Category: issues

“GE has used sites like The Economist and Quartz for native advertising to promote itself as a supporter of innovation. But its biggest and most visible effort to date came in March with the introduction of Pressing, a policy news hub that pulls in content from millennial-aimed Vox, where Pressing made a splash as a launch sponsor.”

Even after taking practice out of the equation, “over three-quarters of the genetic variance in music accomplishment remained,” they report. This means that the aforementioned “genetically influenced propensities” to practice “are not sufficient to explain all of the genetic influences on accomplishment.”

“I don’t buy the idea that if our arts organizations die, so will our ability to access art. We’ve seen for more than 2 millennia that art arises from a fundamental human need to both create, and consume, transformative experiences. That will continue for another 2 millennia regardless of our organizational structures or legal tax status.”

The Russian capital’s myriad cultural and history sites – from the Taganka Theater5 to the Bolshoi to the writers’ union clubhouse in The Master and Margarita – have signs posted with codes that lead to a surprisingly rich web site (available to people at home, too) full of history, maps, biographies, and gossip.

“Harl recalled two mounds in the town of Fenton, Missouri, that were leveled to build a Walmart. The site of a 1,000-year-old village in Bridgeton, Missouri, was flattened to build an industrial park.”

“American results on the literacy and technology tests were somewhat better, in the sense that they were only mediocre.”

“That the most rapidly expanding U.S. metro area is a Manhattan-sized retirement village — with more golf carts than New York has taxis — highlights the transformation of the world’s demographic profile. The over-60 set — which the United Nations projects will almost triple to 2 billion by 2050 — offers opportunity to marketers and homebuilders even as it confounds governments that must care for an aging populace.”

“The fact is that by focusing exclusively on monetary issues, the current conversation prevents us not only from remembering the higher objectives of an undergraduate education, but also from recognizing just how bad a job our institutions have been doing at fulfilling them. Colleges and universities have a lot to answer for; if they want to regain the support of the larger society, they need to prove that they are worthy of it.”

“While technology has often been hailed as the great equalizer of educational opportunity, a growing body of evidence indicates that in many cases, tech is actually having the opposite effect: It is increasing the gap between rich and poor, between whites and minorities, and between the school-ready and the less-prepared.”