May 13, 2009
The View from His Book Jacket
Andrew Sullivan’s fantastic View From Your Window, a regular blog item featuring photos from all over the world taken from an inside-out perspective, is about to go bookular. View a slide-show sneak peek of photos selected for the soon-to-be-published book.
May 12, 2009
Recovery Act and Jobs
Amid conflicting reports of continuing layoffs in the government and other economic sectors and optimism elsewhere that the worst of the “Great Recession” may be over, a new Obama administration document outlines the job-creation methodology to be used as implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act continues. Whether this turns out to be “simple, conservative and accurate,” as the White House states, or complicated, hyperbolic and largely an exercise in guesswork, remains to be seen. It’s fair to say that the state and local reporting requirements will be burdensome, but filed without complaint as needed, but perhaps insufficient, relief trickles in.
According to recently released data from the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate in April was 8.9 percent, a 25-year high.
May 11, 2009
Event: The News Industry
The Brookings Institution will host an event May 18, 2009, on “The Future of the News Industry” to:
“[D]iscuss how to ‘re-engineer’ the traditional business model of the news industry and to improve media coverage of public affairs. Time’s Karen Tumulty will moderate a discussion with Brookings Vice President and Director of Governance Studies Darrell West, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Aspen Institute’s Walter Isaacson, and journalist Michael Kinsley. Brookings President Strobe Talbott will offer introductions and opening remarks.”
After the program, panelists will take audience questions.The following participants will take part:
Strobe Talbott, president, The Brookings Institution
Moderator
Karen Tumulty, senior writer and national political correspondent, Time
Panelists
The Honorable Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), United States Senate
Walter Isaacson, president and CEO, The Aspen Institute
Michael Kinsley, writer and columnist
Darrell M. West, vice president and director, Governance Studies
Cardin has introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act (S. 673), which would create a new option under the Internal Revenue Code for a “qualified newspaper corporation,” allowing newspapers to operate under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, according to a May 6 press release. It would be the same IRS status that is used by churches, hospitals, educational institutions, public broadcasting, and other nonprofits. However, as a recent Senate hearing demonstrated, there is very little consensus on how to solve the problems facing the newspaper industry.
May 8, 2009
The Arts: Trevor Young, Edward Hopper, and the Federal Arts Budget
A Washington Post article tips me off to artist Trevor Young’s interesting-looking “Non-Places” exhibit at Flashpoint, a gallery in Washington, D.C. This piece (right, courtesy of Flashpoint’s website), as the article notes, evokes Edward Hopper, whose works I also enjoy. Apparently, unlike other artists working during the Great Depression, Hopper fared well during that period. Let’s hope Young and his peers make it through today’s “Great Recession,” if that’s what we’re calling it.
What individual artists won’t be eligible for, however, is any direct support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal arts agency. President Barack Obama’s FY 2010 budget request for the NEA — released May 7th — pleased agency supporters for requesting a roughly 4 percent increase — to $161.3 million for the fiscal year that beings Oct. 1, 2009 — or $6.3 million more than the current budget of $155 million. That’s still less than some Clinton- and Reagan-era appropriations and doesn’t remove a nearly universal ban on funding for individual artists, a policy established as a result of the decency wars of the 1990s. Still, for those in favor of federal funding of the arts, it’s better than a modern low of less than $97.6 million, allocated in fiscal 2000.
Science Friday: How to Catch a Flammulated Owl
What is a Flammulated owl you ask? Also known as a schreech-owl, Otus flammeolus is a small owl found in mountain pine forests “in scattered localities throughout the West,” according to The Cornell Lab of Orthinology.
Look how tiny they are in the picture at right. This video features Colorado College ornithology professor, Brian Linkhart, who has studied Flammulated owls in Colorado for almost 30 years.