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ted_bloody_maul Great Old One Joined: 23 May 2003 Total posts: 4877 Location: Quester's Psykick Dancehall Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: 19-12-2005 18:34 Post subject: top hoaxing |
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NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS - Re Narnia walks out of talks
Please disregard item 'Narnia walks out of talks..' which appeared on wire at 12.01 GMT. Story was a hoax and inadvertently transmitted to wire.
Link
here's the original story in full...
WTO MEETING - Narnia walks out of talks; says tired of EU, US 'bullying'
HONG KONG (AFX) - The independent state of Narnia has walked out of trade negotiations here, citing pressure from the European Union and the US to enforce liberalization of its garment-related sector. Narnian spokeswoman Susan Aslan said in a statement that delegates 'were tired of bullying by EU and US delegations and would be returning immediately to their state capital at Cair Parvel.' 'If this brings the Hong Kong talks to the knees we will be delighted. Many other delegates told us they are sick of the eternal Lamy winter and are longing for a new trade spring,' Aslan said. The walkout was a first in this round of talks, and follows a similar move by some developing country delegates at the Cancun summit two years ago, the statement said. lw/rc
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edit: this seems to have gone across many different sites.
[Emp edit: Fixing big links] |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 27-08-2006 20:56 Post subject: |
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Here's a better one:
| Quote: | Betjeman love letter is horrid hoax
Richard Brooks, Arts Editor
HIS one regret, Sir John Betjeman once said, was that he had not had enough sex. So the late poet laureate’s biographer could be forgiven the thrill of discovery he felt when someone sent him a passionate love letter supposedly written by Betjeman to a mistress.
Now, however, it turns out that the poet, born 100 years ago tomorrow, never wrote the letter. Instead, AN Wilson, the biographer, admitted this weekend he had fallen victim to an elaborate hoax.
The trick was so successful that the letter has been published in Wilson’s new book Betjeman as evidence of the poet’s previously unknown “fling”.
The giveaway — and a clue that a bitter rival of Wilson’s may be behind the trick — is that the capital letters at the beginning of the sentences in the letter spell out a vivid personal insult to the biographer.
After a Sunday Times reporter pointed this out to him this weekend, Wilson reread the letter and said: “I should have smelt a rat . . . Obviously the letter is a joke, a hoax.”
The identity of the trickster is not known, but one acknowledged rival of Wilson has denied involvement. Bevis Hillier, author of a three-volume biography of Betjeman, said that, although he found Wilson “despicable”, he was “not guilty” of the hoax.
The “love letter” appeared to have been written by Betjeman in May 1944, 11 years after he had married Penelope Chetwode.
It was addressed to Honor Tracy, an Anglo-Irish writer with whom Betjeman worked at the Admiralty during the war.
The letter first came to light about two years ago as Wilson was researching the biography.
In a covering note, someone signing herself (or himself) “Eve de Harben”, with the address Résidence de la Mer, Avenue de la Plage, Roquebrune on the Côte D’Azur, wrote that she had received the letter from her father, a cousin of Tracy. Tracy herself died in 1989.
De Harben sent a typed copy of the letter. The original, according to the note, had been sold to an American collector of Betjemania.
The affair appeared all the more intriguing to Wilson because of Betjeman’s regret, expressed in a television interview in 1984, the year he died, when he said: “I haven’t had enough sex.”
The letter begins: “Darling Honor, I loved yesterday. All day I’ve thought of nothing else. No other love I’ve had means so much.”
Later on in the letter the poet waxed that “love has given me a miss for so long and now this miracle has happened. Sex is a part of it, of course.”
Betjeman then ended the letter: “Tinkerty-tonk, my Darling. I pray I’ll hear from you tomorrow. If I don’t I’ll visit your office in a fake beard. All love, JB.”
Close study of the letter, however, shows that the capital letters at the beginning of each sentence spell out a message: “AN Wilson is a shit”. 
With hindsight, Wilson accepts he could have asked more questions.
