Issue #60
Last Update October 22, 2008
National and Commentary October, 2008 The current administration's days are drawing to an end. With less than a month to the election, and less than three months until a new president takes office, the administration has become an afterthought in the minds of the American public. Anything important is being done by Secretary Paulson, Chairman Bernanke, and, too a lesser extent, Secretaries Rice and Gates and the Generals on the ground in Iraq and Iran. No one is paying any attention at all to the President, the Vice President, or any other senior person in the Executive branch. Anathema to most of its own party, and a hissing and a byword to the opposition, the administration is limping to a close. continued Running Against New York by David Katz October 9, 2008 Wall Street versus Main Street! That false dichotomy has been a mantra for both parties in this presidential election, with Wall Street playing the bad guy and Main Street the "just folks" who were robbed. It makes for good sound bites, and in a simplistic way, it has a truthiness that inhibits further thought. It also allows those that hate New York and its ethnic melange to feel that our problems are due to those "others", who are not really us. The reality is quite different, however. continued Academic Freedom - The Creationist Push Gert Innsry September 16, 2008 The latest ploy by fundamentalists to subvert the teaching of science in schools is to press for "academic freedom" in science instruction. (The equivalent need for "academic freedon" in teaching religion and social history seems not to be on their agenda.) Actually, an academic freedom guarantee will come in handy in the future when another attempt to prevent teachings that dismay fundamentalists arises. If this measure passes, should we be alarmed? Not really. continued Commentary July, 2008 This publication endorses Barack Obama for president. He shown that his instincts are accurate. Time after time he has come out on the right side of issues (most notably with respect to Iraq), and, judging by the way he has run his primary campaign, he possesses the managerial skills necessary to be an effective president. His opponent has adopted the disastrous positions of our current president, and has backtracked on all of the issues that might have made him a viable candidate. The last straw was Senator McCain's reversal on the issue of torture: backpeddling on this is a betrayal, not only of our Constitution, but of his own history. continued What Surge? Gerry Krownstein July 25, 2008 It must be admitted that conditions in Iraq are improving. Violence has decreased, though it is still at unacceptable levels. The Iraqi army has become more confident and more active. The central government has become more active in shutting down sectarian activity. Ironically, this more confident government has begun to demand a date certain for US withdrawal, and to balk at the proposed agreement for US bases in Iraq. Is all this progress a byproduct of the "surge"? The facts say no. continued Health Care – A Utility by David Katz July 19, 2008 As the two major candidates begin to refine their campaign messages, it is clear that health care is one of the major policy issues that each must address. There is general agreement that our health care system is broken: many people are not covered by any health insurance at all; those that have coverage through their employers are at risk of losing it or having benefits reduced; health care outcomes, particularly in child mortality and average life span, are inferior to almost all other developed nations; our manufacturers are burdened with costs that their European competitors do not have, which reduces the competitiveness of our goods and services on the world market; and costs are through the roof. The McCain plan and the Obama plan (and the Clinton plan as well) differ from each other in significant respects, but all miss the most salient fact: we will not be able to cure our health care system until we eliminate insurance companies from the equation. continued Business and Daemon, Gnu, Penguin by Sten Grynir October 13, 2008 In his thought-provoking book, "The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin", Peter H. Salus, the leading documenter of the history of Linux and the Internet, takes a close look at the Open Source movement and comes to grips with "how free and open software is changing the world", as his subtitle states. Accurately defining "free and open", and tracing the history of this philosophy of software development, Dr. Salus shows how this cooperative paradigm has the possibility of supplanting, or at least complementing, the proprietary/competitive model on which most of our economic development of the past several centuries has been based. continued Population and Jobs Gerry Krownstein September 2, 2008 We seem to be afraid of everything at once. In so many areas of discourse, we fear both the thing and its opposite. Take world population , for example. Currently at 6 billion, and projected to hit 9 billion by 2050, we understand the strain that an ever-growing population places on food, living space, raw materials, water and jobs. At the same time, we bemoan the aging of our population, and the strain that a retiree nation will pace on the much smaller group of wage-earners for support and health care. In Europe, Germany and other countries worry about losing their national character as they attract ever-larger numbers of immigrants to do the jobs that a shrinking native working population can no longer fill. On the one hand, we have too many people, while on the other we have too few. How is this conundrum to be resolved? continued Mini Laptops by Sten Grynir August 14, 2008 For the last two years or so, there has been a laptop category called Umpcs (Ultra Mobile PC’s), which were small, light, and surprisingly powerful. This category never really caught on with the purchasing public. Most had screens as small as 5 inches, although others were as large as seven inches. Some had tiny keyboards of varying usefulness, others had on-screen keyboards. Some had touch screens for navigation and data entry, others relied on buttons and keys. The smallest devices had the advantage of being pocketable; the largest were, at least, light weight and fit easily into a small shoulder bag. Memory, storage capacity, speed, ease of typing and ease of reading were all issues that discouraged sales. Then came the ASUS eee family of laptops. Small, lightweight and extremely inexpensive, these mini laptops sold in numbers none of their equivalent competition had been able to match. To see why the ASUS eee line has been so successful, it is instructive to compare it to another mini, the Fujitsu U810. continued Digital Freedom by David Katz July 24, 2008 The copyright system is broken, according to the panelists at the Digital Music Forum East - 2008. Originally intended to promote innovation by giving the author of copyrighted material a short-term monopoly on its sale in exchange for allowing the public to make fair use of the content, this Constitutional procedure has been modified over the years until it stands as an impediment to innovation and the public's right to use the material it has purchased. Several developments have contributed to this situation: absurd lengthening of the copyright period, digital rights management technology, and the draconian terms of the DMCA, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, passed in 1998 and currently up for modification to make penalties for infringement harsher. continued Arts and Reviews Mannerist Music by David Katz October 20, 2008 As part of its "Music Before 1800" series, Corpus Christi Church, on 121st Street near Columbia University, presented Pomerium's "Mannerist Music of the Renaissance". Pomerium is an a capella choral group formed in 1972 to perform music composed for the chapel choirs of the Renaissance. Their strong, sweet voices, superb execution and intelligent interpretation made this concert an artistic as well as educational triumph. Mannerism, a 16th Century "anticlassical" style, is characterized by unexpected chromatic movement and avoidance of symmetry of timing. The thirteen pieces presented in this concert, by Gesualdo, de Wert, de Silva, de Rore and de Lassus, illustrate the chromaticism, leaping vocal lines and intensified harmonies that form this style. continued Taking Action in the Performing Arts By Eugene Marlow, Ph.D. September 23, 2008 According to Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, there are approximately two million people in the United States involved in the performing arts: in music, dance, and theater. So why are the performing arts so undervalued in this country at the national and local level? Why has involvement in the performing arts been eradicated from our elementary educational systems? Why are the potential benefits for lifelong learning in the performing arts not being realized? Why is the increasing diversity of our communities not sufficiently reflected in our performing arts organizations? Why is there no national policy with respect to the performing arts? Horses by Gert Innsry July 13, 2008 The American Museum of Natural History has mounted an ambitious exhibition on the horse and its impact on human civilization. Although it falls short of its goals, this is an interesting and well-mounted exhibit, one that will be of interest to children ad adults alike. Mixing the disciplines of paleontology, archaeology, anthropology and history, the museum traces the evolution of the horse, shows its modern anatomy in detail, discusses the horse in pre-history, its eventual domestication and the historic relationship between man and equus. Models, skeletons, dioramas, and video are all used to convey the knowledge the Museum is intent on imparting. continued
International
Technology
What can those in the performing arts world do about these challenges at the national, local, individual, and group levels? continued
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