By Emily Rowan “Blood is kinda like snot,” author Karen Houppert declared in her book, The Curse, “How come it’s not treated that way? People with runny noses do not hide their tissues from colleagues and family members. Young girls do not cringe if a boy spies them buying a box of Kleenex.” When hormones run rampant and shooting cramps puncture their insides, few women … [Read more...] about Mother Nature Meets Her Match
Archives for 2011
Trusting the Anonymous
By Frank Hou Founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia has revolutionized the way Americans gather information and conduct research. A web-based encyclopedia spanning 16 million articles written by its users, Wikipedia is among the most widely used websites in the emerging digital era. Millions of Americans, varying from high school students to college … [Read more...] about Trusting the Anonymous
“Legislating from the Bench” in Tarasoff v. UC Regents
Preface: In order to understand how the Tarasoff verdict was reached and why it is an example of judicial activism, it is first necessary to be aware of the facts that led to the initiation of the case. In 1969, a man named Prosenjit Poddar began seeing a psychologist named Lawrence Moore who worked for the Cowell Memorial Hospital at UC Berkeley (Tobriner 1976, 2). Poddar … [Read more...] about “Legislating from the Bench” in Tarasoff v. UC Regents
Casual Labor
“Social participation is the oil of the digital economy.” – Trebor Scholz[1] “The consumer is sovereign in a jungle of ugliness, where the freedom of choice is imposed on him.” – Jean Baudrillard[2] Histories of Play and Labor In his short essay “Money for Nothing: Virtual Worlds and Virtual Economies,” Steven Shaviro traces what he sees as the historical trajectory … [Read more...] about Casual Labor
Gambling With Luck
“What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?” - Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men In our daily lives, the most we bet on a coin toss is a couple of dollars or an embarrassing public act. We think it is a fair way to make an arbitrary decision: the coin has an equal probability of landing on heads or tails so we leave it up to chance to decide. Consequently, we associate … [Read more...] about Gambling With Luck