January 31, 2009, 10:08 AM ET

On the Integration of Book Culture With Everything Else

A notice appeared the other day at Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors, about another closing of a book review section in a newspapers. (See here.) The Washington Post plans to close Book World, its 16-page weekly. From now on, book content in the print version will disperse into other sections: Outlook and Style & Arts. This will retain 12 pages of reviews, including Michael Dirda’s and Jonathan Yardley’s pieces, and the online edition will retain the section, at least for now.

The New York Times reported on the change with the summary, “In another sign that literary criticism is losing its profile in newspapers . . .” (see

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January 30, 2009, 03:50 PM ET

Portrait of an Unlaughing Woman

January 30, 2009, 02:51 PM ET

The One-Second Super Bowl Gimmick

Even many people who aren’t football fans sometimes find themselves excitedly gearing up for the string of oddball and massively expensive commercials unveiled during the Super Bowl broadcast. Of course, with the economy in a tailspin, some of that same game’s potential advertisers have been shedding jobs like crazy in an attempt to cut costs during this global recession.

Seattle was once thought recession-proof. But that has been proven wrong.

Retail chains (from Starbucks to Home Depot) are closing stores and/or announcing significant profit shortfalls.

Even still, NBC is requesting more money than ever for ad time during Sunday’s big game between Arizona and Pittsburgh. According to one Reuters report, a 30-second spot during this year’s contest will cost about $3-million. (Last year’s game, which my New York Giants...

January 30, 2009, 12:39 PM ET

The Sack of Rose

Rose Art Museum (Photo at The Boston Globe’s site)

In my last post, I blogged on Brandeis University’s shocking decision to close its renowned Rose Art Museum and sell off the entire collection. By shutting down the museum, Brandeis found a way to get around those pesky AAM (American Association of Museums) deaccessioning rules. Now President Jehuda Reinharz is saying the university might not sell off all of the art after all — only some of it.

In an email (posted on Tyler Green’s Modern Art Notes) sent by the president’s office to those questioning the Brandeis...

January 29, 2009, 01:11 PM ET

Richard John Neuhaus

(Photo at Spence Publishing’s Web site)

Richard John Neuhaus passed away earlier this month, a victim of cancer. Obituaries may be found here and here and here. Most of the commentary focuses on Neuhaus’ background in civil rights work and his shift toward the Right through the Eighties. His best-known book, “The Naked Public Square,” argued that secularism was aggressively, and wrongly, pushing religious thought out...

January 28, 2009, 03:52 PM ET

Obama Tells Truth About Washington Weather Wimpiness

Today President Obama brought some much-needed leadership and tough-minded thinking to the crucial education policy issue of hair-trigger weather sensitivity and resulting needless school closures (at HuffPost via Russo): “My children’s school was canceled today, because of what? Some ice,” Obama said, and all at the table started laughing. “As my children pointed out, in Chicago school is never canceled,” he continued. He said that in their old hometown, “you’d go outside for recess in weather like this. You wouldn’t even stay indoors.” The President said he would have to bring “some flinty...

January 28, 2009, 02:18 PM ET

An NLRB Victory for Grad Employees

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

January 28, 2009, 01:55 PM ET

Grade Deflation?

I’ve just started following the current high-school grading controversy in Fairfax County, Virginia. The video above highlights one high school student’s very public statement about the extent to which she feels unfairly penalized as a function of Fairfax’s grading policy (i.e., not accepted to her college of choice).

If I’m getting this right, Fairfax uses a six-point grading scale, which starts at a 64 (as the lowest possible “passing” grade) and culminates in an “A” at 94 or better. A 93 translates into a B-plus.

The student in the YouTube video above complains that colleges do not take this idiosyncratically weighted grading system into account when they assess Fairfax County students’ applications. Instead, she says, what might otherwise be an A or A-minus from another school system looks like...

January 28, 2009, 11:24 AM ET

Closing the Doors to Art

“Liberal Arts Without the Art” (from Flickr user Mike Licht)

On Monday, Brandeis University announced it would sell off the entire collection of its 48-year-old Rose Art Museum and shut it down. Like colleges and universities everywhere, Brandeis is suffering steep losses in its endowment, and the university faces a $10-million operating deficit. By any standard, the Rose is a first-rate museum, with a collection of more than 6,000 works that concentrates on modern and contemporary art. Its collection was built from donations of works of art and money specifically given to the museum. It includes critical works of art by such prominent giants as Jasper...

January 28, 2009, 09:26 AM ET

Gates Speaks

The Post exerpted the education part of Bills Gates’ annual State of the Gates Foundation letter on their op-ed page this morning (Disclosure: Education Sector receives grants from the foundation). It proceeds in pretty standard fashion until this sentence, about halfway through: Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students’ achievement in any significant way. That’s one of the (many) good things about being one of the richest and most famous people in the world. You can straightforwardly admit that your initiatives haven’t always been successful, because having done so you’re still one of the richest and most famous people in the world....