Send Nudes?

”Look at this photograph. Every time I do it makes me laugh.” For once, I can relate to a Nickelback song. This year, one of the New Year’s Resolutions a friend and I made is to take more photos. Considering it was a New Year’s Resolution, you already know I have only taken about three and a half new photos since January. We looked through our camera rolls and saw mostly memes and pictures of dogs. While those are great, we felt like we had so many missed opportunities having not taken photos of our friends or during anything fun we had done. These next few years are our glory days, after all, and there are only so many memories our brains can hold. And technology will probably not advance far enough for me to telepathically transfer those memories to my children when they ask me what my childhood was like. I know I wish there was something more than a few black and white photos left from my parents’ lives in the Eastern Bloc.

Looking at an old photo may not tell you everything about the situation or the event it captures. But even the “knowledge at bargain pric[e]” it provides is better than forgetting everything. I’ll take bargain brand toilet paper over no toilet paper at all. Susan’s Sontag argument seems very ignorant. It’s limited to those people that hate on concert videos, claiming people should “live in the moment.” And I agree, those vidoes are really annoying to watch. However, for one thing, I do not see how recording a video someone prevents the person from experiencing the concert. But anyway, the issue behind that becomes more of a social media problem. Photography does not deserve to be torn down because of social media; there is so much more to it than that.

Plant A Tree Today

It’s Earth Day. Hopefully most of you were aware of that before seeing the new Snapchat filters, but that may be too much to ask. Our planet is no stranger to the “Janus faced god” that is science. The Earth knows all too well the “death and beauty, wounds and power: the piercing horns of the dilemma of science.” There have definitely been scientific discoveries that have immensely helped our planet and improved our understanding of nature. However, one of the greatest periods of scientific breakthrough, the Industrial Revolution, jump-started the anthropogenic climate change that has hurt the Earth for centuries now. When we discovered new sources of energy (fossil fuels) we were unaware of the significant implications that would follow – reintroducing fossilized carbon into the atmosphere it had not been exposed to for millions of years. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFC’s, were an amazing breakthrough chemical used for refrigerants and propellants in aerosol cans. The hole in the ozone layer they caused was not discovered until decades later. These examples are a just a couple among countless others.

I love science. Being a scientist, Chet Raymo clearly does too. But humans have had the tendency to rush into scientific breakthroughs, often driven by fame or commercial gain, without anticipating or caring about the consequences that will follow. With this reckless attitude, science can easily become more of a “weapo[n] of destruction” than anything else. In honor of Earth day, I urge you all to exercise “a measure of restraint” with the amount of waste you throw away, gas you burn, or water you run.

Charging Taurus

The sculptor Arturo Di Modica’s Charging Bull, in New York City was built as “a symbol of ‘the strength and power of the American people.’” The term “bullish” has been used to positively describe rising stock prices. However, with the addition of the Fearless Girl, the Charging Bull has instead become “a symbol of patriarchal oppression.” Besides a booming economy or “an aggressive threat to women and girls,” the bull is also a symbol of the astrological sign Taurus. This sign rules the planet Venus, the planet of relationships and romance. Taureans are known to be as stubborn as the bull that represents them. Yet, like other earth signs, Taurus is a sign of practicality and reliability. It has an eye for beauty and enjoys the physical pleasures of life. These down to earth individuals are generous and dependable. Being much more interested in astrology than economics, I first associate bulls with Taurus, not a booming stock market. To me, this is an example of how context is everything – especially for artwork. Adding the Fearless Girl to the Charging Bull drastically changes its context, thus completely changing interpretations of the meaning behind Di Modica’s statue. In this sense, I believe it is inappropriate and unfair to Di Modica to leave the Fearless Girl standing up to what was intended to represent economic success.