Category: issues

“Although many faculty members like to complain about the declining capabilities of incoming students, the data show that students’ have increasingly taken advanced courses in high school. The demographic data provide little in the way of surprises; they show the high school-age population growing increasingly diverse over time, with white students making up 86 percent of the national high school senior class in 1972 and declining to 62 percent by 2004.”

Arts Council England “has haemorrhaged talent in the last few years. It now has a staff lacking in confidence, working for an organisation whose own chief executive recognises as a “damaged” brand. Not surprisingly the Arts Council is facing difficulty recruiting new high-calibre staff. Only a genuine change of culture will enable the kind of two-way exchange of talent and expertise between the Arts Council and the theatre sector that is needed if damaged relationships are to be repaired and aspirations and ambitions fulfilled.”

“The idea that video games and explicit media content are a threat to society is demonstrably false. Whatever evidence there might be that violent media content causes violent behavior, or that graphic sexual content stimulates unhealthy sexual behavior, there is a simple test that invariably proves otherwise.”

“As Google’s influence grows, a number of scholars and programmers have begun to argue that the company is acquiring too much power over our lives – invading our privacy, shaping our preferences, and controlling how we learn about and understand the world around us. To counter its pervasive effects, they are developing strategies to push back against Google, dilute its growing dominance of the information sphere, and make it more publicly accountable.”

“For scores of historic house museums, simply keeping the lights on has become a challenge. The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Mass., is trying to stave off foreclosure with a feverish fundraising campaign. The Mark Twain House in Hartford can’t even afford to buy energy-saving light bulbs that would slash its electric bill. Experts say this summer may make or break some sites, many of which already have cut their hours and staff and are struggling for donations in today’s troubled economy.”

“The National Performing Arts Convention ended with departing delegates praising Denver for its friendliness and weather. But the quadrennial confab also ended in a controversy that some are predicting — on and off the record — may doom it.”

Italian car maker Fiat has apologized to China over a television commercial featuring Hollywood actor Richard Gere and a reference to Tibet.

“Each age creates Stonehenge in its own image. For Enlightenment scholars it was ‘the Grand Orrery of the Ancient Druids’, to the Romantic imagination it was fraught with thrilling foreboding, for the 1970s counterculture it was the ideal place for a pop festival. The concerns of our own times seem reflected in the current crop of theories.”

“The Public was supposed to be a new kind of arts centre, a civic landmark that would leapfrog its home, West Bromwich, into a new cultural league and regenerate the entire region. And who better to design it than Will Alsop, the London-based architect who doesn’t so much think outside the box as paint the box a crazy colour and put it on wonky stilts several storeys above the street?”

“There is a parallel between what you feel during a top-class rugby match and what an artist feels on stage – and it’s not just the roar of the crowd. The people who are watching influence how you behave: they were viewing Kaufmann and driving him forward, just as they used to inspire me. I could empathise with Kaufmann’s total concentration on the performance, and the way he had to become one with the orchestra, who gave him the power to go beyond the norm.”