Media Week (V4-N11): UK Copyright, The Killing, History in the UK.

The UK government has launched a wholesale review of UK copyright law (Guardian):

The review into "Intellectual Property and growth", chaired by Ian Hargreaves, the professor of digital economy at Cardiff University and a former editor of the Independent, won't just impact on the ability of musicians to be rewarded for the work they have created.The outcome could affect publishers, film companies, designers, medical researchers and every teenager who has digitally altered a picture and posted it on Facebook or created a witty YouTube mash-up.The review panel, due to report to Vince Cable and George Osborne next month, will identify the "barriers to new internet-based business models" raised by the "costs of obtaining permissions from existing rights-holders". There's no shortage of examples of these barriers to innovation.

Sofie Gråbøl of the Danish TV show The Killing (Observer):

Sitting in a small Copenhagen cafe, next to her apartment, the actress Sofie Gråbøl is trying to make sense of the cult status she has achieved in Britain thanks to BBC4's Danish thriller, The Killing. "It's amazing," she says. "I can't believe it."She plays the lead character, Sarah Lund, in the show that has become the subject of feverish dinner party debates and whodunit Twitter speculation. Although The Killing's TV audience is relatively small, at around half a million, it is devoted and vocal.Previous long-running series, such as The Sopranos and The Wire, which laid claim to a cognoscenti audience, benefited from a DVD box-set boost after broadcast. The Killing, which screens in two-episode blocks on Saturday night (episodes 15 and 16 of 20 played last night), has been able to access another kind of viewer, those who catch up by watching online on the BBC's iPlayer.

The teaching of History in UK schools is coming under fire (Telegraph):

The report said: “Some pupils found it difficult to place the historical episodes they had studied within any coherent, long-term narrative. “They knew about particular events, characters and periods but did not have an overview. Their chronological understanding was often underdeveloped and so they found it difficult to link developments together.” Christine Gilbert, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, said: “Pupils need to experience history as a coherent subject which develops their knowledge, thinking and understanding, especially their chronological understanding, and I hope the current review of the national curriculum will recognise the importance of this.” In primary schools where history teaching was rated “satisfactory”, inspectors said there was “an unbalanced curriculum with too much attention paid to particular topics at the expense of others” and many teachers lacked specialist knowledge of the subject. The report also criticised changes introduced by the previous government which allow schools to ditch history as a self-contained subject and instead incorporate it in a general humanities course alongside geography and arts subjects.

NPR interview with Nathan Myhrvold who has written a very large cookbook (NPR)

Along with his two co-authors, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, Myhrvold created a self-published, highly produced, six-volume cookbook entitled, Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. "Food, like anything else in the physical world, obeys the laws of physics," explains Mhyrvold. "The fact is when you whisk together some oil and lemon juice and make mayonnaise, you're using the principles of physics and chemistry there, too. I think that understanding how those principles affect cooking helps you cook better." That scientific approach to food is part of the modernist movement, which strives to understand science in the kitchen and to use new technologies and techniques to change how people eat and appreciate food.

From the twitter:

"Will Indie Bookstores Seize the Day?" Bait and Beer

Northshire Bookstore in VT finds niche by offering full service to self-publishers - The Advocate

Another interesting collection of articles from OCLC Research and Above The Fold