Archive for the 'Culture' Category

Rap music sales slide 21%

Washington Times

Maybe it was the umpteenth coke-dealing anthem or soft-porn music video. Perhaps it was the preening antics that some call reminiscent of Stepin Fetchit.

The turning point is hard to pinpoint. But after 30 years of growing popularity, rap music is struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture’s negative effect on society.

[...]

It’s at least ailing, according to recent statistics: Though music sales are down overall, rap sales slid an alarming 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and for the first time in 12 years no rap album was among the top 10 sellers of the year.

Europe’s old churches turn into bars, eateries [and Mosques]

Newsweek

For the Muslims of Clitheroe, collective worship has never been easy. It’s been 40 years since the first Asians settled in the little town close to England’s industrial heartland, but the 300-strong community has struggled ever since to find a suitable site for a mosque. No longer. In December the town council finally approved plans for the conversion of a handsome but derelict structure: a disused Methodist chapel.

‘Stop feminising our schools - our boys are suffering’

Daily Mail (UK)

[T]he real world life is full of winners and losers. And right now, the losers are a generation of boys who have been betrayed by an education system that no longer recognises crucial differences between the sexes.

[...]

The simple truth is that by the time our boys have done 12 or even 14 years in the feminised environment of today’s schools, they all ask: “What’s the point?”

If boys are not getting into university, or not applying in the first place, it’s because they’ve been turned off learning. They’ve been given a message that it’s not for them.