Category: issues

“When the Newseum decamped from Rosslyn [in northern Virginia] eight years ago [for downtown D.C.], it left behind a modern building with a broadcast studio, a beckoning silver dome and a mind-boggling 54,000 square feet of space. … Called Artisphere, it is [now ]Arlington’s trailblazing new cultural center – a home not just to visual art, but to esoteric discussions, edgy theater, performance art, ballroom dance and music ranging from classical to punk.”

Until recently, accepted practice in postwar Japan has been for star pop entertainers to marry and retire from the stage at around age 25. But now, with nearly a quarter of the country’s population older than 65, many of Japan’s top “idols” continue to perform – and draw crowds. (The members of the star boy-band SMAP are pushing 40.)

“If passed, the bill would legalize several well-established consumer practices, permitting you to time-shift TV programs, make backup copies of CDs and DVDs and format-shift anything you have legally acquired, copying your CDs onto your iPod, for example. But it doesn’t permit you to pick any digital locks that producers might choose to install on their content, which is proving to be its most contentious provision.”

“At the Future of Music summit, Victoria Espinel waxed rhapsodic about the artistic community, echoing the Obama administration line that American innovation and intellectual property are key to its economic recovery. But without directly indicting consumers, she outlined a strategy for containing file-sharing that suggested that many digital music fans will need to alter their behavior or else risk being cut off from the Internet at the very least.”

In 2000, Oleg Mavromatti was making a film depicting himself crucified. The Russian Orthodox Church complained to the government, and he was charged with the crime of “inciting religious hatred and denigrating the church.” Facing five years in prison, he fled to Bulgaria. “Last month, the Russian consulate in Sofia refused to renew Mavromatti’s passport,” without which he cannot apply for refugee status.

“The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is poised to allocate at least $100 million in Federal funds to a future performing arts center at the World Trade Center site.” The money is part of a $200 million fund originally intended to compensate utilities companies for 9/11/01 damages.

“Somewhere along the way, standards seem to have been not so much lowered as eliminated. “Content” has replaced that archaic term “substance” and seems to promise much less. Style, in many cases, is content; that’s not even really news anymore. The bar has been lowered so many times that it now just lies there on the floor, lifeless and limp, the outmoded relic of other eras.”

“A sluggish economy and harsh spending cuts might mean tough times are ahead for most of us, but the romantic narrative of the impoverished poet, musician or painter might lead us to expect that the cultural world could at least anticipate a period of creative fulfilment.”

Pro: “[There] are fruitful discussions between neuroscientists and psychoanalysts about the relationship between … the non-conscious, as explored by the former, and the unconscious, as described by the latter.” Con: “Exposure to pseudoscience greatly helps understand genuine science, just as learning about tyranny helps in understanding democracy.”

“The Charity Commission has accepted that druids’ worship of natural spirits could be seen as religious activity. The Druid Network’s charitable status entitles it to tax breaks, but the organisation says it does not earn enough to benefit from this.”