Category: issues

Orange County, California’s recently expanded performing arts center has made the region a major player in the West Coast cultural scene, where once it was thought merely as an appendage of Los Angeles. But “a closer look at the [center’s] 2005-06 fiscal year, which ended June 30, reveals that it wasn’t spectacular. In fact, all key measurements – attendance, ticket sales, income, expenses and number of events – were down from previous years.”

In the five years since the 9/11 attacks, there has been no shortage of ideas for a memorial honoring the victims. But a deadly combination of shrieking bloggers, opportunistic politicians, and shortsighted bureaucrats have thus far managed to shoot down, water down, and wrap in red tape every serious proposal. “Future memorial juries would be wise to think about how and why these designs have been so easily pushed off track.”

When British airline authorities imposed harsh new restrictions on carry-on baggage in response to a terrorist threat, few complained. But when officials began murmuring that the near-ban on hand baggage could become permanent, musicians cried foul. “The impact if these policies continue will, over time, be inconceivable. London, along with New York, is one of the musical capitals of the world but these restrictions could lead to the erosion of that status — and of the reputation of Britain as a whole — as musicians are forced to alter their plans.”

One soloist who has been feeling the effects of the UK baggage restrictions is London-based violinist Viktoria Mullova, who went so far as to smuggle her unprotected Stradivarius onto a Helsinki-bound flight in a shopping bag last month. This week, she’s due to play concerts in the US, and there’s a very real possibility that she will have to make the trip without her instrument.

It’s thriving, with thousands who have decided that official explanations of the events of 9/11 don’t add up. “Distrust percolates more strongly near Ground Zero. A Zogby International poll of New York City residents two years ago found 49.3 percent believed the government consciously failed to act.”

Slate asks a group of writers and critics about what art has helpd them sort out the attacks of 9/11…

The famously brutal military government of Myanmar (aka Burma) is rebuilding ancient temples in an effort to draw tourists, but archaeologists are concerned that the bricklayers doing the work “have no training in repairing aged monuments, and their work has nothing to do with actually restoring one of the world’s most important Buddhist sites. Instead, using modern red bricks and mortar, they are building a new temple on top of the old.”

“There was a time when the entertainment industry believed it could stop digital thieves like the Coles with copy-protection software that prevented duplication and dissemination. Commercially released movies have contained copy-encryption software since the fledgling days of VHS. Modern DVDs feature a patented Content-Scrambling System (CSS) that prevents them from being copied using standard burner software. But for all it does to stop piracy, CSS may as well not exist.”

“Five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the planned performing arts center at ground zero is without either institutional leadership or a fund-raising campaign. While the city has indicated that it will play a role in overseeing construction of the center, it hasn’t specified what that role will be. This leaves the arts groups chosen to occupy the center — the Joyce and the Signature Theatre Company — in the dark about when it will actually be built.”

Are celebrities narcissistic because they’re celebrities or were they born that way? A new study reaches conclusions: “Our research also shows that many celebrities exhibit narcissistic behaviour prior to becoming famous, which could indicate a self-selection bias for the entertainment industry by certain personality types,”