Rav Casley Gera

In response to his article, “The tall and short of it”

Dear Jeff Jacoby,

I’m going to have to take a little umbrage at your article, “The tall and short of it,” in today’s Globe.

You ask of Deval Patrick, “is there anything there?” Were you watching the same debate as I was? Maybe it’s because from my seat in the JFK Jr Forum I could only see the candidates on TV, but I heard Patrick make a range of numerated, precise policy statements. [Read more →]

I first came to New York when I was 18, and I can honestly say being there was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. A few visits while I was studying in Boston didn’t exactly change my mind. But that was before I lived in London. Surely, I thought, couple of years in the original City At The Centre Of The Modern World would take some of the shine off the current City At The Centre Of The Modern World?

So, in the midst of an epic tube-train-flight-monorail-train-bus-tube journey from London back to Boston on Monday, I decided to have a pootle around and see how I felt in the city. [Read more →]

I suppose you could accuse me of jumping on the Mercury bandwagon. Although the ex-Pulp man’s croonings had floated onto my radar before his latest album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, I did take the opportunity of the nomination to give it a proper listen. For the uninitiated, Coles Corner is a richly orchestrated smoky-lounge bar album of wistful ballads that recalls Pulp’s This is Hardcore more than their more commercially successful material. It’s unashamedly retro, and unashamedly Americana. [Read more →]

Am angered by article in Prospect by Robert Jackson calling for a “mixed-model” format for higher education. He repeats regularly that this does not mean privatisation, even though he advocates allowing Universities to decide salaries, fees and, by implication, admissions policies entirely independently. Quite how this differs from privatisation is not clear. Jackson emphasises the success of the US model in meeting the need for mass vocational training, arguing that a centrally-regulated model can’t match up. Of course, his fundamental concern is of cost, that further extension of HE beyond the government’s 50% mark will simply be politically untenable. He also reiterates the tired line that funding HE from taxation means “the transfer of money through the tax system from poorer taxpayers to the children of better-off taxpayers.” Although Jackson left the Tories for Labour not long ago, he’s clearly learnt the Government’s trick of only ever adopting left-wing rhetoric in pursuit of the most right-wing policies. [Read more →]

Numbers are flying, people are shouting, and protestors are waving banners. Nuclear is back on the agenda, and it isn’t a pretty sight. Some environmentalists are furious, calling the Government’s endorsement of a new generation of nuclear power stations a betrayal, and those who see nuclear as necessary seeing the others as misguided and deluded. The anti-nuclear lobby squeal repeatedly about the danger, about Chernobyl, about Five Mile Island, and about the threat of waste. Those in favour of new builds repeat, endlessly, that without nuclear we cannot meet our future energy needs. Repeat ad infinitum. [Read more →]

You’ll have read, no doubt, that financier Warren Buffet, the world’s second-richest man, is to donate most of his fortune to the charitable foundation founded by Bill Gates, the world’s richest. Various figures (mostly around $31bn) have been attached to the deal, all of which estimate that it will make The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation a bigger sponsor of health and education work in Africa and elsewhere in the global South than UNESCO. [Read more →]

Multimedia! Digital Overload! Don DeLillo! Media Studies, Baby!

Yes, we live in an uber-digital age; yes, 3.3 billion text messages were sent in the UK in the last month. Everyone from U2 to the Pope has commented at length on the never-ending sea of media messages that buzz, pop and bleep over us from the moment we wake to the moment we sleep at night – and even in between.

So it takes skill and inspiration to make a comment on on this brave new world that makes an impact. Which makes the work of New York mix artist Christian Marclay even more impressive. His 2003 piece Video Quartet, recently granted a proper room in the rehanging of Tate Modern, makes for a startling evocation of media overload: startling not for its technical skill or apparently sage commentary, as with so many pieces on similar themes, but for its humour and humanity. [Read more →]