Category: issues

The Knight Foundation’s Arts Challenge Philadelphia has a “seductively simple application.” To wit: “Tell them in 150 words about your idea. Requirements: It must be arts-related, it must be based in or benefit Philadelphia, and you must raise money to match the grant within a year.”

“Far too many bright, motivated kids are being badly served by their educational experiences–ones at elite, wealthy schools as well as underfunded ones.”

“The case against making increased GDP per capita the overriding policy objective is that it doesn’t deliver the increased happiness or welfare if promises.”

Only 14 percent of the people surveyed could answer all four questions about current events: “which party controls the House of Representatives, the current unemployment rate, the nation that Angela Merkel leads and which presidential candidate favors taxing higher-income Americans. … Most news audiences, however, scored substantially better than the public.”

“The Princess of Wales theatre would be sacrificed as part of Mr. Mirvish’s broader plan to transform Toronto’s King Street theatre district into an arts hub that would include two large art galleries in addition to the planned 2,600 condo units in three towers with as many as 85 storeys each.”

“Like the wise people know: Dance like no one’s watching; Love like you’ve never been hurt; Sing like you’re part of the choir, and somehow let that little kid inside of you back out before it’s too late.”

They’re going away, which is weird: “In December 1997, Fortune magazine ranked the VFW 16th–just behind the United States Chamber of Commerce–on its list of the ‘mightiest lobbying groups’ in the land.” But that’s all over.

The Museum Tower reflection issue, owners say, will get resolved – by someone, doing something. And someone’s going to pay for it. (Details are a little sketchy.)

“The Cambodian government has asked the United States to help it recover a 10th-century Khmer sandstone statue from the Norton Simon Museum in California. It says the work was looted from a Cambodian temple complex during the country’s political upheavals in the 1970s.”

“Arts and cultural organizations have a multibillion-dollar impact on the Philadelphia region’s economy, and are among the nation’s most productive in creation of jobs and stirring up economic activity. Only those in the Washington area generate more per-capita expenditures, and in terms of jobs, no region comes close to Southeastern Pennsylvania.”