Should Taxpayers Even Be Funding The Arts At All? Michael Lind Makes The Case Against

“The NEA Literature Fellowships program, for example, offers $25,000 grants in poetry and prose …Why should writers get $25,000 for ‘travel, and general career advancement’ but not janitors, or home health aides, or car mechanics, all of whom could use the money more than ‘creative writers,’ a group drawn mostly [sic] from the upper middle class and the rich?”

How Did This Group Shoot A Mindbendingly Great Music Video In Zero Gravity?

“The new video is but the latest reminder that OK Go is a band, yes, but also something more. Ross says the band sees itself a kind of freewheeling creative factory, where catchy songs exist alongside viral videos, and things like collaborations with airlines and experiments like OK Go working to encode its latest album, Hungry Ghosts—from which ‘Upside Down & Inside Out’ is taken—onto strands of DNA.”

Germany Has Produced Great Cinema. But It’s Been A While And Germans Are Asking Why

“To be fair, whinging that no German cinema movement has proved as influential or productive as the New German Cinema movement circa 1962-1982ish is bit of a non-starter, as one could argue that no national cinema movement since has proved as influential or productive as the New German Cinema. But if there’s no worthwhile national film culture in Germany, if German films have no future, then why do Berliners seem to go ga-ga for their annual film fete?”

Was Facebook’s Free Basics Program In India A Good Deed Or Colonialism Redux?

“It tries to solve a problem it doesn’t understand, but it doesn’t need to understand the problem because it already knows the solution. … When Zuckerberg or Andreessen face criticism, they argue that their critics are being elitist and inhumane – after all, who could be against helping India develop? The rhetoric is rich with the White Man’s Burden.”