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A personal report on the 2010 Rio Carnival.
Archive for the ‘Arts and Cultural Policy’ Category
February 19th, 2010
November 19th, 2009
Another couple of shoes have dropped in the story of screwed-up values and national humiliation at Berkeley. The good news: readers will recall that the faculty senate passed a resolution demanding that subsidies to the intercollegiate athletics program stop going up, and quickly go back to zero (the accumulated debt of this program, which is [...]
October 16th, 2009
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy, Crime Control, Policy Analysis, Politics and Leadership, Prisons and penal policy, Reviews
Want law enforcement that’s really tough on Mexicans? Try Mexico’s. Only seven years until accused there are presumed innocent, and meanwhile the cops aren’t afraid to do what’s needed to get the job done. Like lie under oath.
Roberto and Layda are students in my shop (Roberto is my PhD advisee), and I am over-the-top [...]
September 29th, 2009
…a prima facie case of chronic educational malpractice at Berkeley. Apparently we have close to 3000 alumni who learned (from us?) that the most important thing they can do for Cal now is to buy a fifty-year football ticket for the price of a small house.
….One might ask, so what if it does make money? We could probably make a fortune with a modeling agency renting out good-looking undergraduates who got a custom-greased ride through their academics and beauty scholarships instead of pay; would that make it a good idea? It’s about as mission-relevant as our football program.
September 2nd, 2009
The advent of Google Books calls for the restoration of non-automatic copyright renewal.
July 16th, 2009
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy
The MSM is only three days behind the RBC on the hot issue of museum evening social events. We congratulate the Post.
The ‘reviews’ gathered in this group nicely illustrate the tension this marketing initiative raises (and the careless flacky reporting typical of arts coverage other than straight reviews). On the one hand, a bunch [...]
July 13th, 2009
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy
Three readers took issue with my worry about museums keeping the wolf from the door by renting their space for parties and events. In fact, I’m pretty ambivalent about this; as Mark has pointed out here, museums are a better first date than almost anywhere and should be open many more evenings. Movies [...]
July 13th, 2009
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of the real jewels in the Bay Area’s cultural/educational crown. My wife and daughter-the-middle-school-math-and-science-teacher and I spent the day there, revisiting a place we knew well when the kids were younger. It seemed that Cannery Row has become at least thirty percent more schlocky and touristy over the last [...]
May 5th, 2009
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy
Faked pre-Columbian pottery is destroying the market for looted examples of the real thing.
April 19th, 2009
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy, Health Care
On Friday our students put on their annual talent show in a room of about 4000 square feet with a high, hard ceiling. They set themselves up with a sound system, necessary for the electronic keyboard but otherwise I think any of the performers could have done fine acoustically as the room is quite hard. [...]