Category: issues

Shuki Weiss, who is producing a five-day rock festival in Tel Aviv this week, has released a “statement lambasting moves to boycott the Jewish state, which has seen a growing number of international acts pull out of planned appearances in Israel” in the wake of last week’s deadly raid on an aid flotilla headed for Gaza.

Nearing the end of his 69-city tour, Michael Kaiser reports that he “was depressed to see how many venues I visited presented performances that were entirely interchangeable with performances at other venues. It is not that the art was bad. It simply was not special or unique to the organization.”

“The use of books and movies in teaching is growing in part because fictional characters obviously aren’t protective of their privacy the way real patients can be. … What’s more, with fiction, students can experience a much wider range of disorders than they may ever encounter in real life.”

“Government funding for South African arts initiatives has been slashed in the lead up to this month’s Fifa World Cup–despite the fact that planned expenditure on the event is scheduled to reach around R13.7bn ($1.75bn).”

“it appears that Wal-Mart is entering into an agreement with the American Public University system — which is for-profit, not public — to offer its employees a group rate on any of several online degrees. Wal-Mart has a history of hiring from within, but many of its front-line staff don’t have the educational background to move up, so this is a way for the company to grow its own.”

Critics charge that “colleges have failed to improve learning outcomes and productivity because they are resistant to change, underfunded and married to a process of shared governance that is at times cripplingly deliberative. But some panelists went further Thursday, arguing that there’s simply a dearth of shared ideas that a critical mass of institutions can rally around.”

The Liberal government’s message is: “We are no longer interested in funding the arts. Fend for yourself. If your product is any good, the market will support it.” Such an attitude shows, at best, a lack of understanding — and at worst, blind ignorance. It’s as if we’ve suddenly become a Third World country.

“The Internet and technological advances in ticketing systems used by theaters and sports teams have not only established new, tricky-to-regulate markets for tickets to be resold and exchanged, but also complicated the very idea of what a ticket is.”

“The premise is that all of us now die twice. There is the old kind of death, the cessation of breathing kind, … [and] then there’s the digital kind of death. … By this they mean your online bank accounts, your usernames, your ever-multiplying entry codes. Your PayPal, e-mail, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Second Life, and WorldofWarcraft presences. What becomes of these precious assets when you die?”

“The stimulatory effects of caffeine may be nothing more than an illusion, according to new research that shows there is no real benefit to be gained from the habitual morning cup of coffee.”