From a Portland playwright and grantwriter: “Consider just doing a show when you’re ready and not forcing yourself to program a whole season. Consider strategic partnerships. Consider not becoming a nonprofit and being an LLC instead. Consider the difference between what you want and what you need. (Do you WANT your own building, or do you NEED your own building?) Consider what you’re spending money on. Invest in people first, stuff second.”
Category: ideas
The Rise Of The Private Press, And What That Means For The Public
“While political news is everywhere, coverage of the day-to-day inner workings of government—the slow, steady development of policy in Congress, in the administration, and in the independent regulatory agencies, and how those policies are implemented—has become increasingly scarce in the media that average citizens historically have relied upon. The opposite, however, is true of the ‘paywall press.'”
How Freeways Destroyed American Cities
Urban freeways displaced communities and created air and noise pollution in downtown areas. They made it easier for suburban commuters to “zip to their suburban homes at the end of the work day, encouraging those with means to abandon the urban core.”
Feeling Complacent? Here’s Why
Information is now prized more than wisdom; journalistic punditry has ousted authentic thought. And today “nothing, it seems, is more conducive to the love of one’s neighbor than the sharing of identically branded products.”
Privacy On The Internet? What’s The Reasonable Expectation?
“In reality, the internet is more like a bustling city than a hydra. There are glitzy neighbourhoods: safe, family-friendly and with well-lit streets. But there also are seedy underbellies to be navigated only by those in the know, as well as plenty of dark alleys, forgotten corners and hidden haunts.”
Ethical Dispute Or Cultural Difference? Figuring Out ‘Moral Relativism’
“Because the term ‘moral relativism’ is closely associated with this subjectivist picture of morality, it elicits understandable hostility. How can we earnestly hold our moral commitments if we give up on the aspiration to objectivity regarding morals, to getting them right rather than wrong? I think there is another way to understand what moral relativism involves, which does not require us to give up our aspiration to objectivity. Let me use an example.”
If Internet Addiction Is Real, Why Don’t We Regulate The Web The Way We Do Gambling?
“So should individuals be blamed for having poor self-control? To a point, yes. Personal responsibility matters. But it’s important to realise that many websites and other digital tools have been engineered specifically to elicit compulsive behaviour.”
We Need More Welders And Fewer Philosophers, Says Marco Rubio. Let’s Ask A Philosopher Who Used To Be A Welder
“I know there is currently a shortage of skilled welders, but which is more likely: that the machines will someday replace all the welders or that the machines will someday replace all the philosophers?”
3-D Printers Are Going To Revolutionize Pretty Much Everything
“If we’re going to use physical ‘documents’ the way we use paper ones—glancing at them for an hour, or perhaps only a moment, then tossing them aside—we’ll need printing material to be recyclable, even biodegradable. Imagine the 3-D printing equivalent of a Post-it note! What’s more, we need our intellectual culture to evolve. Right now, we don’t value or teach spatial reasoning enough; “literacy” generally only means writing and reading.”
The Arts In Britain: Survey Says They’re Still Male, Still White, Still Middle-Class
“The survey reinforced the recent findings of the Warwick Commission, which found that arts and culture was being ‘systematically removed’ from the state education system, and that arts audiences were predominantly white and middle class. Both factors were contributing to the creative sector becoming a closed shop, particularly to those from black, asian and ethnic minorities (BAME) and less affluent backgrounds.”