Now September 2008

monday, september 08
Tag It
RFID World
Las Vegas

Sin City may seem an odd place for a three-day yapfest on radio-frequency ID technology, but as MGM Mirage chief information officer Tom Peck will tell the 3,600 attendees, casinos have bet big on the technology. MGM Mirage, whose properties include the Bellagio and Luxor, uses RFID tags to track everything from gambling chips to staff uniforms. A word of warning to anyone hoping for an extra-generous pour from a Vegas bartender: The company has even attached smart sensors to the spouts of liquor bottles. -- TB

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tuesday, september 09
Collect
Shanghai Biennale
Shanghai, China

Five years ago, Cai Guo-Qiang, who masterminded the visual effects at Beijing's Olympic opening ceremony, was the only Chinese artist in the Artprice Index of 100 top revenue-generating contemporary artists. Today, there are 36, and China recently surpassed France to seize the No. 3 spot in art-revenue rankings. (Quelle horreur!) The rising demand for Chinese art explains the brighter-than-ever spotlight on Shanghai's seventh biennale, running through mid-November. This year's theme is "Translocalmotion." In exhibits scattered throughout the city's fast-growing network of museums and galleries, 50 artists will muse on identity, movement, and the mass migration from China's countryside to urban centers. -- Kate Rockwood

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wednesday, september 10
Sniff
Fragrance Business 2008
New York

Thanks in part to Eau de Every-Celebrity-Ever, perfume is a $33 billion industry, with more than 400 new scents launched last year in the U.S. alone. But don't expect execs at Fragrance Business 2008 to be debating jasmine versus lilac: With a growing demand for everything olfactory, from scented candles and house sprays to body lotion that smells like buttercream, sniffing out the next big trend means creating new technology. Highlights at the two-day conference, themed "The Architects of Innovation" this year, will include candles that can absorb bad smells from the air before releasing good ones, methods for making fragrances last longer on skin, and greener ways to harvest materials. -- KR

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monday, september 12
Watch
Burning After Reading
Directed By Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Here's a novel, if difficult to replicate, money-making scheme: Find the unpublished memoir of a fired CIA analyst at the gym and try to blackmail him with it. And this is a dreamier version: Brad Pitt plays a personal trainer! George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, and John Malkovich costar! Brainy comedy abounds! And the Coen brothers count their money from their latest weird-people/weirder-scenario caper! -- JC

tuesday, september 16
Play With Fire
EuCheMS Chemistry Congress
Torino, Italy

Odd-electron complexes. Amyloidogenic proteins. Oligosaccharide mimicry. Though this summit's official language is English, we're not sure we understand a word. Luckily for laypeople, while 2,000 researchers -- including three American Nobel laureates -- talk scientific shop, EuCheMS will take chemistry to the streets, hosting public lectures on salient issues including the environment and energy in terms that even the ionically ignorant can grasp. And what chem-con could end without lighting a Bunsen burner? The first Silver Flask will go to the winner of a "magic of chemistry" contest. We're envisioning leaping flames and dazzling explosions, but we'd settle for a baking-soda volcano. -- Clay Dillow

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thursday, september 18
Read
Bumping Into Geniuses
By Danny Goldberg

"No one became a rock star by accident or against their will," writes Danny Goldberg, the former head of Atlantic, Mercury, and Warner Bros. Records, in this rocking memoir. The musicians he managed -- from Nirvana to Bonnie Raitt to Sonic Youth -- may have different definitions of selling out, but none is so naive as to think of their craft as pure. Goldberg details various business-driven compromises -- Bruce Springsteen tossing a ballady bone to Top 40 stations to up his numbers among women; Kurt Cobain unwilling to turn down a Rolling Stone cover yet wearing a Corporate Magazines Still suck T-shirt -- and portrays artist management as a type of rabid advocacy aimed as much (if not more) at bigger revenues as at keeping the art intact. -- KR