3.22.09 by Ruth + 89 comments!
According to this article in … yeah, I don’t really have to tell you what publication … an artist, Shepard Fairey, (who is incidentally most famous for another piece of art) was brought to court this week in Boston for vandalism.
An example of the charges against him:
Here’s something else which was painted on concrete…
…in Berlin, in 1989. That piece of concrete is now an art gallery.
There are many many many more examples.
Remember the trash cans at Central which had reproductions of famous pieces of art on them? If you didn’t go to Central, pretend you remember them anyway. I think we can all agree that that was a pretty awesome idea. It was an awesome idea because it took blank surfaces and made them interesting. The difference between that and the examples above is, essentially, the pressence of permission. As rebelious teenagers, I think we can all agree that permission isn’t important.
If you were considering going out and spraypainting “Free Shepard Fairey” on the sidewalks, you should call me so I can go with you. Actually, if you are Shepard Fairey you can probably afford both a good lawyer and bail. Nevermind.
5.25.08 by Deus + 92 comments!
The radius of the planet Earth is roughly 6371 km, and the troposphere extends an average of 12km above the surface. From that follows that we have [(4/3)π*63833]-[(4/3)π*63713], or 1,083,206,916,846 cubic kilometers, of atmosphere. 21 percent of that is oxygen, so there are about 227,473,452,538 cubic kilometers of O2 that we have available for breathing. Now, if the oxygen were increased by just three percent, or 32,496,207,505 cubic kilometers, the atmosphere would ignite if you lit a match. Conversely, if you subtact a few percent from those 227,473,452,538 km3 of O2, replacing it with something like CO2 or all the other stuff released by us into the atmosphere, or perhaps dropping a few nukes into the South American rainforests, there won’t be enough to sustain human life.
Feel free to check my math.
5.10.08 by Ruth
Earlier this year a classmate of mine turned around during a discussion of our recent change from a twelve-to-three-male-to-female-ratio AP Physics class to an eleven-to-one-male-to-female-ratio AP Physics class to tell me that actually, research shows that men have more “calculating” brain capacity and women have more “connections” so it made sense that there was a large majority of guys in our class. This was a bad thing to say to me. “Actually, research shows that you are predisposed to do badly at what you do best.” He didn’t fool me. I’m only sad that there weren’t a few more girls present to hear my little tirade of a response:
There seems to be this society wide misconception that girls are bad at math. Actually, psychology research has shown over and over again that girls only do worse on math tests than guys only if you tell them they are going to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat). Unfortunately, because of this society wide misconception, nobody actually needs to say it. It’s sort of a vicious circle. Girls underachieve in math and science because they think they will, and then they think they will because they have in the past. In the end probably thousands of girls miss the opportunity to have interesting, fulfilling careers in math or science which they may never know would have been interesting and fulfilling because they were never encouraged to pursue math and science.
Girls, don’t let anyone talk you out of being able to do math and science.
