Viva was not forever for Spice Girls as London musical closes

By Belinda Goldsmith

LONDON (Reuters) - A musical based on the meteoric rise of British pop band The Spice Girls that was mauled by the critics is closing six months after its premiere in London, the show's producer said on Thursday.

The brainchild of "Mamma Mia!" creator Judy Craymer, "Viva Forever" was loosely based on the story of The Spice Girls, with a wannabe girl band making the finals of a TV singing contest resembling "The X Factor".

But the show, written by British comedienne Jennifer Saunders, struggled after receiving appalling reviews. Critics said it lacked the "va-voom" of The Spice Girls and labored under an "insultingly banal" script, poor performances and a gloomy set.

The Spice Girls, who backed the show and all attended the red-carpet opening in London's West End theatre district last December, thanked the cast and fans for their support.

"Although 'Viva Forever' won't continue in the West End, we are thrilled that the thousands of people who came to the show had as much fun as we did," they said in a statement.

Craymer said it was "with a heavy heart" that the decision was made to close the show, which opened with strong advance tickets sales but struggled to fill seats despite discounted tickets. The last show will be on June 29.

"The show has evolved since we first opened and is now brighter, lighter and funnier, but despite the wonderful audiences and extremely positive feedback we just can't make it work," she said in the statement.

Craymer's "Mamma Mia!", based on ABBA hits, has earned nearly $2 billion worldwide and was made into a hit film.

The crash of "Viva Forever!" belies the enduring popularity of The Spice Girls who stormed the charts in the 1990s with a string of hits including "Viva Forever", "Spice Up Your Life", and "Wannabe".

They sold more 80 million records worldwide and notched up nine British No. 1 singles during their six years together before splitting up in 2000.

Now mothers in their late 30s and early 40s, The Spice Girls remain popular with Britain's celebrity-obsessed tabloids and performed at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics.

"Viva Forever!" joins a list of musicals that have failed in London. DJ Mike Read's musical about Oscar Wilde closed one night into its run in 2004 and Cameron Mackintosh's "Betty Blue Eyes" closed after six months in 2011.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Britain's most successful composer of musicals, has condemned so-called jukebox musicals based on previously recorded songs as purely money-making schemes.

"They are cynical exercises. You must have your heart in the subject you choose to turn into a musical," Lloyd Webber said in a recent interview.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/viva-not-forever-spice-girls-london-musical-closes-102125625.html

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Bird fossil sheds light on how swift and hummingbird flight came to be

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

A tiny bird fossil discovered in Wyoming offers clues to the precursors of swift and hummingbird wings. The fossil is unusual in having exceptionally well-preserved feathers, which allowed the researchers to reconstruct the size and shape of the bird's wings in ways not possible with bones alone.

Researchers spotted the specimen ? the nearly complete skeleton of a bird that would have fit in the palm of your hand and weighed less than an ounce ? while working at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

The newly discovered bird was named Eocypselus rowei, in honor of John W. Rowe, Chairman of the Field Museum's Board of Trustees.

First collected in southwestern Wyoming in a fossil site known as the Green River Formation, E. rowei lived roughly 50 million years ago, after the dinosaurs disappeared but before the earliest humans came to be.

E. rowei was a tiny bird ? only twelve centimeters from head to tail. Feathers account for more than half of the bird's total wing length.

To find out where the fossil fit in the bird family tree, the researchers compared the specimen to extinct and modern day species. Their analyses suggest that the bird was an evolutionary precursor to the group that includes today's swifts and hummingbirds.

Given the differences in wing shape between these two closely related groups of birds, scientists have puzzled over how swift and hummingbird flight came to be. Finding fossil relatives like this specimen is key to figuring that out, the researchers say.

"This fossil bird represents the closest we've gotten to the point where swifts and hummingbirds went their separate ways," said lead author Daniel Ksepka of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina.

Hummingbirds have short wings relative to their bodies, which makes them good at hovering in mid-air. Swifts have super-long wings for gliding and high-speed flight. But the wings of E. rowei were somewhere in between.

