A few months ago I saw a lecture by Judith Levine (author of harmful to minors) about the perils of protecting children from sex. She argued against age of consent laws, discussed the normalcy of sex play between children (which led to some pretty interesting conversations about some of my friends pasts!), and explored different ways in which sex with an adult can be instructive or beneficial to a younger person. Scandalous- and oh so true.
I went to screening of the film Bomb It, and learned about the history of grafitti and the roles street artists are playing today all over the world. Some of the very first grafitti artists were interviewed in the movie, and they explained their personal evolution from simply ‘tagging’ or scrawling their names on walls and windows, to competing for better spots like train cars or billboards, to creating massive works of art. Today, one of the major issues for grafitti artists is the reclamation of public space as a venue for their personal expression. See this movie- it will make you want to write your name on the wall.
And this week I went to a philosophy lecture at Macalester and found out a bit more about memes. Memes are usually defined as being the cultural version of genes. I would say a meme is a fancy word for an idea. Like genes, memes reproduce and perpetuate themselves, or fail to, dependingon how successful they are. While I agree that ideas often behave in ways that model evolution, I’m not sold on the value of this theory. One problem I see is that memes, unlike genes, have no base unit- how can a calculus meme, integration meme, differentiation meme, and graph meme all exist despite overlapping one another and containing different amounts of information? I feel like I’m going to be reading some Richard Dawkins soon, maybe he’ll explain.
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