To transfer the magic of ballet into cinemas eight 3D cameras will be filming the moves of the troupe in multiple close-ups. Their pirouettes will then be transmitted into cinemas in 1200 screens in different countries in quality comparable with that of Hollywood blockbusters. Few can match Cameron’s eye for 3D production – he directed ‘Avatar,’ the highest-grossing 3D film in history. The US-based Cameron Pace Group, the company of James Cameron and Vince Pace, will produce the 3D Mariinsky event using the same Oscar-winning technology as in ‘Avatar.’ “We all know if you team up with Cameron [Pace] something exciting will happen. All your experience helps you, so Live will not lose any part of this promised magic. When people know this is happening now it adds so much to the feeling,” Mariinsky Theater Artistic Director Valery Gergiev said. The project is also being managed by British group Glass Slipper Live Events, who worked with the late pop star Michael Jackson. One of the project’s organizers is former Royal Ballet dancer Ross MacGibbon, who danced in ‘Swan Lake’ himself and once performed with legendary Soviet dancer Rudolph Nureev. He also recently worked on a 3D version of the latest ‘Bourne’ blockbuster. MacGibbon described the 3D version of the quintessential Russian ballet as an “exciting adventure, a great honor and even a challenge.” “Having already filmed a ballet in 3D, I feel up to this challenge. The shapes made in classical ballet can only be fully appreciated on screen in three dimensions, as dance is all about movement through space. The 3D will transform the cinema experience. I feel, it’s especially thrilling when allied with great dance,” MacGibbon explained. The Mariinsky Theater, built in the 18th Century, is at the forefront of using state-of-the-art technology in its shows. The theater’s first-in-history live Internet broadcast of a performance took place in 1999. The Mariinsky was also the first Russian theater to experiment with Live 3D, with its closed-circuit experimental live broadcast to an audience in Paris and its 3D versions of ‘Giselle’ and ‘The Nutcracker.’ “Mariinsky Live 3D format is something totally new not only for us but also for the whole world. Looking at this opportunity it’s to both display the qualities of the company but to do it with the newest possible technology,” Gergiev said. And for those who can’t make the trip to St. Petersburg, watching ‘Swan Lake’ in 3D at a cinema near you is also a way to save money and time while still getting a chance to appreciate the show. The performance will be conducted by Maestro Gergiev – who is also the London Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Conductor – in St Petersburg on Thursday, at 9:30pm local time (17:30 GMT). … Read More
The US government has been running a quantum Internet for over two years
A longtime goal among cryptologists has been to perfect the “quantum Internet” — which, in the most basic way possible, uses the main principle of quantum mechanics to transfer communications from one point to another.Still confused? Technology Review explained it as easily as possible:“The basic idea here is that the act of measuring a quantum object, such as a photon, always changes it. So any attempt to eavesdrop on a quantum message cannot fail to leave telltale signs of snooping that the receiver can detect.”Makes sense, right? Well it’s much easier said than done and has been a desire of computer scientists and cryptologists since the early days of the Internet. A quantum Internet connection cannot be even remotely disturbed without raising a red flag, so data sent over such a network would be transmitted in the most secure form the digital age has ever seen.“And these are literally completely secure,” wrote Dan Nosowitz for PopSci this week. “Any attempt to eavesdrop is necessarily obvious, because the mere act of eavesdropping physically changes the transmission.”According to a revelation made by two scientists this week, the era of quantum Internet may finally be upon us.The Tech Review blog announced on Monday that Richard Hughes and a team of researchers at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico have been running an “alternative quantum Internet,” and have been doing so for roughly two-and-a-half years. In a blog post the website broke down the basics of how Hughes and company created a system that works like a hub-and-spoke network in which all messages anywhere in the network get routed from a main node — a central hub.“The idea is that messages to the hub rely on the usual level of quantum security. However, once at the hub, they are converted to conventional classical bits and then reconverted into quantum bits to be sent on the second leg of their journey,” announced the blog. “So as long as the hub is secure, then the network should also be secure.”The government’s labs at Los Alamos have previously been used for nuclear research and were instrumental in the Manhattan Project — the Allied forces program that evoked the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to Tech Review, though, the goal of having a commercially viable quantum Internet is one much less intense. The website reported that a quantum connection could be used to establish 100 percent secure connections using fiber cables between home computers, televisions and other objects as seemingly everything can be wired these days to the Internet.Given recent attempts out of Washington to essentially eliminate encryption, though, selling a super secure connection to the American public is likely a long way coming. … Read More
Turkish pianist convicted of insulting Islam
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In Turkey world-renowned pianist Fazil Say has been handed a suspended 10-month jail sentence on charges of insulting Islam. The court found the 43-year-old guilty of “insulting religious values of a part of the population”.
The pianist was not in court for the sentencing but he denied the charges and claimed they were politically motivated.
