Category: issues

Philip Pullman: “Authors and musicians work in poverty and obscurity for years to bring their work to the level ‘that gives delight to their audiences, and as soon as they achieve that, the possibility of making a living from it is taken away from them.'”

“Each side filed papers accusing the other of acting unethically” – and the government accused a federal prosecutor turned Sotheby’s lawyer of providing false information to her former colleagues.

“The issue is how they were placed in the city and in the landscape. Modernist planning deliberately kept them away from sources of employment, retail hubs and decent transit, and they were surrounded by vaguely defined spaces which created an unpleasant no-man’s-land condition.”

“Tourism has displaced other economic sectors: banks, insurance companies, everything. It’s eroding Venice, and everyone knows it, but no one has any answer to the problem.”

“The Scottish government has published its draft budget for 2014/15, with a lower than expected cut of £2.1 million [or 8.2%] to Scotland’s five national performing companies. … However, The Stage understands that much greater cuts had been on the cards.”

“It’s like saying that a child doesn’t need to study English because she talks with her parents at home. … A teacher might say, ‘Calm down!’ – but how exactly do you calm down when you’re feeling anxious? Where do you learn the skills to manage those feelings?”

Incoming culture secretary George Brandis “is not about to throw the Australia Council restructure into reverse, despite his misgivings about it … Brandis says his differences with Labor are philosophical: arts policy should recognise and promote intrinsic values – art for art’s sake – and not treat culture as a tool for other policy goals.”

“Last night, Anthony Weiner ended his disastrous run for mayor with a crude gesture at a reporter. Political wisdom of the act aside, it turns out that raising the middle finger – flipping the bird, as it’s commonly known – has a surprisingly complex history.”

“After six years of legal wrangling and decades after he wrote the lyrics to the hit song ‘YMCA,’ Victor Willis will gain control of his share of the copyright to that song and others he wrote when he was the lead singer of the 1970s disco group … [He] was able to recapture those songs, thanks to a little-known provision of copyright legislation that went into effect in 1978.”

“The reason that research can seemingly suggest that our enjoyment of wine, certain foods, and classical music is BS can tell us a lot about snobbery and how we experience the finer things in life, the limitations of expert judgment in any field, and why marketing is so powerful.”