Enrollments have been declining, and state funding has declined. So what to do? Respond to the market and try to offer courses (and majors) that can attract students and their tuition.
Author: Douglas McLennan
Could A Font Help Your Remember More of What You Read?
Sans Forgetica is purposefully hard to decipher, forcing the reader to focus. One study found that students recalled 57 percent of what they read in Sans Forgetica, compared with 50 percent of the material in Arial, a significant difference. No word yet on the retention rate of Comic Sans. – Wired
Hell As An Incentive
The “bad place” has been detailed extensively – these are all the bad things that will happen to you if you don’t behave. Hell has been a moral consequence, it has been a spur to behave better. And increasingly we’re being warned of the possibilities of versions of it visiting earth. The point is, the concept of hell is a powerful idea that has framed our thinking. – The New Yorker
Beauty Isn’t Explained By Science. But Science Needs To Understand Beauty
If there is a universal truth about beauty — some concise and elegant concept that encompasses every variety of charm and grace in existence — we do not yet understand enough about nature to articulate it. – The New York Times
New Initiative To Extend The Arts With Technology
The aim is that by using devices such as mobile phones, Extended Reality (XR) headsets and streaming into live performance environments, or even in the home, audiences will be able to experience live performance in entirely new ways. – Arts Professional
Chinese Censorship Is Complicated. It’s Why Orwell Isn’t Censored…
Here’s the rub: Monitors pay closer attention to material that might be consumed by the average person than to cultural products seen as highbrow and intended for educated groups. (An internet forum versus an old novel.) As a result, Chinese writers are watched more closely than foreign ones. — The Atlantic
Spotify Is Now Selling Sponsorship Of Its Personalized Playlists
“It feels, pretty simply, like yet another example of a tech company creating a highly personalized product in seemingly warm partnership with its users, then realizing that it can trade on this goodwill to make money.” – Vox
The Day Mainstream Culture Died
Jared Marcel Pollen: No taste is triumphant anymore. This is to say that the mainstream is itself in peril as much as the domination of any narrative art within it. Indeed, the very notion of a mainstream seems to be perishing in overproduction and disaffection with the cultural gatekeepers. – 3AM Magazine
Mystery Over Why Easter Island’s Giant Heads Are Where They Are Is Solved
The heads are unforgettable, standing watch over Easter Island’s windswept plains. Clearly they served some function, but was it more than ceremonial? The answer, say scientists, is yes. And a practical yes at that… – The Guardian
The Silent Film Era Produced 10,000 Movies. The Vast Majority Have Been Lost Or Destroyed
Because early motion pictures were released on nitrate film, which is dangerously flammable and susceptible to decay—only to become even more flammable as it deteriorates—the majority of these films are no longer with us today. While the exact number of lost films is unknown, a study commissioned by the Library of Congress ballparks the surviving number at a scant 14 percent. – Smithsonian