There was a shooting on my campus. A lone gunman entered the first floor of the library last week in the middle of the night and started randomly shooting. Three students were injured and hundreds more hid in the stacks while campus police ended the attack by killing the shooter. As a sociologist, I know too well how our culture has a way of pushing people to the point of breaking,
On August 4, Federal Judge Vaughn R. Walker struck down California’s ban on same sex marriage ruling that the prohibition violated the right to equal protection as afforded by the United States Constitution. Judge Walker went to great lengths to lodge his ruling in an extensive review of the facts presented. Ultimately, he determined, “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition...
The New School held a conference last week that may be of interest to many Sociology Lens readers, so I have decided to devote this week’s entry to sharing some notes from the conference. The implosion of work and play was the most recurrent theme in the panels that I attended. The term “playbor” was frequently used to describe the product of this implosion. Panelists generally seemed to assume that playbor was a relatively new and increasingly prevalent phenomenon. However,...
by pj.rey While the term “augmented reality” uttered in a sexual context might immediately conjure the perennial problematic of the boozed, buzzed, and befuddled (commonly referred to as “beer goggles”), more nuanced analysis may prove fruitful. Fellow Sociology Lens news editor, nathan jurgenson, recently argued in “towards theorizing an augmented reality” that we need to anticipate an ascending paradigm where “digital and material realities dialectically co-construct each other.” To anticipate this new reality, I argue that we ought to turn...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY&feature=related] by linanne10 A recent youtube video of one of the performances in the largest British competition show, “Britain’s Got Talent,” have received incalculable viewing frequencies, and the number is still rising. Susan Boyle is the focus of this incident. Her mundane (and to some point, ludicrous) appearance, with her resonant and rich voice made her the new “instant celebrity” (according to a recent New York Times article). Drawing from Alexander’s idea on social performance, a successful performance needs to...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFacRsGWZqQ&feature=related] “Are we creating world peace or fundamentally changing the world? No,” he (Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and Canonical) said. “But we could shift what people expect and the amount of innovation per dollar they expect.” — New York Times Most people’s impression on Linux is something mythical which only computer geeks are involved with, if they have even heard of the operating system before. In recent years, volunteers and tech professionals had devoted major effort in developing...
by kiddingthecity Jeff Wall is famous for grand tableaux, which he shoots in sections over several months before stitching together the final image using computer montage. He has been known to spend almost two years on a single picture, with actors and crew to shoot scenes of the everyday. He teases out the myth of reality outside perception to the point that he is able to re-create in studio the ‘decisive moment’ of Cartier-Besson, in which the elements of an...
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