“In my 67-year lifetime, the five boroughs have never been so full: Our population is soaring toward 9 million; most parts of town bustle with energy and investment; and crime has fallen to historic lows. I marvel over the blossoming. I can walk down the Hull Street block where I grew up without fearing for my life — which wasn’t the case 25 years ago when it was strewn with empty lots and menace lurked behind every parked car.”
Category: issues
Seattle Voters Will Vote On Spending $67 Million A Year On The Arts
The 0.1 percent tax, or 1 penny per $10 spent, is expected to generate $67 million a year and would go toward arts, culture and science programs, with more than 300 organizations receiving money.
Inside The Ludicrous 15-Year Campaign To Save National Lampoon
To save money, the offices, then on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, had been turned into a makeshift storage facility, and rent hadn’t been paid. The phones had been turned off, and for two years calls to National Lampoon had been routed to the pink-cased iPhone of Cora Victoriano, the beloved longtime receptionist/office momager who in a previous life worked in the office of Imelda Marcos.
Congress’s Budget Deal Includes Increases (!) For NEA, NEH
Mind you, they’re not big increases – $2 million (1.33%) each for the NEA and NEH, and flat funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But this is a change from the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate the agencies entirely. “Like many of Trump’s planned initiatives for his first 100 days in office, however, this plan did not pan out.”
‘National Report Card’ Says U.S. Students Are Stagnating In Music And Art
“The findings come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which regularly reports on U.S. student achievement, including math, reading and science. But only three times – in 1997, 2008 and now from 2016 – has it looked at music and visual arts. Overall, the national scores on arts achievement remained flat when compared with 2008, said Peggy Carr, the acting commissioner of NAEP. ‘Granted this is not the best score,” she said, especially when compared with U.S. students’ progress in math.”
Trying To Understand Populism? Take Another Look At William Gladstone
Interest has surged in an institution that houses Gladstone’s books and papers and that sees itself as a temple of liberal values, delighting its director, Peter Francis, who believes the trend is a reaction to the rise of populism in Britain.
Florida Legislature Cuts Funding For Arts School That Educated “Hamilton,” “Moonlight” Makers
After continued budget talks, House and Senate leaders agreed late in the day to give $500,000 to New World School of the Arts in the 2017-18 budget. That would still represent a cut of $150,000 in funding from this year — about a 23 percent deduction — but it’s drastically more than what could have happened: Losing the grant entirely.
If We’re Going To Have An Internet Of Things – And We Are – It Needs A Code Of Ethics
A leading computer ethicist: “We’re just at the tip of the iceberg in what is arguably going to be a brave new world. And it’s highly heterogenous: We’ll be seeing a lot more autonomous systems, we’ll be seeing enhanced humans and smart systems, devices, and organizations. When you put all of those together, and you start thinking about how to bring out the best of the Internet of Things rather than the worst of the Internet of Things, governance is really the key.”
The ‘Garden Bridge’ Is Dead, And Those Who Proposed It (Should) Owe The British Public Millions Of Pounds
How did it get so far in the first place? “Varnished with a Kevlar coating of celebrity sparkle, Bullingdon Club backing and architectural fairy dust, the garden bridge has always seemed capable of surviving every missile of common sense thrown at it. For three years it has been fiercely opposed by supporters of gardens and bridges alike, of which this vanity project was clearly never either.”
The French Capital Of Lacemaking Has Become The French Capital Of Far-Right Politics, But How?
Of course, Calais only became a lacemaking capital after some British skulduggery: “Lace-making began to flourish here in the early 19th century, after three British weavers smuggled giant looms, called Leavers machines, across the English Channel to evade English restrictions on selling lace to the French. They set up in the textile-making town of Calais. The new industry blossomed, and the metallic click of the Leavers looms vibrated in Calais’s narrow streets day and night.” (Narrator voice: This prosperity was not to last.)