Category: issues

“It used to be a central pillar of the British higher education system that all institutions offered a similar range of degrees at the same price (if not with the same prestige). When education becomes a private investment not a public good the principle of universal provision necessarily falls by the way.”

In American speech, according to research by linguist Mark Liberman, “could care less” is far ahead of the “couldn’t” version. And “could care less” is no recent corruption, Zimmer found; it shows up in print by 1955, only 11 years after the first sighting of “couldn’t care less.”

The revered anti-apartheid leader said that “Cape Town Opera should postpone its proposed tour next month until both Israeli and Palestinian opera lovers of the region have equal opportunity and unfettered access to attend performances.” The company is scheduled to perform Porgy and Bess in Tel Aviv in November.

Michael Kantor, artistic director of Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre (and a nephew of Rupert Murdoch), has described Australia’s answer to Lincoln Center as “that badly designed and ugly shrine to mediocrity … [that] ghettoises rather than centralises artistic endeavour … [and ought] to sink into the ground and be swallowed back into the swamp it always was.”

“Regularly-funded bodies will be subject to cuts of 15% in real terms across the four years. The body’s fund which supports touring and audience development, is to be cut by 64%.”

“‘[There] was a consensus that arts and education would take a hit, it was just a question of how hard that hit would be’, the Australia Council’s Louise Walsh says. ‘But it actually hasn’t happened’.”

Robin Usher: “The festival event of the year for those lucky enough to see it was the pan-European production of Ligeti’s opera Le Grand Macabre … [at the] Adelaide Festival last summer. Nothing in the current Melbourne International Arts Festival … has come close to matching it and, given his guiding philosophy, it is unlikely anything could.”

“Museums are hiding away mummies and human remains for fear of offending pagans and other minority groups, it has been revealed. They are putting up warning signs, closing previously opened coffins and displaying exhibits in darkened cases. This is despite the fact that such displays are among the most popular attractions.”

An FP List of the world’s most influential political satirists shows that in dangerous places, telling jokes can be hazardous to your health.

“The more efficiently a society identifies the most able young people of both sexes, sends them to the best colleges, unleashes them into an economy that is tailor-made for people with their abilities and lets proximity take its course, the sooner a New Elite — the “cognitive elite” that Herrnstein and I described — becomes a class unto itself.”