Category: today’s top story

“The California wildfires are posing a serious threat to the historic Mount Wilson Observatory, which was designed by D.H. Burnham & Co, the firm of the great Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. … Firefighters are quoted as saying it isn’t a matter of if the fire will reach Mount Wilson, but a matter of when.”

“Seattle’s theater scene is busy with talk about the work drop-off. Though no one expects every role to be filled here, most are stunned that their own work options went south so quickly.”

Yale University Press has backed down from publishing reproductions of cartoons that appeared in a Danish newspaper in 2005 and led to Muslim rioting and deadly violence. The book is about the controversies. The publisher says its advisers have advised against it.

“As a reporter for Vanity Fair magazine, Mr. Dunne was perhaps the country’s foremost chronicler of crimes among the privileged. He developed his journalistic specialty in a painfully personal way, when Tina Brown, the newly installed editor of the magazine, asked Mr. Dunne to cover the 1983 Los Angeles trial of a man charged with killing a promising young actress. The actress was Mr. Dunne’s 22-year-old daughter, Dominique Dunne.”

“Perhaps it’s the momentousness of the task at hand, or maybe it’s trepidation in a new environment, but Landesman — somewhat uncharacteristically — is proceeding cautiously.” Even so, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts “is an unabashed hawk on the issue of money; increased funding, he said, is one of the barriers the NEA needs to overcome if it intends to once more lead the country’s sprawling network of artists and arts organizations.”

Technology minister Stephen Timms “proposes that alongside measures to block access to illegal downloading sites and throttling connection speeds for repeat offenders, persistent filesharers should also have their internet connections terminated.” Opponents of the measure warn that it would “restrict fundamental rights” and might be illegal.

Brooklyn-based start-up Kickstarter “uses the Web to match aspiring da Vincis and Spielbergs with mini-Medicis who are willing to chip in a few dollars toward their projects. Unlike similar sites that simply solicit donations, patrons on Kickstarter get an insider’s access to the projects they finance, and in most cases, some tangible memento of their contribution. The artists and inventors, meanwhile, are able to gauge in real time the commercial appeal of their ideas before they invest a lot of effort — and cash.”

“How many of our most joyful memories have been created in front of a screen? If we are to step off this hurtling machine, we must reassert principles that have been lost in the blur. It is time to launch a manifesto for a slow communication movement, a push back against the machines and the forces that encourage us to remain connected to them.”

“On Monday, the museum was to close its doors for extensive renovations and expansion. Its collection of 5,000 original works by Pablo Picasso will be stored in high-security government warehouses, and lending of works to other venues will be curtailed until the museum reopens.”

“Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo are planning to join a coalition of nonprofit groups, individuals and library associations to oppose a proposed class-action settlement giving Google the rights to commercialize digital copies of millions of books.”