"[Based on its wing shape] it probably wasn't a hoverer, like a hummingbird, and it probably wasn't as efficient at fast flight as a swift," Ksepka said.

The shape of the bird's wings, coupled with its tiny size, suggest that the ancestors of today's swifts and hummingbirds got small before each group's unique flight behavior came to be. "Hummingbirds came from small-bodied ancestors, but the ability to hover didn't come to be until later," Ksepka explained.

Closer study of the feathers under a scanning electron microscope revealed that carbon residues in the fossils ? once thought to be traces of bacteria that fed on feathers ? are fossilized melanosomes, tiny cell structures containing melanin pigments that give birds and other animals their color. The findings suggest that the ancient bird was probably black and may have had a glossy or iridescent sheen, like swifts living today. Based on its beak shape it probably ate insects, the researchers say.

The other authors of this study were Julia Clarke, Sterling Nesbitt and Felicia Kulp of the University of Texas at Austin, and Lance Grande of the Field Museum of Natural History.

The results will appear in the May 1 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

###

Ksepka, D., et al. (2013). "Fossil evidence of wing shape in a stem relative of swifts and hummingbirds (Aves, Pan-Apodiformes)." Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent): http://www.nescent.org

Thanks to National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128061/Bird_fossil_sheds_light_on_how_swift_and_hummingbird_flight_came_to_be

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Is Canadian-Born Ted Cruz Eligible to Run for President?

Not even six months into his first term, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is weighing whether to run for president in 2016.

Cruz, whose ambitions National Review?reported?Wednesday, wasted no time chiseling a niche for himself as a champion of conservatism: opposing gun-control legislation and expressing skepticism toward immigration reform.

There is, though, one question that nags at his possible goal of reaching the White House: Does Cruz, who was born in Canada, meet the constitutional muster of being a natural-born citizen? Cruz and a number of legal scholars say yes, but it?s an answer that begs for explanation.

The Constitution has only a few requirements for aspiring executives. Presidents must be at least 35 years old, have lived in the U.S. for 14 years, and be a ?natural born Citizen.? Cruz is 42. Check. He?s lived in Texas for more than 14 years. Check. But the definition of what it means to be a natural-born citizen has never been decided in the courts and the Constitution doesn?t explain exactly what it means by "natural born," according to Peter Spiro, a Temple University law professor and citizenship-law expert.

?These questions get decided in the court of popular opinion,? said Spiro, who added he thinks Cruz counts as a natural-born citizen. ?Why deprive ourselves of having the opportunity to choose somebody on the basis of that kind of formality??

Cruz argues he fits the requirement because his mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth. ?I?m a citizen by birth,? Cruz said in an interview with Sean Hannity in March.

He was born in Calgary, Alberta, on Dec. 22, 1970, to a Cuban-born father, Rafael, and a Delaware-born mother, Eleanor. Both of his parents were in Canada working in the oil industry. They and Cruz moved to Texas, where his parents went to college, when the future senator was 4 years old. Federal law says that people born outside the U.S. to a parent or parents who are citizens and who have lived in the country are considered citizens at birth.

Some news organizations have taken a whack at answering this question as well. The Texas Tribune, for instance, said confidently in August 2012 that Cruz could be considered a natural-born citizen because his mother was a U.S. citizen. ?Bottom line: Despite being born in Canada, Ted Cruz can be considered a natural-born U.S. citizen,? the Tribune wrote.

Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz agreed. ?Of course he?s eligible,? he told National Review. ?He?s a natural-born, not a naturalized, citizen,? said Eugene Volokh, who?s a friend of Cruz.

Still, his Canadian birth means he?s also technically a Canadian citizen, according to Naomi Alboim, a professor who studies citizenship at Queen?s University in Ontario. But even if Cruz were to openly claim his Canadian citizenship along with his U.S. citizenship, that wouldn?t legally prevent him from becoming president. There?s no statutory bar to the presidency for dual citizens.

?Is it a wrinkle?? Spiro asked. ?I think the answer is no.??

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/canadian-born-ted-cruz-eligible-run-president-154514193.html

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