Business

MANGA MONDAYS | Advertising with Anime: Places as Products

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If you’re ever riding a train in Japan’s Tottori prefecture, you might be lucky enough to ride the “Conan Train.” Which, as it happens, is exactly the same as a regular train, except for the fact that the outside is a giant advertisement for the “Conan” anime (that’s “Case Closed” in America). Why, you might ask, is there such an over-the-top advertisement for an anime in the middle of Japan’s least populous prefecture? Surely the advertisement would reach more people in Tokyo? As it happens, Tottori prefecture is the home of Gosho Aoyama, the author and illustrator of the Conan manga. Thus, it’s not that someone is advertising the anime or manga.

Life

CULTURALLY SHOOK | I’m with Kanye – Materialism Makes Me Happy

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If you tell me you’re in pursuit of happiness, I’ll tell you you’re awfully misguided (@KidCudi, wyd?). Happiness itself is simply a concept—a crude abstraction, nebulous by nature. People say it exists. I say: pics or it didn’t happen. A journey to a more ambiguous abstraction there never was.

Politics

NOBODY’S OPINIONS | Fallout

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In the wake of this week’s election results (and it really does seem like a literal wake), the American people experience at this moment an unprecedented and unsettling division. There are calls for revolution and for resolution, for peaceful protest and property damage, for faithless electors and for faith in the decision made by the citizens of our great nation. These are indeed trying times, when no one knows the truth from lies. This Tuesday, I too was shocked and uncomprehending, but it is important that as we move forward we create a compelling narrative to explain all that has happened since the cycle began in 2015. This means addressing all of the arguments circulating on social media, and that is what I will do here.

Politics

BETWEEN BARS | Just Visiting

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This week is National Prison Visiting Week, a new initiative led by the VERA Institute of Justice to open up prison facilities to local community members to come in and interact with inmates and correctional officers. The “opening” of the prisons provides the public an opportunity to see the effect that a local institution has on people, many who eventually reenter society (studies estimate 95% nationwide). It also seeks, I predict, to demonstrate that mass incarceration is not an abstract phenomenon but a condition that is as local as state prisons and county jails, which make up the bulk of the nation’s incarcerated. VERA’s president points out that it is in a community’s interest to know the people it sends behind bars, for they will not be hidden forever:
Prisons and jails, and the 2.2 million people in them, have been literally walled off from what was previously a deeply neglectful public. But no more.

Politics

KRAVITZ’S KORNER | Why Undergrads Should Be Against Graduate School Unionization

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The prospect of graduate student unionization at Cornell University is becoming a serious possibility. There has been much debate about the relative merits of this decision from the perspective of graduate students. In fact, Interim President Rawlings laid out his argument for why he feels it is not in their best interests to do so. But lost in this discussion is how a unionization of graduate students might adversely impact the undergraduate student body. Graduate student unionization may hurt undergraduate education

Graduate student teachers play a vital role in the education of undergraduates; they often offer the most direct and accessible source of academic assistance.

Life

WHITE KNUCKLES | Bucket Lists and the Ancient World

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We all have the painful awareness that, during our lifetime, we will not have time to read every book worth reading, to visit every place that fascinates us, to learn what we’ve always dreamed of doing, to play musical instruments and knit scarves. In response to this anxiety, we make lists; bucket lists. Things to do, things you must see, 100 movies to watch at least once. They help us keep track of the meaningful time, of the time that does not dissolve between library hours and scheduled meetings and meals and sleep, the time that crystallizes in scrapbooks and gleaming pictures, in timeless anecdotes and stories repeated over and over. Cornell has its own bucket list, 161 things to do.

Politics

OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM | Cornell Is Wrong About Unionization

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Cornell and President Rawlings are wrong. There is really no other way to say it. Last week, President Rawlings sent an email letter out to all of campus, which forcefully attacked the concept of a graduate student union at Cornell.  I think the content and spirit of this letter were not only intellectually dishonest, but obviously supported anti-union propaganda. I say this only because the language of this letter is very similar to language used by companies against union campaigns for workers.

Life

BETWEEN BARS | Learning Chinese

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This week at Auburn I taught Chinese. It came as a surprise, really: when we checked our belongings in at the front desk I noticed a fellow tutor holding what looked like worksheets that were written in Chinese. She explained to me that she taught a small Chinese class and invited me to join her in administering a quiz for her class. It turns out the entire Chinese class that night consisted of three people. The five of us sat around a single table in a classroom filled with other students who were there for study hall.

Life

ON MY MIND | I Don’t Feel Like Smiling

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There’s an old chain email/Facebook adage that goes something like: “It takes 37 muscles to frown but only 22 muscles to smile. So smile. It conserves energy.”

I’ll tell you right now that I googled this saying to see if it had any scientific merit, but the first three links I tried were all inconclusive or confusing so I gave up. I give up on a lot of things, so it’s not really a big deal. Anyway, I only looked it up in the first place because I wanted to let you know that smiling is too hard and consequently I’ve decided to stop until further notice.