A NY Times article about London's National Theater, where I saw a show last week. It talks about how there's no National theater here, and hints that maybe there should be, so that there can be an affordable place for people to see quality theater. This idea is interesting to me. I think there should be. How do we start one? Really. I think there's a place for a National Theater in America today -- to counteract the national entertainment that is reality TV. I guess I always thought the Kennedy Center was a National theater, but maybe not, if I read the article right. There's not much in America for intelligent people. NPR, I guess, although I never listen to it. Museums. But a lot of Broadway is designed with less high-minded goals ("The Lion King" ??). And movies are worse. There's a market for intelligent entertainment. Isn't there? Anyone think there's something there? How do we start a national theater? I mean theatre. :)

In other news, I want to vent a bit of frustration with a class I had this morning. The professor started by saying he wanted to discuss some survey results that were in the textbook -- and so he wanted us not to open the textbook and look at them, because he wanted us to guess what they would be -- and we spent about 40 minutes on this. But -- the page with the survey was part of the reading assignment. I only skimmed the reading, but I remembered the survey, and the numbers that were there. Which made the whole thing pointless because I knew where he was heading. But it kind of bothered me that he taught class not only assuming no one had done the reading, but actually in such a way that if you did the reading, you got negative value from being there -- it detracted from the class. Stupid. No incentive to do the reading generally, but even less incentive if class is made worse by doing it. This is silly. I know not much of the reading in classes for 2Ls and 3Ls gets done, and that's not great on its own, but it's one thing for a professor to know that and to not teach in such a way that people who haven't done the reading are lost (although the argument can obviously be made that teaching in a way that people who haven't read are lost would make people do the reading), but it's another thing to teach in such a way that there's a real disincentive to reading, and that if you did do the reading you feel dumb for showing up. At least set the bar a little higher than that. It's just sort of sad and disappointing, I think. Not very motivating if the bar is so low. Just venting. Sorry.