“Based in a set of former cowsheds in the Yorkshire Dales, a team of experienced piano salesmen is travelling to Germany this week to launch the first of a range of uprights and grands which will have a production run of 50 in its first year. Cavendish pianos, named after the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, who own the premises in Bolton Abbey, bring British-made instruments back to the high street market for the first time since Yamaha moved production of its Kemble pianos to the far east in 2009.”
Tag: 03.19.12
What Happens When Computers Write Our Stories For Us?
Forbes–one of financial journalism’s most venerable institutions–now employs a company called Narrative Science to automatically generate online articles about what to expect from upcoming corporate earnings statements. Just feed it some statistics and, within seconds, the clever software produces highly readable stories. Or, as Forbes puts it, “Narrative Science, through its proprietary artificial intelligence platform, transforms data into stories and insights.”
British Music Has Its Best Year In US In A Decade
“British artists accounted for 11.7% of all albums sold in the US in 2011, the BPI said, up from 9.8% in 2010. Adele’s second album 21 led the pack, selling 5.8 million copies, followed by Mumford and Sons’ Sigh No More, which sold 1.4 million. A total of 30 albums by UK acts sold more than 100,000 copies in the US.”
Ballet San Antonio Scales Back Season
The final program of 2011-12 has been cut from two performances to one (at a smaller theater); 14 of 19 dancers have been laid off, though several may be re-hired this fall.
When Hollywood’s Finest Filmed The Nazi Death Camps
“John Ford was the Academy Award-winning director of The Grapes of Wrath and Westerns starring John Wayne. George Stevens was known for comedies featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They would make history, at Nuremberg, with the first documentary film ever created for submission as evidence in a trial.”
Thinking With Noam Chomsky
“Why can everyone learn Portuguese? Are some aspects of our nature unknowable? Can you imagine Richard Nixon as a radical? Is Twitter a trivialiser? New Scientist takes a whistle-stop tour of our modern intellectual landscape in the company of Noam Chomsky.”
Sorry, Mike Daisey, Your Steve Jobs/Apple Play Is Journalism, Whether You Admit It Or Not
David Carr: “Is it O.K. to lie on the way to telling a greater truth? The short answer is also the right one. No. It’s worth examining that question now that we have learned about the lies perforating the excerpt of Mike Daisey’s one-man show on Apple’s manufacturing processes in China, broadcast in January on the weekly public radio show This American Life.“
So Who Is Mike Daisey, Anyway?
“It may surprise people who only know his name from the controversy that Daisey is a highly respected theater performer who has toured the world with his solo shows. … Like the late Spalding Gray, Daisey is essentially a monologist who pens his own material and performs it behind a simple desk. His shows usually tackle current issues from a highly subjective angle, weaving together the topical and the personal into something that isn’t quite fiction or nonfiction.”
Belief In God Is A Natural Human Instinct
“The vast majority of humans are ‘born believers’, naturally inclined to find religious claims and explanations attractive and easily acquired, and to attain fluency in using them. This attraction to religion is an evolutionary by-product of our ordinary cognitive equipment, and while it tells us nothing about the truth or otherwise of religious claims it does help us see religion in an interesting new light.”
What’s More, Religion Is What Made Civilization Possible
“Up until about 12,000 years ago all humans lived in relatively small bands. Today, virtually everyone lives in vast, cooperative groups of mostly unrelated strangers. How did this happen? … [Religion] forged anonymous strangers into moral communities tied together with sacred bonds under a common supernatural jurisdiction.”