This fall, women will comprise more than 56 percent of students on campuses nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Some 2.2 million fewer men than women will be enrolled in college this year. And the trend shows no sign of abating. By 2026, the department estimates, 57 percent of college students will be women.
Author: Douglas McLennan
Report: Cultural Employment In UK Up 20 Percent In Five Years
Employment in the cultural sector has grown steadily over the past five years, increasing by 20% between 2011 and 2016 to 654,000 jobs, according to newly released Government figures.
Study: How Bots Spread Fake News
For the first time, these guys have systematically studied how fake news spreads on Twitter and provide a unique window into this murky world. Their work suggests clear strategies for controlling this epidemic.
Scientists Are Working On Making Us Immortal. Ethical Questions Abound
“Mind uploading could actually offer something tantalisingly close to true immortality. Just as we currently back up files on external drives and cloud storage, your uploaded mind could be copied innumerable times and backed up in secure locations, making it extremely unlikely that any natural or man-made disaster could destroy all of your copies. Despite this advantage, mind uploading presents some difficult ethical issues.”
Public Broadcaster Sues LaVar Burton Over “Reading Rainbow”
The suit alleges “copyright infringement, conversion, cybersquatting, violations of the Lanham Act, breach of contract and interference with customer relations,” and seeks profits from LeVar Burton Reads, which Burton did describe on the podcast itself as “a Reading Rainbow for adults.”
A Professional Fringe Theatre Out To Redefine What Success Is
“We are a professional theatre company who happens to perform in alternative spaces. Just because our shows are free does not mean we are inferior in quality. Just because we aren’t playing at the Boston Center for the Arts doesn’t mean we are unprofessional, or underfinanced. We have been around for seven years, and we pay our artists decent wages. We are working very hard to redefine fringe and redefine what it means to be a professional theatre company.”
Nothing New: Celebrity Culture Has Always Been With Us
“Antoine Lilti’s The Invention of Celebrity is a book that does just that. A chronicle of the origins and development of our modern société du spectacle, it provides a genealogy of the media-driven world of celebrities and personalities who now dominate our headlines and crowd (out) our public debates. Far from being the product solely of 20th-century developments or the perversion of a less starstruck age, argues Lilti, the culture of celebrity has in fact been with us since the 18th century. ‘Celebrity’, Lilti writes, is ‘a characteristic trait of modern societies’. It was present at their birth.”
Truth Or Opinion? Just Because We’re “Entitled” To Our Opinions Doesn’t Make Them Right
The notion that the metaphorical “court of public opinion” should be a truth-seeking body was chucked overboard long ago. Today, a peculiar, pluralistic ideology dominates the “free market(place) of ideas”—an ideology cast in the same mold as liberal multiculturalism. The noblest virtue of this ideology, we’re taught, is not the bare-knuckle struggle for truth, but the equal protection and representation of variegated perspectives and identities, especially those that have been historically excluded from the mainstream (or feel like they have been).
Some Existential Questions About Music And Artificial Intelligence
“Whether businesses or researchers, these teams are trying to answer the same question: can machines create music, using AI technologies like neural networks to be trained up on a catalogue of human-made music before producing their own? But these companies’ work poses another question too: if machines can create music, what does that mean for professional human musicians?”
Veteran Arts Admin Bob Booker Has Some Words Of Advice As He Retires
“In regards to arts advocacy in general, we need to take a new approach that places the arts as a vital, engaging activity of tremendous value to Americans. Too often we approach advocacy and communication with our heads bowed and our hands out: “Please sir, can you save the arts? Can you save my organization that has been in the red for years and would you maybe consider following your state’s policy that requires arts programming in schools?” We are too timid, too afraid of offending and are perceived as impotent, ineffectual and incompetent.”