Results tagged “humor” from Uncivil Society
Now *this* is an educational PSA. More at Carpe Testes.
And the occasional guy contemplating what this says about the nature of human identity, all on Bam! Kapow!
Sexuality in the Arts meditates on the latest essential issue of The Comics Journal, which examines David Michaelis' new biography of Peanuts creator Charles Shulz. "In Schulz’ incredible body of work, anyone could pick many individual strips that are autobiographical for their individual life"--or social movement.
Just like baby boomers think they discovered sex, today's do-gooder revolutionaries believe that they're first to revolutionize charity by making it more business-like. But if you do a little historical digging, you soon realize that social enterprise is just the latest variation on a recurring theme.
Case in point: this article from Mad #72, available on this essential DVD set from NYC's own GIT Corp. The article is response to the then-current trend of remaking charity in the image of commercial business, complete with outcome metrics, efficiency-maximizing strategy and Madison Avenue marketing campaigns.
The earlier movement's most notable effect: the enactment of the public charity/private foundation legal so-called reforms that are the bane of today's social enterprise start-ups. We're headed in a similar direction today, but we could still avoid it--and the the best place to start is by taking humor more seriously as a cultural barometer.
I got home from the office today to find news of another Union Square suicide, this time in San Francisco. As you can see from the above SFist comments thread, the connection was quickly noted--indeed, someone commented on my Flickr set they initially thought it was from SF.
In all likelihood the second death was a coincidence, not inspired by its New York counterpart. For one thing, as of the time of the San Francisco suicide, reports of the New York event had not hit the national news.
The reporting of suicide raises complex ethical questions. One issue is perhaps best known through Robert Cialdini's classic Influence: namely, the possibility that suicide is contagious.
It's not an unlikely hypothesis. Mimesis is hard-wired in the mind; it is arguably the key factor in the emergence of humanity. But it also seems to have a dark side. Philosopher Rene Girard has written extensively on the role that mimetic desire plays in social conflict, as imitation among competitors leads to mimetic aggression. Similar, it has been argued that reports of a suicide spark imitative self-destruction, as the report of the act validates suicide as an adaptive behavior.
The possibility that the suicide is mimetic has given rise to at least two competing lines of thought re the ethics of reporting suicide. One approach holds that we need to limit access of information about suicide, so as to reduce the possibility that the act will go viral. Supporting this approach: statistical studies that seem to confirm that suicides tend to occur in clusters.
Others adopt a somewhat revisionist point of view, arguing that a more nuanced analysis of the statistics does not actually support the mimetic hypothesis, at least in every case. Among the proponents of this argument, surprisingly enough, has been the Center for Disease Control, which cites a Texas study observing that news of suicide might actually decrease the risk of suicidal behavior.
How can that be, given our innate mimetic impulse? One key factor may be the way the news is presented. In short, the more it comes across as maladaptive or reductionistic--less than beneficial, less than human--the greater the likelihood that suicide will seem unattractive. In this regard, consider jokes about suicide or, say, driver ed films that associate mangled bodies in car accidents with funny music; rather than being tasteless, they might actually be embedded strategies for survival, neutralizing negative mimetic behavior by making reckless or self-destructive acts seem absurd.
If you spend a lot of time, um, doing research on the web, you've probably seen the mock video battle between celebrity SOs' Sarah Silverman & Jimmy Kimmel. What you might not have thought about is its significance for social innovation. From today's New York Times:
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Mr. Kimmel said that the most difficult part of the project was arranging the schedules of the stars featured in his video — they included, in addition to Mr. Affleck, Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford, Cameron Diaz, Don Cheadle, Robin Williams, Josh Groban and Huey Lewis.
“Every once in a while Hollywood rallies itself for a worthy cause,†Mr. Kimmel said. “We saw that with the ‘We Are the World’ video, with ‘USA for Africa’ and after 9/11. This is just the next natural step in that progression.â€
The gaggle of celebrities was wrangled by Jill Leiderman, an executive producer of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,†who also performed the not-insignificant task of explaining the premise of the enterprise to the various stars — who, while certainly regular viewers of Mr. Kimmel’s show, might have been at a Hollywood premiere or volunteering at a soup kitchen on the night Ms. Silverman’s video was first broadcast.
Marshall McLuhan used to say that behind every joke is a grievance. Sometimes it takes the form of a popular female evangelical Christian who riffs on housework and husbands . . .
It was easier for me to submit myself to him when I was younger and thinner. . . . But then I got older and gained weight, and it’s harder for me to submit to him. Because basically I think I can take him.
. . . others, the not-quite-happenstance association of a wild-eyed love of laundry detergent with a giant cleaver "made for home use."
In the aftermath of l'affaire Givewell, Gifthub and MetaTalk have been engaged in a lively chat re online interaction and philanthropy.
