Culture

COMMON SENSE | Your Weight Is Not Your Worth

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In the Indian community it often feels as though your worth is derived from your weight. Six months before I’m due to see my family in India again I’m already dreading the opening greetings which will undoubtedly revolve around how much weight I’ve gained or lost since the last time I’ve seen them. Either way it’s not a pleasant experience. This dread was reinforced a few days ago when I was went home for the weekend, visited a family friend’s house and was greeted by the exclamations of how much weight my sister and I had lost since the last time we’d seen these people. Outrageously one of the ladies at the house started to talk about how her 11-year-old daughter was “healthy” for her age (aka overweight) — and trust me she looked perfectly fine.

Culture

IT’S ONLY LOGICAL | The Tragedy of Diversity

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On its diversity and inclusion webpage, our ever enlightened university boldly regards itself as “a place where intercultural skills are developed and enacted among diverse campus constituencies”.  Cornell bumptiously claims that more than 39 percent of undergraduates identify as students of color, and each year the admissions office touts “the most diverse class to date”. Yet the stark reality stands in opposition to the propagandized malarkey that is smeared across administrative outlets. Student life at Cornell remains largely segregated. Under the guise of special interests and cultural celebration, cowardice for sake of comfort has been condoned.

Culture

ON MY MIND | Wake Up Mr. Kim: On Asians Who Say the N-word

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Hello! Today I want to talk about why it’s not okay for non-black people of color – specifically Asian and Pacific Americans – to say the N-word. But before we can do that, I need you to chew on this interesting and relevant anecdote:

Picture me, Spring, 2015. The air was brimming with promise as I contemplated the two glimmering stars compelling me towards a sweet horizon – a.k.a. high school graduation and Kanye West’s supposed new album So Help Me God SWISH Waves The Life of Pablo. On an otherwise nondescript sunny day in March, I found myself at one of several school-sponsored “parties” for our graduating class.

Bill Nye

MANGA MONDAYS | Anime and Rural Japan

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I recently watched Only Yesterday at the Cornell Cinema (highly recommend it!) and the show really got me thinking about the role of rural settings in Japanese popular culture. Note that I didn’t just say anime there! I’m broadening my horizons a bit this week. To which end, we’re going to start with some cultural background. Modern Japan has a bit of a problem: during the postwar period, the country urbanized at an unprecedented rate (if I recall correctly, it was the highest rate in history, though I don’t have a source for that).

deep focus shot

WATCH ME IF YOU CAN | Hollywood and the Blacklist

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The 2015 biopic Trumbo depicts the struggle that many screenwriters faced during the Red Scare. Dalton Trumbo (played by Bryan Cranston), along with nine other screenwriters, was tried and charged for contempt of Congress under the accusation of writing films promoting anti-American ideals.  As a consequence, he and many other writers faced blacklisting, forbidding them from writing and getting paid, wasting an enormous amount of talent. After his jail time, he decided to use the loopholes in his court orders to his advantage. Trumbo wrote films under the identity of Robert Rich (another screenwriter who was away on military leave) and even won an Academy Award for Best Original Story for The Brave One.

Entertainment

MANGA MONDAYS | Better Than Expected

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By MICHAEL MAUER

A few weeks ago I wrote a post covering this season’s anime and what I thought looked good. My overall impression basically boiled down to “It’s all sequels plus a few interesting shows. But not as good as last season.” Having just caught up on some shows from this season, I need to revisit that opinion. Because there is some pretty awesome stuff coming out right now. Remember how I said not to judge a book by its cover in that post?