He says he did think it strange that when he finally returned it to de Harben in France, the letter was returned soon after with “Addressee and address not known”.
Roquebrune exists, as does its Avenue de la Plage. There is a place called Résidence de la Mer, a block of flats near the pebbly beach. This weekend, Mario Ballestra, concierge at the block for the past 40 years, said he had never heard of de Harben or of Bevis Hillier.
“We have had just three English people living here in the last 30 years,” said Ballestra, “one called Mr Thompson who is in his 60s, and the others, a young couple who come here each summer. I have never met a Mme de Harben.”
The attention of The Sunday Times was drawn to the hoax a few days ago when a journalist also received a letter from de Harben.
It had the same French address and the same story that she had married a Frenchman. In the letter, de Harben confessed the love letter she had sent to Wilson was “spurious”.
She had made the whole thing up — including the rude message — to avenge an attack which Wilson himself had made some years ago on Humphrey Carpenter, a “dear friend of mine”. Carpenter was himself a distinguished biographer and book reviewer for The Sunday Times.
This explanation, however, appears to be yet another spoof. Carpenter’s widow Mari said this weekend she had never heard of de Harben. She also said Wilson and Carpenter had patched up their differences not long before her husband’s death.
Despite the French address, the padded envelope containing the letter was postmarked “west London” and a tiny sticker on the back indicated it had been bought at Warren & Son, a stationer in Winchester, which happens to be Hillier’s home city.
Hillier, however, was insistent. He said: “This isn’t the sort of lark I do . . . I am not guilty. But it is very Betjemanesque.”
He may deny involvement in the hoax, but Hillier does not like Wilson. “The man is despicable,” he said. “When my 2002 volume on Betjeman came out, Wilson wrote in The Spectator that Hillier is not really a writer at all. His book is a hopeless mish-mash.”
Hillier spent 25 years on his three-volume Betjeman biography, authorised by the poet before his death. He acknowledges that Tracy was close friends with Betjeman, who lived with a mistress for much of his marriage.
But Hillier is dubious about any sexual relationship with Tracy, pointing to a letter from the poet to her which reads “You forcibly illustrate my maxim that the ones we don’t sleep with are the dearest and the best.”
Wilson maintains the relationship was sexual. “I interviewed Tracy in an old people’s home not long before she died and she told me there had been an affair,” he said.
Wilson would not be drawn, however, on his suspicions over the true identity of de Harben. He said: “All I’d say is this person must know an amazing amount about Betjeman and his life. But I really don’t think I should name who I think it is.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2330457,00.html
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| nissemus Great Old One Joined: 19 Nov 2005 Total posts: 117 |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 30-08-2006 17:24 Post subject: |
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How's this for brass neck?
| Quote: | Conman could be stripped of MBE
A man who was awarded an MBE by the Queen after applying for it himself could now be stripped of the honour.
Former police worker Michael Eke, 38, of March, Cambridgeshire, admitted the offence at Norwich Crown Court.
The Cabinet Office said: "The Sovereign may, on the advice of ministers, cancel an award if the holder is considered unworthy to retain it."
Eke was convicted of using a false instrument with intent, in reference to the honours form used for nominations.
The court heard he wrote two fake references to the Cabinet Office, in the name of other people, recommending him for the honour.
Admitted theft
He then sent more letters using false names to local community leaders, asking them to back the application.
Eke received the MBE in 2003 for his services to the community.
He was among 140 people chosen to carry the Olympic torch on the London leg of its 78-day journey to the Athens Games in 2004.
He was a stationery stores manager for Cambridgeshire Police until he was arrested and suspended in February 2005.
Eke admitted seven counts of theft, including the theft of laptop computers and digital cameras from Cambridgeshire Police, and four counts of obtaining a money transfer by deception.
False information
At a previous hearing, he pleaded guilty to obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception by using false information on an application form to the force.
The court heard that Eke used his job to help steal four laptop computers worth more than £5,000.
