“Today’s postal systems are staring over a precipice. Unless they reinvent themselves, some observers say, they won’t last two decades – let alone a century. Can hand-delivered paper survive in the world of e-mail and instant messaging? Despite ominous trends, the answer, surprisingly, is almost certainly yes.”
Tag: 09.02.04
New Ranking Of The World’s Top Universities
An annual list of the world’s top universities puts Harvard at the top. “Of the world’s top 20 universities, all but three — Cambridge, Oxford and Tokyo — are in the United States.”
Luring Hollywood Into Opera
With charm and shrewdness, Placido Domingo, the general director of the Los Angeles Opera, has been enticing Hollywood into the fold since he was a midwife at the company’s birth in 1986. ‘It’s not that we’re in Hollywood so we have to use film directors. It’s because we believe in them. It has never been a gimmick.”
NY’s Penn Station Revival Spins Off The Tracks
On the surface all looks like a go for rebuilding New York’s Penn Station within the old US Post Office across the street from Madison Square Garden. “Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the project, with its soaring glass-enclosed great hall, was originally unveiled in 1999. It has been a pet project of politicians from both sides of the aisle, including Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for whom the proposed station is named, and Gov. George E. Pataki. Most of the $800 million needed to complete the project’s construction has been in place since 2001. And the post office abandoned the space this summer, in part to make room for the news media covering the convention.” So why has the project stalled out?
Can Loud Music Puncture Your Lungs?
That’s what doctors now think. They “suspect that loud music may damage the lungs due to its booming bass frequency, which can be felt as a vibration going through the body. The lungs may essentially start to vibrate in the same frequency as the bass, which could cause a lung to rupture.”
Avignon Fest Dispute Leads To Leadership Change
“A disagreement at the Avignon festival has led to the departure of one of its founding fathers, the actor Alain Leonard. His resignation comes after a rift between his not-for-profit organisation, Avignon Public Off (APO) and Association de Lieux de Festival en Avignon (Alfa), a rival organisation set up last summer by the directors of 40 of the fringe venues.”
Ireland’s Abbey Downsizing
Ireland’s Abbey Theatre – the national theatre – is facing a funding crisis, and is taking measures to downsize. “The Abbey employs more than 100 people, many of whom work on a fixed-contract basis. Sources close to the theatre say the literary department is likely to face the brunt of cutbacks with some of its functions transferring to the artistic director, Mr Ben Barnes.”
Summer Of Free Music
This has been a bountiful summer for free music in the UK. “Magazines have long used cover-mounted CDs to boost sales but this year newspapers have embraced them enthusiastically…”
Official Download Chart Debuts
The new download chart measuring music downloaded on the net debuts in the UK. “The countdown, broadcast on BBC Radio 1, is an attempt to take account of the thousands of tracks that are bought legally from online sites such as iTunes and Napster. But if supporters of online music were hoping it would herald a break in the dominance of the music industry majors, they were disappointed:” all the music in the Top 20 was produced by major labels.