Kennebec journal archives

Fredi Walker-Browne and friends at NYTW’s benefit. Photo: Jon Burklund/ZANNI Productions New York Theatre Workshop punches far above its weight. The gutsy little theater on East 4th Street, just in recent seasons, has produced shows like Slave Play, Once , and Hadestown, all of which later traveled uptown to play successfully on Broadway. Its primary impact on the theatrical Zeitgeist, though, struck way back in 1996, with the super-blockbuster Rent , Jonathan Larson’s rock adaptation of Puccini’s La Bohème. To celebrate the show’s silver anniversary, NYTW organized its annual fundraising benefit as a kind of birthday celebration. Between solicitations for donations, it invited current workshop collaborators to talk about Rent ’s impact on their work, Zoomed with old cast and crew members to share their memories of making the show, and presented new interpretations of a few Rent songs by the current crop of Broadway stars. Daphne Rubin-Vega videoed in, looking … [Read more...] about The Highs and Lows of NYTW’s

There was no Kurt Sutter reaction to AMC’s renewal of Breaking Bad yesterday. That’s because the refreshingly uncensored Sons of Anarchy creator had just pulled the plug on his Twitter feed, days after he blamed the protracted negotiations for the Vince Gilligan -created Breaking Bad and the firing of The Walking Dead showrunner Frank Darabont on Matt Weiner ’s megadeal for Mad Men . “No one else wants to f**king say it, but the greed of Mad Men is killing the other two best shows on TV — Breaking Bad and Walking Dead ,” Sutter wrote last week. “Why Darabont got fired — Weiner. He held AMC hostage, broke their bank, budgets were slashed, shit rolled down hill onto Gilligan and Frank. Those, along with the recent anti-TV Academy zingers , are now just a distant memory. Here is Sutter blog post on his exit from Twitter: “I’m a guy desperately in need of buffers. I have big feelings, big reactions, big emotions. All the things that … [Read more...] about ‘SOA’ Creator Kurt Sutter Quits Twitter

Legend has it that when Aesop, a slave, was brought to the Greek island of Samos, he so charmed the locals with his fables that they not only freed him, but honoured him with a shrine. That Aesop should have come to this Northern Aegean island for freedom holds a special poignancy today, even if it is only myth, because Samos is now home to one of the largest refugee camps in Greece. More than 4,400 asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa live in and around an overcrowded camp above the port town of Vathy, the capital of Samos, waiting for clearance to cross the sea to the mainland and beyond, where they hope to find a future. Unlike the other Greek island camps, which tend to be built in remote places, the Samos camp is close enough to town to allow refugees to walk to shops and the seafront, so when I was there in October and this summer, I was able to meet some and do what I could to help, even as I was also exploring the island, renowned for its dramatic … [Read more...] about Volunteering and vacationing on the Greek island where Aesop told his stories

(Subscribe to our Today's Cache newsletter for a quick snapshot of top 5 tech stories. Click here to subscribe for free.) An international team of scientists have designed a single chip-scale laser that can generate random numbers at ultrahigh rates, more than a hundred times faster than the current fastest random-numbers generator system. The process of random number generation is important in computing since it forms the base of cryptography. Random numbers are widely used for information security, cryptography, and quantum stimulations. The more random the key of any security system is, the harder it is to break the code logically. It is for this reason, that random number generators are used to encrypt data. The system termed as “massively parallel ultrafast random bit generation” could be used to increase the ability to generate streams of random numbers or bits, that in turn can generate cryptography keys that secure critical data. “As networks expand in an … [Read more...] about Scientists build fastest laser-powered random number generator

Video Player Close HANGZHOU, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Scientists from east China's Zhejiang Province have developed a bionic soft robot in a bid to make deep-water exploration easier and more environmentally friendly. The research, jointly conducted by a team from Zhejiang University and Chinese research institute Zhejiang Lab, was published in the journal Nature on Thursday. The fishlike robot can withstand the high pressure of the deep sea with its electronic components decentralized in a gel-like body, a design inspired by a deep-sea snailfish, researchers said. "Compared with traditional deep-sea equipment with 'armor,' the soft robot is light in weight and simple in structure, which can greatly reduce the difficulty and cost of deep-sea exploration," said Li Tiefeng with the Zhejiang University team. Moreover, motivated by "artificial muscle" rather than an electric machine or motor, the robot emits no noise and does little harm to marine creatures as it flaps its fins … [Read more...] about Chinese researchers develop soft robot for deep-sea exploration