He also obtained grants by deception from arts and other organisations worth about £25,000.
Judge Paul Downes adjourned sentencing until 3 October for reports.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/5297966.stm
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He should have gone for a KBE! |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 07-09-2006 20:50 Post subject: |
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Here's a very recent one. (I posted the original story on the 'Endurance' thread.)
| Quote: | Diver with miracle survival story is exposed as hoaxer
By Devika Bhat
A man who claimed he was lost at sea for nearly three days after being struck by a boat in a diving accident invented the entire story, it emerged today.
Matthew Harvey, 35, was pulled out of the water in Fermain Bay, on the east coast of Guernsey, by the crew of a passing yacht on Monday evening after apparently going for a solo dive on Saturday morning.
Mr Harvey claimed that he had been knocked unconsciousness by a boat, before being swept out to sea, floating helplessly for 58 hours. He had been given up for dead before his seemingly remarkable rescue.
His wife, Katie, reported his disappearance to police on Saturday and his reappearance two and a half days later had baffled his rescuers.
Mr Harvey, a museum worker, had described on Tuesday how he was struck by a boat upon surfacing from his dive, losing his mask and his regulator which controls the air supply. He said that he regained consciousness as the powerful current swept him out to sea, in the direction of Jersey.
He then claimed he was able to drag himself into a gulley where he took refuge overnight on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, he decided that his best option was to get back in the water and swim ashore to dry land, but misjudged his position and was carried out to sea again before being rescued that evening by the yacht.
But Guernsey police said today that Mr Harvey had been on the mainland during his supposed ordeal and the search operation. He is currently being questioned by officers and could face criminal charges.
"...the circumstances surrounding Mr Harvey’s disappearance is [sic] not accurate. In summary, he was not missing at sea or on the coast of Guernsey as suggested," a police statement said today.
"Police can confirm that for some of the time Mr Harvey was reported as missing, he was in the UK. The matter is complex and the full facts are as of yet not established.
"Police can confirm that Mr Harvey has been interviewed with respect to the matter and his family kept fully informed as to this significant development…
"…It is noted that there has been critical speculation with respect to the search at sea for Mr Harvey being unsuccessful. The information gathered by police clearly indicates that at the time of the search Mr Harvey was not in the sea or upon the coast."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2347278,00.html
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There's surely more to come... |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2006 08:09 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | The prince of conmen who lost his crown
From Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo
THE wedding reception of Prince Satohito Arisugawa, kinsman of the Japanese Emperor and scion of an ancient aristocratic house, was everything an imperial marriage ought to be.
The venue was an exclusive Tokyo club known as a haunt of royalty. Prince Arisugawa was splendid in his black military uniform and glittering medals. About 350 guests, including actors, politicians and TV celebrities, presented the traditional Japanese wedding gift — envelopes of banknotes.
True, most of the assembled guests did not know the couple, there were no other members of the Imperial Family there, and in her junihitoe, a twelve-layered kimono worn by court ladies in the 10th century, the bride was perhaps a little overdressed — even for a princess.
But it was only when journalists got hold of the story a few weeks later that the guests realised the truth: Prince Arisugawa, the man to whom they had collectively given 13 million yen (£60,000), was actually Yasuyuki Kitano, the son of a greengrocer who formerly worked as a security guard and caretaker.
Yesterday Kitano, 44, and his bogus bride, a 47-year-old divorcée named Harumi Sakamoto, were imprisoned for 26 months for the 2003 swindle, which embarrassed dozens of well-known faces and exposed a snobbery — as well as a deep naivety — about the country’s closeted Imperial Family.
“It was a malicious criminal act,” Judge Takaki Oshima said at the Tokyo District Court. “[It] cleverly took advantage of reverence for the imperial court and Imperial Family.”
