Category: issues

“To most people, counterfeiting means forged currency first and foremost. But counterfeiters are copying an ever widening range of products. For some time they have been churning out imitation designer fashion, software and CD s. Now they are copying medicines, mobile phones, food and drink, car parts and even tobacco. New technology has broadened the range of goods that are vulnerable to copying. It has dramatically improved their quality, as well as lowering their cost of production. Where once counterfeits were cheap and shoddy imitations of the real thing, today their packaging and contents (especially for digital products such as software, music CD s and film DVD s) often render them almost indistinguishable from the genuine article.”

With the big mass retailers like WalMart now accounting for 40 percent or more of sales for books and music, their influence on what gets sold is growing. “But with the chains’ power has come criticism from authors, musicians and civil liberties groups who argue that the stores are in effect censoring and homogenizing popular culture. The discounters and price clubs typically carry an assortment of fewer than 2,000 books, videos and albums, and they are far more ruthless than specialized stores about returning goods if they fail to meet a minimum threshold of weekly sales. What is more, the chains’ buyers ? especially at Wal-Mart ? carefully screen content to avoid selling material likely to offend their conservative customers.”

“Everything that makes London look like London is being destroyed. Such is the cry of the latest panic over London’s architectural landscape, this time inspired by Renzo Piano’s plan to build Europe’s tallest skyscraper, a 1,016ft glass shard, at London Bridge. In this instance the outcry centres on its impact on the river, and last month’s public inquiry into the project heard a lot about the damage the tower threatened to do to the historic views of the Thames.
But it is already far too late. There are no historic views any more. As a journey downriver, from Hammersmith in the west all the way to Wapping and Deptford in the east, reveals, the damage has already been done.”

Three years ago, voters in Minneapolis overwhelmingly approved a $110 million bond issue to build a new downtown library. But that was before the tech bubble burst, before 9/11, and before Minnesota’s largest city became a primary target in a statewide budget-cutting push by Governor Tim Pawlenty. The city council is determined to move ahead with the project, and groundbreaking is set for this week. But a significant chunk of money must still be raised from private sources, and a shortfall could affect the design of the building and its surrounding area, and could even cause funding to be diverted from branch libraries elsewhere in the city.

“The executive producer of this week’s CBS miniseries, ‘Hitler: The Rise of Evil,’ was fired for publicly likening the climate in America in advance of the invasion of Iraq to the climate in pre-war Germany that allowed the rise of the Third Reich. Ed Gernon lost his job for drawing an analogy. Imagine being axed for expressing an opinion about a period in history when it was unsafe to express an opinion. If it weren’t so nasty, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was all a publicity stunt.” But it’s no stunt, and the continuing backlash against anyone daring to badmouth the current administration has many in Hollywood drawing another analogy, to the old McCarthy blacklist.

The US Congress is close to passing a law that would allow artists a tax deduction for donating their work to a non-profit institution. “The Artists’ Contribution to American Heritage Act of 2003 (HR 806) would allow artists a charitable tax deduction ‘equal to fair market value’ for contributing ‘literary, musical, artistic, or scholarly compositions created by the donor’ to qualifying public institutions such as a library or museum. Under current law, artists may deduct only the cost of materials used to create the work.”

The Bush administration is spending $125 million to teach American history. Studies show that few colleges require study of American history, and that few students kn ow even the basic outlines of American history.

Historian David McCullough gives this year’s annual Jefferson Lecture, the “highest humanities honor the US federal government can bestow. The NEH, which curates annual lecture series, asks only that the Jefferson Lecture, for which it pays the speaker $10,000, be “original and substantial.” Unfortunately, McCullough’s lecture, while entertaining, was neither very original nor particularly substantial. It was meant, perhaps, to be inspirational, with a long peroration about the glories of history, the human drama, the importance of leadership, the lifting of the spirit, and much more repetitive flapdoodle. This stuff sounds good when well delivered, and McCullough has the natural, practiced delivery of a man who might do voice-overs for the History Channel. But for something so prestigious as the Jefferson Lecture it was all rather flimsy and diffuse.”

The Australian government has pledged an increase in arts spending of $19 million over the next four years. But some are disappointed. A report last year recommended a $9 million a year increase. And there are strings attached to the money that is offered. “The Federal Goverment’s pledge, which averages out to $4.75 million a year, falls a little short, and comes with strings attached – it is contingent on the states and territories matching the amount dollar for dollar.”

Some 500 arts supporters gathered in New Jersey’s state capital to protest proposed cuts in the state’s arts budget. The governor had originally proposed eliminating arts funding, but has recently suggested that half the cut might be restored. “This is a national calamity. It’s going to leave us a poorer and dumber nation. And we’re dumb enough.”