4/9/08

Fact-Checking Is Hard

Quickie post!

From Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News:

Strings rule at University of Texas Performance

It wasn't much publicized, so there wasn't much of a crowd for the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra concert Wednesday evening at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

Aw. I'm touched you attended!

UT's Butler School of Music must be one of the country's biggest.

It...must?

In just under five minutes, I uncovered the following facts:

The University of Texas' (newly re-named) Butler School of Music has about 700 students.

The famed Juilliard School has about 800 students.

The New England Conservatory of Music (alma mater!) has about 750 students.

The University of Michigan's School of Music
has 1050 students.

Indiana University's Jacob's School of Music
and The University of North Texas' School of Music compete yearly for the title of "largest music school", each enrolling about 1600 students yearly.

The University of Texas is not, in fact, one of the country's biggest. In fact, and I stress again the word fact, it is commensurate in size with the two top conservatories in the United States.

Just sayin'. Lazy journalists, sheesh.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

SA,

You got to forgive the guy...he's from Texas. And, as everyone knows, they have no sense of proportion. If it's from Texas it's got to be HUGE! And if its not from Texas they don't know about it, nor do they care. And all of this with a stupendous amount of inexplicable pride.

When I applied to Rice for my undergraduate (I didn't go, it was too damn hot), I was asked by two students there where I was from, and I told them I was from Oregon -- their responses are priceless.

The first asked me "where exactly in Canada is Oregon?".

The second mused that it must have been a long drive to Rice, "nearly 10 hours or so."

I wish I could tell you those were jokes. Sadly, they were not. Like I said, no sense of perspective.

Empiricus said...

Note to self...

Anonymous said...

O Ye Detritus Magi,

Can we, perchance, not use the quasi-word "OK" in a music review? Mr. Cantrell has the following in his review:

"In general, brasses were OK, but not rock-solid."

Wow.. insightful, or something.

Didn't even bother to spell it "okay". OK.

I think that sucks.
OK?