Kitano was formerly the head of a group of rightwing nationalists who revere the Japanese Imperial Family and appears to have passed himself off as a prince since the 1980s. Acquaintances quoted in the Japanese media remembered how he affected the special Japanese pronouns reserved for members of the Imperial Family — the equivalent of the royal “we”. In 2000 he gave a lecture to a peace organisation in Hiroshima as Prince Arisugawa and before that he persuaded a Shinto shrine to sell dubious bottles of mineral water decorated with the imperial chrysanthemum crest.
A bit of research by any of his victims would have exposed him — the aristocratic Arisugawa family, from whom he claimed descent, died out in 1913. “I didn’t know the prince directly, but a friend of mine in Tokyo told me that we could go to his wedding reception,” said Seizo Mikami, a businessman and politician. “I was very excited and planned to bring 500,000 yen to congratulate him on his marriage.
“I ended up bringing 100,000 yen because my secretary told me that he wasn’t one of my voters.”
Mr Mikami looked around for Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako, hoping to pose alongside them for a photograph, but they were not to be found.
“Even after the verdict I don’t feel bad towards them,” Mr Mikami told The Times. “It’s bad to cheat people, but this isn’t murder or burglary. I try to remember that he gave a country bumpkin like me the fleeting dream of attending a royal wedding.”
PAST PRETENDERS
Omar Yusuf was arrested by Australian police in Malaysia this year. He had claimed to be a Middle Eastern prince but fled Australia owing A$9m
A Buddhist monk was defrocked in 2001 after claiming to be a member of the Cambodian royal family — as well as having sex with young boys and defrauding people
In 1318 John of Powderham claimed that he and not the reigning Edward II should be king, saying a nurse had swapped him. He later retracted, saying the Devil had inspired him, disguised as a cat. He and the cat were hanged.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-2353026,00.html
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 18-01-2007 10:57 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Court expert 'was bogus scientist who bought PhD on internet'
Russell Jenkins
Jury is told that degree cost £700
Lawyers used him to challenge claims
The jury heard that Gene Morrison's qualifications could be bought in America for about £700 (Cavendish Press)
A man who said he was a forensic scientist and offered himself as an expert witness to solicitors had bought his masters’ degree and doctorate over the internet, a court was told yesterday.
Gene Morrison, 48, who lived in Hyde, Cheshire, called himself Dr Morrison and trailed the letters PhD and BSc after his name. In advertisements in the Solicitors Journal he boasted that he had been offering a first-class “objective and professional” service to the legal and insurance professions since 1977.
But a jury at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester was told that Mr Morrison had no expertise in the fields and that his qualifications from “Rochville University” in America could be bought for $1,398 (£709).
Neil Flewitt, QC, for the prosecution, said: “The services offered by the defendant were used by solicitors dealing with criminal, civil and family proceedings and also by insurance companies and private individuals. It is the prosecution case that the defendant frequently misrepresented his qualifications and his ability to deliver the services offered by his company, the Criminal & Forensic Investigations Bureau.”
Mr Morrison faces 23 counts of obtaining a money transfer by deception, obtaining property by deception, perverting the course of justice and perjury. The jury was told that he denied all but two counts.
Mr Flewitt said Mr Morrison was employed in 2002 by a firm of solicitors in Birmingham, which wanted to challenge evidence offered by a qualified expert that their client, Darren Knuckey, was an armed robber who had been picked out by CCTV at a petrol station.
Younis Khan, a solicitor for Ahmed Solicitors, asked Mr Morrison if he had the technical expertise to carry out the job. Mr Morrison wrote to the firm subsequently claiming that he was an expert in facial mapping and quoting a price of £1,850. The job was given the approval of the Legal Services Commission.
Mr Flewitt said: “Although the defendant had indicated to Ahmed Solicitors that he was able to provide the report that they required, the reality was that he did not have the expertise to produce the report himself.”
He turned instead to Walter Baynes, the proprietor of a visual presentation company called Piglet Productions, to carry out the work. In an initial and then full report, Mr Morrison allegedly passed off Mr Baynes’s work as his own.
