Viewing fell by 27% among 16-24 year olds and children, while it fell only 5% in the 55-64 age category in the same time period. Ofcom said its report highlighted “a widening gap between the viewing habits of the youngest and oldest audiences”.
Author: Douglas McLennan
We Assume Meritocracy Is The Proper Order Of The World (But What If It’s Not?)
“The basic idea—that we should rank candidates for power according to some desirable quality, then pick the best of them—seems too obvious to have needed inventing, but invented it was, and (at least in the West) not so long ago. If we go back to the occasion of its first appearance in the English-speaking world, we will find a group of men who opposed it, not just because they did not think it would work in practice, but because they disagreed with it in principle.”
Cautionary Tale? Why Did Google Delete A Literary Critic’s Blog?
In the weeks since then, Cooper has been updating readers with progress on the case via Facebook. So far, there hasn’t been much change in the situation: as of July 5th, Cooper wrote, “there are now three separate and simultaneous ‘internal investigations’ into the situation going on at Google.”
An Indian High Court Rules For Literary Tolerance, Defending Writer
This decision sends a strong message at a time when freedom of expression is under threat from government attempts to muzzle dissent, and from self-appointed morality enforcers affiliated with conservative groups.
Inside Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Final ‘Hamilton’
“In the ticketholders line were the people who had gone to extremes or paid thousands of dollars just to see the production that night. One attendee said she’d paid $3,500 for the chance to catch the show a second time before the original cast left, while others in the line had camped out overnight for cancellations. Here and there were the lucky winners of the day’s ticket lottery. “I’m the unicorn!” one of them declared happily.”
The Term “Modernism” Gets Thrown Around A Lot. But What Does It Actually Mean
“What remains unresolved — at once exciting and haunting — is a central paradox in the field. Scan the program of any recent conference of the Modernist Studies Association, the titles of articles published in Modernism/modernity, or the monographs published in the field (at least a half-dozen presses have initiated series in modernist studies in the past decade, with more coming), and one will similarly find “modernism” endlessly modified by prefixes.”
Looking For Brain Fitness? It Takes More Than Simple Games
One study, “financed by the National Institutes of Health, suggests that cognitive training that uses thinking, such as problem solving and learning, like reading a newspaper article and discussing it with a friend, has staying power in the brain — even 10 years after the training ends.”
Yes, Broadway is More Diverse, But The Theatre System Still Conspires Against Diversity
“While I marvel at the creative genius that is Lin-Manuel Miranda (and remain as eager as any self-respecting theater lover to snag a Hamilton ticket), I am uncomfortable with how theater makers are reveling in the breakthrough success of a show that succeeded not because of the theater system but in spite of it.”
There Is Badness In The World. We’re Closer To It Than Ever. How To Deal With It?
“Social media makes the joy, suffering and anger of millions of people feel like our own. That is empowering and overwhelming. Social media also gives us the illusion that we can be effective merely by talking or feeling. The technology of this new form of mass communion has probably developed faster than our emotional capacity to process it. We do, however, have a tried and true method of communion with other people, the past and things that are foreign or unsettling to us: These include art and literature and honest colloquy, in which people speak not for victory but for truth and understanding.”
Some Countries Support Artists Directly (But There Are Tradeoffs)
“Whether or not artistry is a formal profession in the eyes of the state, and what states do or don’t do to support that profession, reflects different agendas within different political systems. While the American model mostly distributes public funding for the arts indirectly, via tax deductions for nonprofit organizations and their donors, many other governments provide substantial direct support to individual artists.”