of December. But this year they have been forced by competition from supermarkets to slash prices of their most popular titles.”
David Lynch: $1 Billion For World Peace Center
Filmmaker David Lynch has “lent his famous name and idiosyncratic hairstyle to a project to raise $1 billion on behalf of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru of transcendental meditation who once entranced the Beatles, and who has for the past few decades been striving to build an earthly paradise. The $1 billion is for a meditation centre big enough to hold 8,000 skilled practitioners. Lynch explains that such a critical mass of positive thinking ‘broadcast’ from one spot will be enough to pacify the world.”
US, France Compete For Afghan Gold
Competing groups from France and the US are proposing to tour Afghanistan’s greatest treasure – the Bactrian gold. “The finds from Tillya Tepe, in northern Afghanistan, date from a 2,000-year-old tomb which was discovered in 1978, but they have never been on display for security reasons. The gold alone numbers 20,000 items. Afghanistan still has nowhere with sufficient security to exhibit the material, since the bombed and looted Kabul Museum on the outskirts of town is an extremely damaged building. A touring exhibition would raise money, at least part of which would go to rebuild the museum or establish a new purpose-built museum in the city centre.”