“This month the best-selling ‘lad-lit’ novelist Tony Parsons becomes the second author to take up the airport operator BAA’s invitation to spend a week at Heathrow. In fact, he’s there right now, observing stressed holidaymakers and bored business travellers, eagle-eyed security guards and overworked cleaners, as he works on a new book.”
Tag: 08.07.11
Gunmen Steal $120K From Mann Center In Philadelphia
“Two gunmen made off with more than $120,000 in catering proceeds Friday in a brazen lunchtime holdup at the Mann Music Center … Investigators are looking at the possibility of an inside job.”
Financial Exec Explains What His Firm Gets From Sponsoring Summer Opera
David Bulteel, a director of London firm Investec PLC, on its sponsorship of Opera Holland Park: “We like to be aware of how many new clients it brings in, and how much money they might generate. There are softer issues, however, and softer benefits, and you can’t measure those in pound signs. … The staff members love the fact that they can take clients, and it really helps them build relationships.”
Tougher Customers At The Ailey Dance Camp In Newark
“When [teacher] Nehprii Amenii of Brooklyn walked into Newark Arts High School for the first time this summer, she was prepared to be hit with what she called ‘full cannons of attitude’.”
TV Ad Buying Stays Strong, Fending Off Internet, Bad Economy
“Despite worries of a possible double-dip recession, so far companies are not pulling back from their television ad spending plans, demonstrating the resiliency of the medium even when faced with a downturn and the persistent threat of the Internet to steal viewers.”
Lucille Ball At 100 – An Appreciation
“Though the comedy is frequently panic-stricken, she always knows her center of gravity. And even when she goes big, with her eyes or lips or limbs, she’s never less than natural, playing not to the studio audience but to the confidential camera, apparently average and evidently extraordinary.”
Crowds Flock To Giant Marilyn Statue In Chicago (But The Critics…)
“Beyond the behavior the sculpture triggers, critics have seized on the subject’s lack of connection with the city. The film’s famous subway-grate scene is set in Manhattan, and the Amazonian replica of the pin-up was fabricated in New Jersey, where the artist, Seward Johnson, an 80-year-old grandson of a co-founder of Johnson & Johnson, maintains a studio.”
Google And “Culturenomics” – Can You Really Analyze Books This Way?
Culturomics is a nifty tool, but we need to be cautious and critical about this kind of digital data and about claims that culturomics could make “much of what [historians] do trivially easy.”
Report: To Help Libraries Survive, Bundle Them With Community Centers, Health, Centers
“The report proposes running libraries in partnership with the private sector, charities or other councils and extending their reach by integrating them with community facilities such as churches and by providing health centres and police surgeries on site.”
UK Musicians Union: Musicians Are Being Blackmailed Into Working For Free For Charity
“It is extremely unfair to put professional musicians into a situation where they are emotionally blackmailed into working for no fee and are asked to give their services to a good cause. This is particularly unjust when others associated with the event, such as venue staff, lawyers and caterers, are being paid.”