Prosecutors had brought the case against Say last June after he had posted a series of comments on the social networking site Twitter.
Pointing to the prosecution of several artists and intellectuals for voicing their views critics have accused the governing AK party of undermining Turkey’s secular values and pandering to Islamists.
Say, who has played with the New York Philharmonic and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, has also served as a cultural ambassador for the EU.
More about: Classical music, Islam, Justice, Turkey
Copyright © 2013 euronews
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Everybody’s an Anarchist Sometime
Ben Powell of the Independent Institute
explains at the Freeman:
Consider Cambodia in the late 1970s. The Khmer Rouge
government intentionally killed more than two million of its own
citizens. That’s an average of eight percent of the population
killed each year while government simultaneously inflicted
countless other horrors. Do you think the Cambodian people, faced
with that government, would have been better off with no government
at all? Congratulations. You are, sometimes, an anarchist.
The anarchist-minarchist debate usually revolves around how well an
ordered anarchy could work. How well could law and order be
provided without state provision? That is an important question—one
that Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, and James Buchanan made
important theoretical contributions to in the 1970s. Bruce Benson
and others started making historical contributions in the 1980s.
And starting in the late 1990s,
scholarship ;on the question virtually
exploded. ;
Reasonable classical liberals can digest this scholarship and
disagree about how well an “ordered anarchy” might work. But
whether you cling to Hobbesian notions of a nasty, brutish, and
short life in anarchy, or believe anarchy would be libertarian
paradise, you have only answered half the question about anarchy’s
desirability. The other half of the question is, “Compared to what
government”?
He takes the infamous example of Somalia, one of
liberals’ favorite strawmen for libertarianism:
Cases like Pol Pot’s Cambodia are easy calls for most
of us. It would take extraordinary Hobbesian assumptions about life
without a state to think that Cambodians were better off with his
government than they would have been without a state at all. The
Chinese under Mao, Russians under Stalin, Germans under Hitler—they
all fall in the same category.
The real question is how far to move the line. Somalia had a fairly
predatory state until its collapse in 1991, but it wasn’t nearly as
murderous as those above. It’s been in a state of anarchy since
then. To the extent we can measure them, living standards seem to
have ;improved ;since
the state collapsed. In fact, they’ve improved faster than the
sub-Saharan African average.
When classical liberals ;talk
about Somalia ;it is not because it represents some ideal
libertarian anarchy. It doesn’t. We talk about Somalia because it
passes the comparative institutions test. Its imperfect anarchy
seems to be doing better than the very imperfect state that
preceded it and many of those states it shares a continent
with.
This does not prove that a limited minimal government wouldn’t work
better in Somalia. But that is not the relevant question. As I
argued in response to a bunch of nation-builders at a conference on
Somalia a couple of years ago: Whatever version of a government you
think is ideal, it is probably not achievable in
Somalia. ;
Consider other African governments today. Most brutally suppress
the freedom of their subjects and have horrible standards of
living. Check out their ;Polity
IV ;scores on how liberal/democratic they are, or their
economic freedom ;scores. How many of them, like
Somalia, would be better off ;stateless?
Read the rest of Powell’s piece
here and more Reason on Somalia here. … Read More
American classical pianist Van Cliburn dies at 78
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Van Cliburn, the internationally celebrated pianist whose triumph at a 1958 Moscow competition helped thaw the Cold War and launched a spectacular career that made him the rare classical musician to enjoy rock-star status, died Wednesday after a fight with bone cancer. He was 78.Cliburn died at his home in Fort Worth surrounded by loved ones, said his publicist and longtime friend Mary Lou Falcone.”Van Cliburn was an international legend for over five decades, a great humanitarian and a brilliant musician whose light will continue to shine through his extraordinary legacy,” Falcone said in a statement. “He will be missed by all who knew and admired him, and by countless people he never met.”Cliburn made what would be his last public appearance in September at the 50th anniversary of the prestigious piano competition named for him. Speaking to the audience in Fort Worth, he saluted the many past contestants, the orchestra and the city. “Never forget: I love you all from the bottom of my heart, forever,” he said to a roaring standing ovation.Continue Reading… … Read More
Matthew Feeney on 5 Foreign Libertarians Making a Difference Across the Globe
The fight for limited government, free markets,
and peace is not confined to America’s shores. In many cases, those
fighting for libertarian policies abroad are doing so in
environments where classical liberal ideas are alien, unwelcome,
and often dangerous to speak out for. Although it would be
impossible to acknowledge the work of all of the libertarian
activists, politicians, and intellectuals working abroad, Matthew
Feeney highlights five libertarians from Asia, Africa, and Europe
who everyone concerned about the global state of liberty should pay
attention to. View this article.
… Read More
Classical composer aims to be first tattooed president
A classical music composer with tattoos on 90% of his body is a shock contender to be president of the Czech Republic.
… Read More
