31 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2025
  2. Mar 2025
  3. Aug 2024
  4. Jun 2024
    1. To Martin a liberal education meant “the kind of education which setsthe mind free from the servitude of the crowd and from vulgar self-interests.”

      He didn't have the framework to describe it in behavioral economic terms, but Everett Dean Martin's idea of a liberal education in 1926 was to encourage the use of Kahneman & Tversky's system two over system one. It takes more work, but system two thinking can generally beat out system one gut reactions for building a better life.

    2. In his 1926 work, The Meaning of a Liberal Education, heargued that education’s task is to “reorient the individual, to enablehim to take a richer and more significant view of his experiences, toplace him above and not within the system of his beliefs and ideals.”

      Is it possible to be above one's own system of beliefs and ideas? Doesn't the system make them a product of it? Evolving from a base at best?

      The idea sounds lovely, but is it possible anthropologically?

  5. Jan 2024
  6. Jun 2023
  7. May 2023
  8. Feb 2023
  9. Jan 2023
  10. Dec 2022
    1. First, the conflation of the deerwith the devaluation of Black life nods to the long-standing tradition of usinganimals to speak back to the power structures upheld by plantation slaveryin the form of animal folktales. And second, this deer comes roaring back tolife. He gets his revenge on the family that made his noble head into a trophy.The taxidermied deer is a speaking animal that has a kind of second life, andthere are multiple ways we might read its importance in Chris’s escape

      back to life, revenge, trophy, head, speaking animal with second life, the deer also fights back

  11. Jun 2022
  12. Nov 2021
  13. Oct 2019
  14. Aug 2018
    1. “If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist.”

      In prior generations, if you couldn't borrow dad's car, you didn't exist...

      Cross reference the 1955 cultural touchstone film Rebel Without a Cause. While the common perception is that James Dean, portraying Jim Stark, was the rebel (as seen in the IMDB.com description of the film "A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies."), it is in fact Plato, portrayed by Sal Mineo, who is the true rebel. Plato is the one who is the disruptive and rebellious youth who is always disrupting the lives of those around him. (As an aside, should we note Plato's namesake was also a rebel philosopher in his time?!?)

      Plato's first disruption in the film is the firing of the cannon at school. While unstated directly, due to the cultural mores of Hollywood at the time, Plato is a closeted homosexual who's looking to befriend someone, anyone. His best shot is the new kid before the new kid manages to find his place in the pecking order. Again Jim Stark does nothing in the film but attempt to fit into the social fabric around him, his only problem is that he's the new guy. Most telling here about their social structures is that Jim has ready access to an automobile (a literal rolling social club--notice multiple scenes in the film with cars full of teenagers) while Plato is relegated to an old scooter (a mode of transport focused on the singleton--the transport of the outcast, the rebel).

      The Rebel Plato, with his scooter--and a gun, no less! Plato as portrayed by Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Notice that as the rebel, he's pictured in the middleground with a gun while his scooter protects him in the foreground. In the background is the automobile, the teens' coveted source of freedom at the time.

  15. Apr 2018
  16. Mar 2018
  17. Aug 2016