Mr Baynes charged £443 for the work while Mr Morrison’s bill was £998. In his report Mr Morrison, it was said, claimed falsely that he had academic qualifications in television imaging analysis from Salford College of Technology dating back to 1977 and had attended Home Office seminars.
Mr Flewitt said: “In presenting Walter Baynes’s report as if it was his own, the defendant has misled Ahmed Solicitors into believing that they were in possession of an authoritative report in support of their client’s defence.
“In the event, no harm was done because the prosecution elected not to pursue the allegation of robbery against Mr Knuckey.” The Knuckey case, said the barrister, was only one of a series of cases that he would outline to show how Mr Morrison operated his bogus business.
Mr Flewitt said that Mr Morrison had produced three certificates from Rochville University, but “Rochville University has no physical existence. There are no buildings and there is no teaching. All you neeed is access to the internet, a little imagination and, of course, enough money to pay for your chosen degrees.”
The case continues.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2552933,00.html
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| filcee Beer Monkey Joined: 12 Jun 2002 Total posts: 889 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 18-01-2007 11:41 Post subject: |
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| rynner wrote: | | Quote: | ...“I didn’t know the prince directly, but a friend of mine in Tokyo told me that we could go to his wedding reception,” said Seizo Mikami, a businessman and politician. “I was very excited and planned to bring 500,000 yen to congratulate him on his marriage.
“I ended up bringing 100,000 yen because my secretary told me that he wasn’t one of my voters.”...
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That tells you just about everything you need to know about politicians... |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17564 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 3 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 18-01-2007 12:33 Post subject: |
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| I want to know why Mr Knuckey hasn't yet appeared in our 'Silly Names' threads. |
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| sunsplash1 Fortean and Proud
cognitively purposefuly I Joined: 09 Jan 2004 Total posts: 2074 Location: The Hills, overlooking a smallish antipodean city in South Australia Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 23-01-2007 13:43 Post subject: |
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| escargot1 wrote: | | I want to know why Mr Knuckey hasn't yet appeared in our 'Silly Names' threads. |
Could be worse, what if 'e was Mr McKnuckley? |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 17-02-2007 10:22 Post subject: |
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An unusual one here:
| Quote: | Pianist's virtuosity is called into question
By Martin Beckford
Last Updated: 2:24am GMT 17/02/2007
The world of classical music has been thrown into turmoil after audio experts denounced a series of critically acclaimed recordings by a revered English pianist as fakes.
Joyce Hatto, who died last year aged 77, had not given a recital in decades because she was suffering from cancer and thought it "impolite to look ill" in public.
But she developed a cult following on the strength of more than 100 discs released by her husband's record label in recent years, which were said to have been recorded at a studio near their home in Royston, Herts.
The critic who claimed to have discovered her CDs said it was "like finding the Holy Grail". After she died Hatto was described as "one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced" who mastered the most difficult pieces ever written for the instrument with "awesome" and "astonishing" skill.
Doubts began to be expressed, however, that a woman who had enjoyed only a modest reputation as a concert pianist in London during the 1950s and 1960s could have gone on to become such a virtuoso on disc, particularly while battling illness.
Then it was alleged that the music software program iTunes, which is connected to an online database of CD track names and lengths, identified two of her discs as being exactly the same as others produced by different pianists and available on other record labels.
Experts in audio analysis went on to examine three of her discs and now claim they are simply copies of earlier recordings, disguised by speed changes or by combining tracks from different performances.
The Hatto CDs analysed so far are Liszt's 12 Transcendental Studies, which is alleged to be the same as the recording by Laszlo Simon; Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3, alleged to have been recorded first by Yefim Bronfman; and Godowsky's Complete Studies After the Chopin Etudes, alleged to have been played originally by Carlo Grante. One of Hatto's discs is even said to feature a fictional conductor.
Last night her reputation was being called into question.
James Inverne, the editor of classical music magazine Gramophone which led the investigation, said: "It's just the most amazing scandal in the polite world of classical music.
"Its ramifications are potentially huge as one would think there are a lot of recording companies involved and they are notoriously picky about copyright issues.
