Role models
(05/01/17 2:21am)
Who do you look up to?
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Who do you look up to?
Recently, I was listening to a lecture. As is the case with many such talks, an anecdote was told in order to transition into an overarching point. It went something like this: the speaker (let’s call him Dan) had built a fence in his backyard to keep his young son from wandering out into the world. One day, Dan was watching his son playing in said backyard. He looked away for a minute and suddenly found the boy gone after refocusing his attention. Dan immediately panicked, imagining his son wandering into the street and getting hit by a car traveling fifty miles per hour. Rushing to the front yard, Dan found the boy harmlessly playing with the family dog on the porch. Crisis averted.
A few years ago, I was perusing the archives of a college student newspaper. It was the end of the year, the time for graduating columnists to sit down and pen their last piece. I stumbled upon one particular column that stood out from the others. It wasn’t because the piece was full of somewhat-vague generalizations about one’s time at university and how the experience was transformative, et cetera, et cetera—after all, most of the pieces contained some sort of introspection.
If you’ve taken a couple of computer science classes at Duke over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed something surprising. No, it’s not the dramatic changes in your sleep schedule or the hours upon hours spent debugging, only to find that you made a dumb mistake in line 2 of your code. Those things, after all, were bound to happen. The answer is much simpler: there are more people in class (and I don’t mean only on exam days).
It is often said that variety is the spice of life.
The Super Bowl happened last week, and as usual, it generated a discussion about the quality of the aired commercials. Which ones were hits, and which ones were flops? While there were some strong ads this year, none of them are likely to achieve the iconic status of Apple’s “1984” commercial. In it, hundreds of soulless, look-alike individuals stare blankly as a giant Big Brother-like talking head spews propaganda from a telescreen. In the midst of this dark and dreary landscape, a woman in a white tank top and red gym shorts sprints into view and hurls a hammer at the screen, destroying it. Anya Major’s character represented the Macintosh, which Apple insinuated was the spark needed to free the computing industry from sameness and monotony. In the ad, the only splotch of color is a beacon of light in a dark world—one that appears to be a stark contrast to the one in which we live today.
What can we learn from “The Big Bang Theory”? At first blush, not a lot. But there is something to be gained by examining what makes the number one-rated comedy on television tick.
There is something about the concept of the middle that always seems to fascinate people. Something about being neither high nor low, neither first nor last, that triggers certain emotions—emotions that allow the middle to become the subject of songs and TV shows. It may seem a strange thing to hold in such high esteem, but it isn’t unworthy. After all, when it comes to many things, the middle isn’t such a bad place to be.
As hard it may be to believe, it has been a whole month since the 2016 general election wrapped up. By now, you have probably read dozens upon dozens of articles and columns discussing the impact of said election. What major changes will it bring about in the United States and around the world? Has it altered the way we think about or do things? The election has certainly given rise to many new movements, but one major one seems to have gone largely unnoticed: that of the sore loser.
The holiday season is rolling around, which means that it is once again time for that classic tradition that wears everyone out but is still going strong as ever. I’m talking, of course, about gift-giving.
We live in a world driven by the promise of change. Politicians are prime examples: they are masters at telling people that things will be different if votes are cast for them. But it is not just the politicians: many people from all walks of life have mastered the art of saying “next year” or “next time,” implying that circumstances will be different given some time and a little luck. Yet, it seems that “next year” always seems to bring with it one thing that was just as prevalent during the previous year: the general lack of respect for the recently deceased.
Quick—what do “Catch-22,” “American Beauty,” and “Last Week Tonight” have in common? You might say that they are all examples of satire, and you would be correct. However, they are also emblematic of issues stemming from the current role of satire in the contemporary world.
It is often said that only two things are certain in life: death and taxes. With apologies to Christopher Bullock, I would like to add one more item to this list: the mantra of hard work. After all, it seems that no matter where you go in the world nowadays, one piece of advice seems to be constant: work hard, and good things will happen to you. “You can do anything you set your mind to, as long as you are willing to work hard,” is another popular variation.
The World Wide Web is an amazing resource. In just a few short decades, it has completely transformed the way we think and live our lives. In the process, it has spawned a new vocabulary that has integrated itself into everyday speech. One such neologism bugs me every time I see or hear it: the insidious “Facebook stalking.”