Category: issues

“The point is that a more scientific mindset would recognize that an empirical proposition demands empirical verification. The era in which an essayist can get away with ex cathedra pronouncements on factual questions in social science is coming to an end.”

“Edinburgh City Council has proposed that all its cultural grants for 2014/15, including those to its festivals and theatres, will be the same as for the current year. Its recently published consultative budget lists proposed cuts across all sectors, but none in culture. This includes all festivals, such as the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe, as well as the city’s theatres and concert halls.”

“People may learn English or German or Chinese to get a job. But they also learn languages to experience travel, food, film, music and literature. … So to be motivated to learn Esperanto, you have to be motivated not by a living and breathing culture, but by an ideal of international harmony. That ideal has to compete with French food, Italian fashion, Brazilian music, Spanish nightlife, American rock’n’roll, Japanese film, and so on.”

“Certainly, the fact that he isn’t on Twitter means that he doesn’t have anything insightful to say about it, and perhaps he should be faulted for making broad pronouncements about a phenomenon he hasn’t even tried to understand. Still, it seems to me that he’s mostly just missing the specific ways that Twitter is horrible.”

“If you use a program to carry out activities in your life, your freedom depends on your having control over the program. You deserve to have control over the programs you use, and all the more so when you use them for something important in your life.”

One label owner: “If the streaming services like Spotify become a predominant model, then very few if any labels can survive on that kind of money. It’s certainly better than people stealing music.”

In survey responses, LGBT actors say that job discrimination still exists – though things appear to be improving.

“In the real world, and under the law, we can’t make all the decisions about what uses we allow of that work. There’s a concept called ‘fair use’ – deliberately ignored in the lesson, on the absurd basis that kids can’t understand it – that explicitly allows others to make use of our work in ways we don’t like, or anticipate. Without fair use, creative works would be next to impossible, because we all build on the work of those who came before us.”

If you’re going to send a takedown notice to someone using your music in a video, maybe make sure that “someone” isn’t one of the most famous copyright attorneys in the world.

“Thanks to the arts, Philadelphia feels different today. But now that the building boom of new facilities is over, the question is whether the city and its benefactors can muster the support to become savior to the arts.”