"There have been similar things in art and theatre but it's the first scandal of this kind in classical music."
Gramophone has decided to scrap a rave review of a new CD purportedly by Hatto intended for its next issue, but Mr Inverne insisted the magazine and its critics would not be embarrassed by the claims that they had been duped by her recordings.
"These are still great performances," he said.
But Andrew Rose, who runs the remastering firm Pristine Audio and who analysed the Hatto recordings, said: "There are a lot of critics and publications with egg on their faces.
"If you look at her biography and recording dates with a cynical eye, the whole thing starts to fall apart.
"She was almost a cult figure and people wanted to believe her story.
"The idea was that she had cancer and didn't want to be seen so her husband built a studio for her, but nobody explained how they managed to squeeze an entire orchestra in there. 
"It's just jaw-dropping and so outrageous and audacious it's almost impossible to believe it's been done."
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| JamesWhitehead Piffle Prospector Joined: 02 Aug 2001 Total posts: 5367 Location: Manchester, UK Gender: Male |
| Posted: 17-02-2007 12:38 Post subject: |
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After decades of buying The Gramophone every month, I gave up on it last year, soon after the terrible Inverne took over as editor. It had become a glossy and dumbed-down joke which insulted its shrinking core readership while whoring after an imaginary constituency of half-interested people.
This curious Joyce Hatto story required exactly that kind of human-interest approach to take off and it received it in the pages on The Gramophone, where the CDs were acclaimed as if the Holy Grail had been found. Old hands will have shaken their heads at the hyperbole and passed on. I had a few of Ms Hatto's original records and her transformation into a keyboard lioness seemed highly unlikely!
I did not imagine a scam. However, such misrepresentations are quite frequent in the classical world, especially where historical material is mis-labelled. To have so many diverse and well-known pianists contributing to this cache shows that the reputations of the critics concerned are now shot to pieces. I doubt if they will disappear though.
The decision to expose the scam and seek respect is as tackily journalistic as the sort of writing which now fills the magazine's pages. In the end, papers get the stories they deserve. 
Here is Inverne's piece from the Gramophone website
Masterpieces Or Fakes? The Joyce Hatto Scandal
February 15 2007
It was already one of the strangest stories the classical music world had witnessed. But the discovery of the late English pianist Joyce Hatto as the greatest instrumentalist almost nobody had heard of, appears to have taken a bizarre, even potentially sinister turn.
It was around a year ago that Gramophone’s critics began to champion this little-known lady, whose discs – miraculous performances, released by her husband William Barrington-Coupe on the tiny label Concert Artist – were notoriously difficult to get hold of. Such was the brilliance of this pianist across Liszt, Schubert, Rachmaninov, Dukas and more in a dizzying range – that it was worth making the effort to seek out Concert Artist to get these discs, and they became much sought-after. By the time she died in June 2006, Joyce Hatto was not only a sudden widespread success, she was a cause célèbre. To love Hatto recordings was to be in the know, a true piano aficionado who didn’t need the hype of a major label’s marketing spend to recognise a good, a great, thing when they heard it.
But at the same time as the cult of Hatto was burgeoning, there were persistent rumours on the internet as to the true origins of the recordings. How, wondered the doubters, could one woman – especially one who had battled cancer for many years – have mastered a range of repertoire and recorded a catalogue that arguably makes her more prolific than even the Richters and the Ashkenazys.
However, Gramophone critic Jeremy Nicholas published a letter in the magazine asking anyone who had any evidence of any wrong-doing to come forth. Nobody did, and the matter rested. Until now.
Several days ago, another Gramophone critic decided to listen to a Hatto Liszt CD, of the 12 Transcendental Studies. He put the disc into his computer to listen, and something awfully strange happened. His computer's player identified the disc as, yes, the Liszts, but not a Hatto recording. Instead, his display suggested that the disc was one on BIS Records, by the pianist Lászlo Simon. Mystified, our critic checked his Hatto disc against the actual Simon recording, and to his amazement they sounded exactly the same.
