Category: issues

“It’s been a trap. It was very easy to fall into, ‘Gee, we can fall back on an economic explanation to justify ourselves.’ And that was easy when times were good, that was good enough reason to justify the expenses. But times aren’t so good anymore.”

“On the outside, the new Speirs Lock Studios on Glasgow’s Garscube Road resemble a long, low unit of brisk industrial storage. Step inside, however, and you enter an airy, expansive complex giving the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama the kind of workshop facilities most dance or theatre companies can only dream about.”

“The artists say the bill gives consumers new rights and big producers new laws, but doesn’t compensate individual creators for new uses of their work.”

Perm-36, the last of the forced labor camps for which the Soviet Union was notorious, is now a tourist attraction that has hosted a rock festival and a site-specific staging of Fidelio. Says a guide, “Our aim is not to make people feel guilty. It’s to draw a line [under the past] and show how far we’ve come – and make it harder for anything like this ever to happen again.”

“It is not an exaggeration to say that the humanities may hit a negative tipping point,” he said, “so there is urgency.”

“Thanks to a fascinating new survey from YouGov BrandIndex, we now know that many of America’s top brands actually have a political tilt in terms of their popularity. YouGov asked people to rate a brand’s quality, value and general satisfaction level–but then indexed the answers based on the respondent’s political affiliations.”

“Even as attendance at museums and concert hall performances has leveled off, people continue to patronize outdoor arts festivals. The festivals are also drawing young and diverse audiences.”

New theology degree programs in Germany are aiming to train imams in an Islam with a European focus, thus giving their immigrant communities access to local clergy better able to understand European society and how to live within it than imams trained in or imported from the Mideast.

“As budget pressures mount, legislators and governors are increasingly demanding data proving that money given to colleges is well spent. States spend about 11% of their general-fund budgets subsidizing higher education. The movement is driven as well by dismal educational statistics.”

“Americans think the U.S. has far more income equality than it has. They want it to be even fairer. Yet they hate the policies that would make it so.”