This morning Phil posted a provocative on how satire and parable keep the wayward self in check. This discussion reminds me of Marshall McLuhan's observations on roles and humor in the contemporary media economy.
As McLuhan noted, jobs and goals have morphed into roles, as we now assume an array of diverse identities adapted to various media environments. The roles of artist and clown are similar in they each stand perpendicular to the environments in which they're immersed. Humor in particular plays a valuable role in exposing hidden assumptions and providing a forum for otherwise unaccepted thoughts. It's public relations not in the sense of craven advertising but providing a medium for multiple roles to relate--outsiders can express grievance without penalty and insiders can learn what they're doing wrong.
The picture above contains one of McLuhan's favorite aphorisms in this regard, taken from the Marshall McLuhan Distant Early Warning card deck. The full set is available for viewing here.
According to me, anyway. The last couple issues of New Scientist have been publishing the results of their "Flirt with Science" contest. I didn't enter, alas, but I'm going to be on the lookout for next year's contest. That I differ from the magazine's chosen winners and runners-up is probably a reflection of my own scientific interests, but what a fun mix of education and entertainment!
Why am I posting my own favorite top ten here? Because . . .
Well, um . . .
Because it's my site, dammit, and I'll post what I want to, even if it's not about social enterprise.
So here they are, my top ten. Your mileage will no doubt differ.
"Looking at you, the creationists may have a point after all."
"How can I know a hundred digits of pi, but not the 11 digits of your phone number?"
"Forget what they say about butterflies, I think that you could whip up a storm just by fluttering your eyelashes."
"As a quantum physicist, the moment I observed you I determined that we were heading to your place or mine."
"What's a nice girl like you doing in a superposition like this?"
"You have a hyperfine structure."
"Baby, you must be a start codon because you are turnin' me on."
"Meiosis?"
"You're so sweet I am developing insulin resistance."
And for the sentimental favorite, here's one that actually worked for Michael Boddy of New South Wales, Australia:
"Did you know that if oysters had no natural enemies, in 10 years the world would be 28 miles deep in oysters?"
(Boddy: "We married in 1968 and are still going strong.")
Makes me wonder what the Boddy count is now in New South Wales!
Ave Maria School of Law is selling the naming rights to its new building.
If your last name's Lucifer or Bastardo, now's your chance to have some fun.
Russian elections?
Venezuelan constitutional referenda?
Nahhhh, the biggest story this weekend is the announcement that Viacom is going to archive the complete South Park online.
For folks who know where to look, of course, getting South Park for free online isn't all that difficult. But what's so great about this latest development is that it'll be completely legal. Viacom's success in archiving the Daily Show--making all the episodes available for free was followed by a jump in the ratings--has apparently led it to conclude that the best way to promote broadcast television is to give shows away online.
Which pretty much confirms what I've been thinking about online distance education. Y'see, there are a bunch of hearty noble souls out there in nonprofit university land who see online education as a potential goldmine. Blogs, podcasts, wikis--the assumption is you'll pay for 'em at full price tuition or a little less. Post it, and they will buy.
Nope. Sorry. Not gonna happen.
If popular entertainment such as South Park hasn't able to find a sustainable fee-based model, I don't see how higher education--which is far less funny--is going to draw a critical mass of paying customers. Sure, a few places on the margins might be able to make a few bucks that way--a Phoenix for non-traditional students and elites like Harvard or Stanford for folks who want to backdoor into the brand names--but for the majority of academic institutions the returns just won't be there. People aren't going to pay to watch or listen to most lectures, and your average professor--myself included--doesn't have the time to transform forty-five hours of a real-world seminar into professional-quality ten-minute instructables, particularly ones for which you'd be willing to shell out twenty-grand a year.
Instead, I see online education primarily as a marketing tool. Professors and, yes, students give information away for free, and maybe, if we're bit lucky, folks will want to join the real-world community themselves by paying tuition. It's a gambit, sure, but it's also 'liberal" education in the truest sense of the word--and it may be the key to the survival of the university itself.
Valleywag reminds us how strident studied virtue can sound outside The Movement. Which sounds a bit creepy in itself, if you ask me.
Options author Dan Lyons was Friday's guest author at Stacey's Bookstore in San Francisco's financial district. Several audience members -- seemingly unaware that Lyons had written a parody about Steve Jobs -- grilled the Forbes editor turned humorist on Apple's lack of corporate philanthropy and the allegedly widening income gap between Jobs and everyone else. When Lyons sputtered that he really didn't know the answers, one attendee snorted, "Aren't you supposed to be a business reporter?" I followed one of Lyons's attackers out of the store to a local Peet's, where she once again spoke truth to power. "It's frightening what they put in the food these days," she informed the barista. "Is this Fair Trade coffee?"
Is nonprofit law obsolete?