In then went a recording of Hatto playing two Rachmaninov Piano Concertos and, sure enough, his computer's CD player listed it as another – by Yefim Bronfman, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, on Sony. Again, the critic compared, and again he could hear no difference.
Gramophone then sent the Hatto and the Simon Liszt recordings to an audio expert, Pristine Audio’s Andrew Rose, who scientifically checked the soundwaves of each recording. They matched. “Without a shadow of a doubt,” reported Rose, “10 of the tracks on the Liszt disc are identical to those on the Simon.” Of the remaining two, he now feels that he has identified a further one – which he identified as being, again “without a shadow of a doubt” from a CD entitled “Nojima Plays Liszt”, a 1993 release from Reference Recordings. Furthermore, his partner – who is based elsewhere with his own equipment – agrees.
More astonishing revelations were to come. The pair then checked a track from a Hatto disc of music by Godowsky, and found that it sounded strange, as if the sound had been tampered with. After running checks, they found that the music had indeed been manipulated – the time had been stretched by an “audacious” 15.112% (such an extreme stretch accounted for the odd sound) to alter the tone, but that if the stretch was reversed it became clear that the track was identical to that played by the pianist Carlo Grante on a CD issued by Altarus.
Rose even created special pages on his website, showing the soundwaves for both the Godowsky and the Liszt side by side with those they match. The listener can compare the tracks simultaneously. Rose later checked the Rachmaninov Concertos recording and, sure enough, it matched up with the Bronfman recording.
It would take many weeks of intensive work to examine all of the Hatto recordings, but it seems clear that at least some of these great performances are identical to other performances available from other recording companies. Contacted for his comments, Barrington-Coupe – who acknowledged that he produced well-nigh all of his wife’s recordings – was at a loss to explain the similarity.
Are the Hatto’s fakes? If so, how many? This, it must be suspected, is a story that won’t go away until the full truth is known.
* Don’t miss the April issue of Gramophone for a longer version of this story
Visit Pristine Audio's Hatto web page: www.pristineclassical.com/HattoHoax.html
James Inverne |
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| Rrose_Selavy Exquisite Elemental
Joined: 07 Jan 2003 Total posts: 1940 Location: Stranded in Sub-Atomica Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 18-02-2007 16:59 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Fake drug, fake illness -- and people believe it! Fri Feb 16, 11:56 AM ET
A media exhibit featuring a campaign for a fake drug to treat a fictitious illness is causing a stir because some people think the illness is real.
Australian artist Justine Cooper created the marketing campaign for a non-existent drug called Havidol for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), which she also invented.
But the multi-media exhibit at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York, which includes a Web site, mock television and print advertisements and billboards is so convincing people think it is authentic.
"People have walked into the gallery and thought it was real," Mahmood said in an interview.
"They didn't get the fact that this was a parody or satire."
But Mahmood said it really took off over the Internet. In the first few days after the Web site (www.havidol.com) went up, it had 5,000 hits. The last time he checked it had reached a quarter of a million.
"The thing that amazes me is that it has been folded into real Web sites for panic and anxiety disorder. It's been folded into a Web site for depression. It's been folded into hundreds of art blogs," he added.
The parody is in response to the tactics used by the drug industry to sell their wares to the public. Consumer advertising for prescription medications, which are a staple of television advertising in the United States, was legalised in the country in 1997.
Cooper said she intended the exhibit to be subtle.
"The drug ads themselves are sometimes so comedic. I couldn't be outrageously spoofy so I really wanted it to be a more subtle kind of parody that draws you in, makes you want this thing and then makes you wonder why you want it and maybe where you can get it," she added.
Mahmood said that in addition to generating interest among the artsy crowd, doctors and medical students have been asking about the exhibit.
"I think people identify with the condition," he said. |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070216/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_drug_fake |
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| OldTimeRadio Great Old One Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Total posts: 5539 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio USA Age: 71 Gender: Male |
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