scholarly journals Take The “A” Train to the Stars

1990 ◽  
Vol 105 ◽  
pp. 335-336
Author(s):  
John Pazmino ◽  
Sidney Scheuer

Astronomers, in addition to their scholarly and academic functions, have the mission to bring enlightenment to the people. In the City of New York, astronomers fulfill this mission through the Amateur Astronomers Association. Over the decades, the Association, or AAA, evolved a multi-faceted scheme of public enlightenment in astronomy. Under this scheme, astronomy in New York City has become a freestanding cultural amenity on a par with streetfairs, artshows, plays, and parades.Once a month during the school year, the Association presents a formal public lecture on astronomy. These are convened in the American Museum of Natural History, the ancestral birthplace of the AAA. Occasionally, lectures are featured at a large university in the City for time and place variety. At these lectures, a professional astronomer explains some contemporary topic on a first-year college level, illustrated by slides and viewgraphs. The lectures — and all public activities of the AAA — are free of any charge. Area high schools and colleges employ the AAA lectures as an extra-curricular activity for their students.

1948 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 1127-1148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belle Zeller ◽  
Hugh A. Bone

In November, 1936, the voters of New York City approved the use of proportional representation for the election of members of the city council by a vote of 923,186 to 555,217, after its opponents had failed by court action to prevent the question from being submitted. By a combination of Democratic delegates from New York City and machine Republicans from upstate, the constitutional convention of 1938 provided the people of the entire state an opportunity to reject decisively an amendment that would have prohibited the use of P.R. in any election in the state. Still another unsuccessful attempt to abolish the system was made in 1940—this time through initiative petition under provision of the New York City charter. With the entry of the United States into the war, no further serious effort at repeal was made until 1947, although dissatisfaction with the results of the councilmanic elections continued to be heard even above the din of war.How did the forces line up in the intense battle over P.R. in the campaign of 1947? The political parties, of course, had a direct stake in the results of the campaign. On the one side were the Democratic and Republican county organizations urging repeal of P.R., while the American Labor party, the Liberal party, the Communist party, and the Fusion forces worked for retention of the system.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-203
Author(s):  
Robert Chatham

The Court of Appeals of New York held, in Council of the City of New York u. Giuliani, slip op. 02634, 1999 WL 179257 (N.Y. Mar. 30, 1999), that New York City may not privatize a public city hospital without state statutory authorization. The court found invalid a sublease of a municipal hospital operated by a public benefit corporation to a private, for-profit entity. The court reasoned that the controlling statute prescribed the operation of a municipal hospital as a government function that must be fulfilled by the public benefit corporation as long as it exists, and nothing short of legislative action could put an end to the corporation's existence.In 1969, the New York State legislature enacted the Health and Hospitals Corporation Act (HHCA), establishing the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) as an attempt to improve the New York City public health system. Thirty years later, on a renewed perception that the public health system was once again lacking, the city administration approved a sublease of Coney Island Hospital from HHC to PHS New York, Inc. (PHS), a private, for-profit entity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-74
Author(s):  
Ryan P. McDonough ◽  
Paul J. Miranti ◽  
Michael P. Schoderbek

ABSTRACT This paper examines the administrative and accounting reforms coordinated by Herman A. Metz around the turn of the 20th century in New York City. Reform efforts were motivated by deficiencies in administering New York City's finances, including a lack of internal control over monetary resources and operational activities, and opaque financial reports. The activities of Comptroller Metz, who collaborated with institutions such as the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, were paramount in initiating and implementing the administrative and accounting reforms in the city, which contributed to reform efforts across the country. Metz promoted the adoption of functional cost classifications for city departments, developed flowcharts for improved transaction processing, strengthened internal controls, and published the 1909 Manual of Accounting and Business Procedure of the City of New York, which laid the groundwork for transparent financial reports capable of providing vital information about the city's activities and subsidiary units. JEL Classifications: H72, M41, N91. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.


Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
Thomas Wide
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  

AbstractThomas Wide visits a recent exhibition on the history of New York City


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-110
Author(s):  
Sweta Chakraborty ◽  
Naomi Creutzfeldt-Banda

Saturday, 18 December 2010 was the first of a two day complete closure of all London area airports due to freezing temperatures and approximately five inches of snow. A week later on December 26th, New York City area airports closed in a similar manner from the sixth largest snowstorm in NYC history, blanketing the city approximately twenty inches of snow. Both storms grounded flights for days, and resulted in severe delays long after the snow stopped falling. Both London and NYC area airports produced risk communications to explain the necessity for the closures and delays. This short flash news report examines, in turn, the risk communications presented during the airport closures. A background is provided to understand how the risk perceptions differ between London and NYC publics. Finally, it compares and contrasts the perceptions of the decision making process and outcomes of the closures, which continue to accumulate economic and social impacts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-169
Author(s):  
Paul Kidder ◽  

Jane Jacobs’s classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, famously indicted a vision of urban development based on large scale projects, low population densities, and automobile-centered transportation infrastructure by showing that small plans, mixed uses, architectural preservation, and district autonomy contributed better to urban vitality and thus the appeal of cities. Implicit in her thinking is something that could be called “the urban good,” and recognizable within her vision of the good is the principle of subsidiarity—the idea that governance is best when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses—a principle found in Catholic papal encyclicals and related documents. Jacobs’s work illustrates and illuminates the principle of subsidiarity, not merely through her writings on cities, but also through her activism in New York City, which was influential in altering the direction of that city’s subsequent planning and development.


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