A new Canadian heritage museum – a pet project of outgoing Prime Minister Jean Chretien – won’t cost $90 million as the Prime Minister announced last May; the bill will be at least a third higher. “Officials estimated it will cost $125-million in a letter to the Department of Canadian Heritage prior to the Prime Minister’s announcement. The department had only $90-million to put toward the project, to be built in the century-old Rideau Canal train station near Parliament Hill, so expensive items were taken out of the budget to bring the cost down for the hurried announcement.” However, some of what was taken out was essential to the project – humidity controls, anyone?
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Concert Tickets Of The Future (They’re In Your Phone)
You buy your ticket, and a message with concert details and a bar code is sent to your cell phone. At the concert you whip out your phone, and a bar code scanner reads your ticket information.
Hating My McJob
McDonald’s is complaining to dictionary publisher Merriam Webster for adding a new word. The word is “mcjob”, defined as low-paying, dead-end work. “In an open letter to Merriam-Webster, McDonald’s CEO Jim Cantalupo said the term is “an inaccurate description of restaurant employment” and “a slap in the face to the 12 million men and women” who work in the restaurant industry.”
Pacifica Ballet Leader Quits
After 15 years, Molly Lynch quit as director of Southern California’s Ballet Pacifica in October. There have been rumors she was pressured to leave by the company’s board. “No one should overlook, however, that Lynch has laid down a terrific foundation on which to grow a bigger and artistically distinguished company, and it would be a waste of criminal proportions to throw it all away.”
“Weapons Of Singing Destruction”
Arab music videos are sexy and alluring. But they’re also controversial in the Arab world. “This is a direct challenge to the forces of traditional Arab culture, which in many places remains an environment of constricted, traditional, and narrowly defined identities, often subsumed in group identities that hinge on differences with, and antagonism toward, other groups. Many Arab observers of these videos recognize the nature of that challenge, which is why one critic calls these videos ‘weapons of singing destruction’.”
When Pop Drives Theatre
“Back in the days of Rodgers and Hammerstein, there wasn’t much of a difference between showtunes and pop tunes. The songs sung from Broadway stages had a multigenerational appeal, received wide radio airplay and were the staples of Your Hit Parade. Today, that trend is reversed: Instead of Broadway driving pop music, it’s the other way around.”
Protest Planned For Israeli Dance Company
Palestinian supporters say they are planning to disrupt an appearance in Scotland by an Israeli dance company. “Last year, around 700 of us made sure Israel’s under 21 football team lost their game against Scotland. I think disrupting a ballet will be a piece of cake.”
Hollywood Needs To Change (Or Else)
Why are the entertainment companies so resistant to change? “The entertainment business prides itself on absorbing and exploiting virtually every youth culture trend. But when it comes to revamping its business model, Hollywood can be as resistant to change as Detroit automakers or the steel industry. When TV sets appeared in living rooms in the late 1940s, movie studios panicked, treating the new medium with the same disdain and distrust that executives today have for baby-faced Internet downloaders. How could we possibly survive, the old moguls moaned, trying to compete with something that is free? Hollywood survived and flourished in the new medium.”
College Aid: Rich Get Richer?
“The US government typically gives the wealthiest private universities, which often serve the smallest percentage of low-income students, significantly more financial aid money than their struggling counterparts with much greater shares of poor students.
Such disparities have been a sore point among universities for years, leftovers from an era when federal money was given to colleges on an individual, almost negotiable basis. Now, for the first time in more than two decades, the nation’s financial aid officers are calling for the imbalances to be wiped away, replaced by a system that steers financial aid toward the universities that poor students actually attend, rather than those with the biggest reputations.”
Where’s The “People” In The “People’s Opera”?
New York City Opera has been “aggressively lobbying to be named the flagship institution in the new cultural presence at ground zero. To its evident surprise, it has encountered resistance. As of this writing, no decision has been announced, but the downtown powers seem to want a greater diversity of artistic expression. City Opera represented that last flush of idealism in which the common man was to be bettered by high culture. What caused the erosion of that old sense of obligation, and why does our ‘people’s opera’ no longer seem popular — or even welcome — at ground zero? The answer, not to be judgmental about it, is the rise of popular culture.”