Category: issues

The starting point: “When people observe that teachers have a lot of trouble making ends meet, it’s a social justice problem. We don’t consider ‘teaching’ a hobby … On the other hand, if we were to find out that futures traders have trouble making ends meet it would not be a social justice problem. They would just go do something else, and we’d probably be thrilled.”

Jennifer Edwards: “I hate to be a kill-joy, but the vast majority of classical art pieces were designed as product placement ads paid for by monarchs and religious institutions. The Sistine Chapel is an advertisement, just like Shakespearean plays and Swan Lake – all were bought and paid for by the wealthy for a purpose.”

“While the service class makes up the largest share of jobs in Toronto, creative class workplaces have significantly better access to the city’s fastest transit infrastructure.”

“This discussion sees the collision of two very different concepts of freedom. One side insists that individuals should be able to freely access information at any time. The other calls for the companies operating the system to have the freedom to devise new business models.”

“Single girls from the country were living all alone in the big city for the first time. The shops, the offices, the factories all needed women to smile pretty, to take dictation, and sew. The cabarets and speakeasies needed them to bring in men. … Grab a cocktail and a man, honey, we all might be dead tomorrow.”

“All of this diligent and relentless narrativizing (whether in business or politics) comes as a response to ever more fluid social relations under high-speed, quick-turnover capitalism.”

“In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has been rebounding slowly. Five years after the disaster, researchers suggest that the city promote its entertainment industry as a development strategy.”

“Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals … Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the Internet to expose scholarly thinking to the swift collective judgment of a much broader interested audience.”

“The going remains tough, but the financial outlook is improving somewhat for Orange County’s two leading performing arts presenters. The Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County both have announced modest operating surpluses for their recently concluded 2009-10 seasons.”

“Just 42 percent of Americans say that TV sets are essential; just 3 in 10 believe this in the 18-29 age range. For landline phones, 62 percent of Americans — down from 68 percent last year — believe landline phones are something the could not do without.”