Too often in our debates about freedom of speech, we assume that it already exists and that it is campus activists, particularly over questions of race, who threaten it. But what Princeton’s students have shown is that, before they came along, there was in fact precious little speech about figures like Wilson, and what speech there was, was mostly bland PR for tourists and prospective students. Even more important, Princeton’s students have shown us that it is precisely the kinds of actions they have taken — which are uncivil, frequently illegal and always unruly — that produce speech.
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Everyone's Trying Really Hard Not to Call the Germanwings Co-Pilot a Terrorist - Mic - 3 views
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The Breivek analogy in this article has some resonance to the notion of media reporting to a certain audience--in this case, western/white, though first impressions necessarily need revision. At this time, we don't know enough about Lubitz, a curiosity in this instant-access age of information. Even his now inaccessible facebook information reduces our impression to a seemingly relaxed tourist enjoying the backdrop of the Golden Gate bridge. To the point of the article, we crave to have more 'backdrop', more cues to connect any dots. Some crave to have preconceptions confirmed, others to reverse common assumptions. For my part, I jotted first impressions via poetry, which doesn't purport veracity but should still, as John Keats reminds in 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', probe to know beauty and truth, the former of which defies understanding in this event. Thus, my first impressions: http://lostmenagerie.blogspot.cz/2015/03/meanwhile-tuesday.html
We have the Woodrow Wilson/P.C. debate all backwards: Protesters are forcing a debate P... - 0 views
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While my general approach to history is one of modulation — past imperfect, always — I’m leery of those who would say, against the students, don’t erase the past. I’m leery of these critics’ timing: if there’s any erasing going on here, it’s in the daily practices of Princeton. In those campus tours, those campus addresses, the general celebration of the man. Why haven’t we heard criticism of how the past is being erased by Princeton’s celebration of Wilson?I’m also leery of these critics’ assumptions that removing a name from a building is about erasing the past. As if once the name is gone, all conversation stops, all memory disappears.
Why People Mistake Good Deals for Rip-Offs : The New Yorker - 5 views
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Last Saturday, an elderly man set up a stall near Central Park and sold eight spray-painted canvases for less than one five-hundredth of their true value. The art works were worth more than two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, but the man walked away with just four hundred and twenty dollars. Each canvas was an original by the enigmatic British artist Banksy, who was approaching the midpoint of a monthlong residency in New York City. Banksy had asked the man to sell the works on his behalf. For several hours, hundreds of oblivious locals and tourists ignored the quiet salesman, along with the treasure he was hiding in plain sight. The day ended with thirty paintings left unsold. One Banksy aficionado, certain she could distinguish a fake from the real thing, quietly scolded the man for knocking off the artist’s work.
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What makes Banksy’s subversive stunt so compelling is that it forces us to acknowledge how incoherently humans derive value. How can a person be willing to pay five hundred times more than another for the same art work born in the same artist’s studio?
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Some concepts are easy to evaluate without a reference standard. You don’t need a yardstick, for example, when deciding whether you’re well-rested or exhausted, or hot or cold, because those states are “inherently evaluable”—they’re easy to measure in absolute terms because we have sensitive biological mechanisms that respond when our bodies demand rest, or when the temperature rises far above or falls far below seventy-two degrees. Everyone agrees that three days is too long a period without sleep, but art works satisfy far too abstract a need to attract a universal valuation. When you learn that your favorite abstract art work was actually painted by a child, its value declines precipitously (unless the child happens to be your prodigious four-year-old).
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