Things You Miss By Living Outside NY

Wow, this sounds like it’s going to be fantastic … unfortunately I’m on the wrong side of the country to really enjoy it:

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have been asked to open a major celebration of the life and career of Leonard Bernstein next fall.

The festival, sponsored by the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, will open on Sept. 24 with Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony in an all-Bernstein concert at Carnegie Hall. The concert not only launches “Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds” but also kicks off Carnegie Hall’s 2008 season.

The gala concert will feature cellist Yo-Yo Ma and singers Dawn Upshaw and Thomas Hampson. The program will include the “Fancy Free” Suite, Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story,” as well as selections from “Mass,” “Songfest,” “A Quiet Place,” “Wonderful Town,” “On the Town” and “Candide.”

The two New York organizations are teaming up to honor Bernstein to commemorate the 90th anniversary of his birth and the 50th anniversary of his appointment as music director of the New York Philharmonic.

*sigh*

Lieberman to Endorse McCain

Regarding this particular piece of news …. both McCain and Lieberman are increasingly irrelevant, so to some degree, who cares whether or not he is endorsing a Republican?

Sen. John McCain, trying to build momentum toward a reprise of his 2000 New Hampshire primary victory, is piling up high-profile endorsements, including one from another political maverick, Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

The Connecticut senator, an independent who was the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee, was scheduled to announce his support for McCain at a town hall meeting Monday morning in Hillsborough.

A Lieberman adviser said the senator decided to back McCain despite being a Republican because he believes his colleague from Arizona “has the best chance of uniting the country in its fight against Islamic terrorism.”

I have to add, though — of all the reasons he could have given for crossing party lines to make his endorsement, that’s the best he can do?

Pathetic.

Google Knols – This Is Going To Be Ugly

Of all the feedback that’s hit the Internet today about the new Google ‘knols’, I haven’t seen much comment about this aspect yet, but to me it’s one of the most problematic parts of the whole idea:

Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

Unless Google puts some sort of gate-keeping into the process, they just opened the door to a cacophony of competing knols on high-value search phrases and highly contentious topics. Imagine the chaos when every pill-pusher on the Internet creates their own knol on various medical terms and conditions, for example, or when there are competing knols on highly-charged topics like abortion or the state of Israel. And as Jeremiah pointed out, I expect that SEO/SEM companies are already thinking about how they could sell knol creation services to their customers.

Even without the massive can of worms that is the conflict of interest issue here (although I think Tony is spot-on in his take in that aspect), I think this has the potential to be very, very ugly.