Category: the petri dish
Earlier this week, Choire mentioned that Simon and Schuster was to hold a press conference on Monday to announce “shocking” new evidence in the death of a rock icon. Since Monday is the tenth anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, it was fairly clear that the “shocking” stuff would have to do with the suicide. Today a new press release gives more information about In Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain, by Max Wallace and Ian Halperin, alleging that Cobain had an already lethal dose of heroin in his system (which would be compatible with the murder-staged-as-suicide-theory), that there were no legible prints found on the gun, etc. Oy.
Slate has a profile of Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Some of Hadid’s works can be seen on her website.
An Arab-American librarian has devised a new, bi-directional alphabet for Arabic. I spent some time looking at the drawings over at the US Patent Office, and I’m definitely intrigued. I do want to reassure the NY Times that native speakers can learn to write the language, shape-shifting letters included, just fine, thank you very much (2nd. paragraph).
A new Irish TV drama is being panned by critics for being too cliche (it’s TV!). Not so, says the Observer’s Henry McDonald
Don’t expect to see ol’ Barney, with his wizened face, his beard matted with crumbs of Brennan’s bread and a permanent froth line of porter above his upper lip while propping up the bar and giving us all a bit of craic in The Big Bow Wow – the name of the club where the main characters of the drama congregate after work. Instead we have an ambitious, ballsy Arab- Irish girl who eschews the hijab, has a secret affair with her university tutor and whose hero is yet another European hybrid of cross-culture and multi-ethnicity, Zinedine Zidane.
Michael Palin’s site has a section devoted to his trip across Morocco, from Tangier to Tindouf, on his way to the Sahara. Fantastic photographs (mostly by Basil Pao) accompany his journal entries.
Slate answers: How did they record George Balanchine’s earlier work? No doubt the topic of how disciples carry on the master’s dances will be tackled in Terry Teachout‘s upcoming Balanchine book.