In Brief: Where Is Winter?

Here is your regular Sunday dosage of interesting items, from Blogville and beyond:

• After having as much fun with YouTube as the rest of us, Patty Mitchell found a clip of her orchestra playing at YouTube, but no one got paid. No one makes any money, so should professional musicians feel cheated? [oboeinsight]
  
• What?! Former First Lady Betty Ford once studied dance with Martha Graham? Yes, it's true. [James Tata]
  
• My 2-year-old nephew, a major Elmohead like most toddlers, found the new robotic Elmo under the Christmas tree this year. We watched the toy at work many times during our holiday visit. That made a video of it doing its thing while being consumed in flames that much more hilarious. Hat tip to Boing Boing. [Google Video]
  
• When Academics Attack! Reminding us that bitter disputes between scholars over minute points are not a recent phenomenon, check out this argument between St. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, and celebrated theologian St. Augustine. The subject is Biblical sources, and Jerome totally owns Augustine, just in stilted academic language. [Languagehat]
  
• When she says listen, we listen. Is she really back, calling Netrebko "the Russian fraud" and Alagna "a washed-up ruffian" and championing baritone Russell Braun, or am I dreaming? [Vilaine Fille]
  
• Shortly after relocating to Munich, harpist Helen Radice lands a regular gig. Congratulations! [twang twang twang]
  
• Amazon.com Recommendations Understand Area Woman Better Than Husband -- hat tip to The Standing Room, whom we welcome back to the land of the living blogs. [The Onion]
  
• A disgruntled reader of The New Yorker takes the short stories printed in the magazine, runs them through Microsoft Word's AutoSummarize function six or seven times, and distills the text down to something that works perfectly as the caption for a typical New Yorker cartoon. [Maud Newton]
  
• In last week's In Brief, we noted that Alex Ross was confident that classical music was NOT dying, but actually reviving. This week, Greg Sandow is convinced that classical music will be dead within 10 years. I'm so confused! [Sandow]