Category: issues

In the interest of efficiency, the European Union has decided to use “new” simplified German in its business. The simplified language, introduced two years ago, “cut the number of spelling rules from 212 to 112 and those governing usage of commas from 52 to nine. German’s Lego-like way of constructing words was also changed by preventing one very long one being created from several.” But the decision has Germans up in arms. – The Telegraph (UK) 08/22/00

• Do copyright laws help or hinder culture? Playwright Charles Mee addresses the question repeatedly in his work – all of his plays include text appropriated from another source, and all of them are available for free over the web. “The greatest plays in human history – those by the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare – would never have been written had copyright laws existed to keep the authors from borrowing from the culture around them.” – NPR 08/21/00  [Real audio file]

A Boston artists’ district has become a popular target for developers, who want to significantly remake the area. Now a coalition of artists is “aggressively attempting to buy warehouse buildings from local developers in the hopes of salvaging the artists’ presence in the bustling arts district.” – Boston Herald 08/21/00

As usual, a fair bit of controversy at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. “Founded in 1948 to foster cultural links after the second world war, the international festival has since been surrounded by a clutch of peripheral events, of which the most prominent and controversial is the fringe festival. So how does the international festival now distinguish itself?” And is it doing a good job? The answer, according to some experts is a resounding no. – The Guardian 08/21/00

“Readers and writers of the past – not just the geniuses, either; the intelligent, alert ones who kept current as we all like to think we do – remind us how culture and taste change. And why. What aesthetic, social and intellectual needs do beliefs serve in their time? Which ones serve us now, and why?” – New York Times 08/21/00 

“Jane Alexander probably could have been less of a diplomat with legislators, and more of an advocate for the avant-garde and the high arts. With hindsight, she had nothing to lose by a more forthright stand since, for all of her charm, graciousness, and tact, she failed to save the agency from become a limping animal, disabled by the Congressional axe. But Command Performance is possibly more interesting as a personal bildungsroman than as a history of a crippled government agency – a tale of what befalls a liberal American idealist at the close of the twentieth century.” – The New Republic

They don’t have Communists, and the drug war has gotten old. What’s the next “great” issue? “With three major combatants in the nation’s culture wars closely tied to the race, the assault on sex, violence, and sensationalism in the entertainment industry is now very much a bipartisan venture. ‘These censorship crusades are quite cyclical. There may be some differences ideologically in terms of what Lynne Cheney would want to censor and what Al and Tipper Gore want to censor. But I’m not aware of any significant differences’.” – Boston Globe 08/20/00

“‘The work we have been doing on media and screen dependency has suggested that people have been desensitised. In order to get a better reaction artists have had to go to further extremes. It is about finding a new kick and a new thrill. Very often, these shock tactics are a substitute for real creativity.’ So is there no other purpose behind this ceaseless search for more raw and brutal forms of diversion?” – The Observer (UK)

Do the values of a culture determine its economic success? A new book offers 22 various scholars and authors debating whether the cultural aspects of a people make a difference in their level of economic development. – Boston Globe 08/20/00

“It’s fascinating the effect a bad review has on you and those around you. Friends and family tend to flap around saying: ‘It’s only one person’s opinion, what does it matter?’ But that’s rubbish. If you get a really good review somewhere, people don’t say: ‘Hey, don’t bother getting excited, that’s only one person’s opinion.’ People tell you to be thick-skinned, to rise above it, but I don’t think you can. Bad reviews hurt like hell and that’s all there is to it. Now I know why so many actors say they never read them at all.” – The Observer (UK) 08/20/00