Monday, August 13, 2007

Today’s Response
Middle Tennessee State University

Audio augmentation

Give your kids a wholesome, fun extracurricular activity this school year. Enroll your child in the Youth Culture and Arts Center’s (YCAC) next recording workshop at MTSU. The current enrollment period is in effect through Sept. 7 for the upcoming Sept. 13-Oct. 12 workshop in MTSU’s John Bragg Mass Communication Building. The workshop is for youngsters ages 12-17, and the fee is $125 per student. Classes are taught by Ryan York, a 21-year-old MTSU student and teacher of guitar, bass, and drums lessons at Chambers Guitars and Musical Instruments in Murfreesboro. Ryan will provide instruction in cassette four-track instruction, digital eight-track, computer recording and electronic music. All proceeds will benefit YCAC, a program of Youth Empowerment Through Arts and Humanities (YEAH), a nonprofit organization.

Call 615-631-9479 or contact York at bororecording@gmail.com.

Over the counter and onto the streets

Should access to a legitimate over-the-counter drug be limited because it is used to make an illegal drug? That’s what some stores in Texas are doing with Tylenol PM because it is crushed and mixed with heroin to create a street drug called “cheese.” Dr. Doug Winborn, health and human performance, says, “Limiting access to Tylenol PM is not a solution to this problem. Users will simply turn to another product or steal Tylenol PM in order to acquire it. Once again, the use of cheese is not the problem but the symptom of some other problem. It also may be one of the many drug phenomena in which a drug trend emerges, hangs around awhile and then goes away … depending on how much publicity it received through the media.”

Contact Winborn at 615-898-5110.
jwinborn@mtsu.edu

Whither the Web?

The National Association of Broadcasters says SoundExchange, the organization that collects royalties from Webcasters, is not acting in good faith to settle a dispute about royalty rates. Ken Sanney, adjunct recording industry professor, says proposed new rates, including retroactive royalties, would have resulted in a flurry of bankruptcies. “Even though the Recording Industry Association of America and SoundExchange were the clear victors of the Copyright Royalty Board’s new rate, in the end, however, collecting on this victory would have been akin to fratricide,” Sanney says. “The uncertainty of when … a solution will be reached and the actual details of such a deal are going to dampen any investment in this industry.”

Contact Sanney at 615-456-6502.
ksanney@mtsu.edu


TR EXTRA

WORKING IT OUT--Labor and management are celebrating “20 years of listening, learning and leading in collaboration” this year at the Tennessee Labor-Management Conference Wednesday through Friday, Aug. 15-17. The conference will take place at the Sheraton Music City Hotel, 777 McGavock Pike in Nashville, and is expected to draw more than 500 attendees. “Labor-Management participants at the August conference will have the opportunity to discuss possible solutions to problems in the health care, pension, and other workplace areas,” says Dr. Barbara Haskew, director of the MTSU-headquartered Tennessee Center for Labor-Management Relations and professor of economics. Contact Catherine Sutton at 615-895-4166.