viz. - Ethos

Convicting Capital Punishment in Art

Rachel Schneider — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: Screenshot from Tiny Subversions

When you live in Texas, you get used to people asking you to verify certain popular stereotypes: cowboy boots, country music, ten-gallon hats, and conservative politics. And—a belief in the capital punishment. The facts are bleak: Texas leads the nation in executions, with 510 since the death penalty was reinstated in Gregg v. Georgia in 1976. To compare, the next closest state, Virginia, has only executed 110 people. While the number of death penalty sentences have declined since 1999, organizations like The StandDown Texas Project and The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty have advocated to either suspend or completely end the death penalty in the state. Numerous problems have been cited, from the shortage of drugs for lethal injections to protests about foreign nationals not being given their proper consular rights. While such logos-based arguments commonly circulate, another kind of ethos-based argument works through various art projects which seek to remind viewers of the humanity of the convicted.

Image Credit: Amy Elkins

H/T: Huffington Post

These online art projects work to reconstruct the ethos of these violent offenders. For example, Amy Elkins’s series Parting Words uses the final statements of the executed to construct their mug shots. For an example, see Elliot Johnson’s. The face is relatively obscured, but the grayscale type conveying the message—“I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me. Try not to worry too much about me. Remember one thing, Mother, I love you.”—becomes the man’s face. These tender words serve as a stark contrast to the dehumanized headshot, providing a new view of the violent criminal.

Image Credit: Huffington Post

Another man, Robert Black Junior, quotes from John Gillespie Magee’s poem “High Flight,” but his recitation trails off at the suggestive lines “— and done a hundred things / You have not dreamed of.” A poem written about flight during World War II becomes a man’s death-cry, an autobiographical narrative. Matched with the illegible portrait, the effect is eerie.

Image Credit: Amy Elkins

Samuel Hawkins’s portrait manages to touch the viewer through a different strategy. The absence of a final statement—here represented as “None”—reminders its audience of how depersonalized the industrial prison complex is. That there is probably more than Hawkins said in life, or could have said in the moment is put into relief by the fact that nothing was said here.

Image Credit: Screenshot from Tiny Subversions

Last Words, an art project by programmer Darius Kazemi, flashes lines from these last statements which include the word “love” in them, presented in white sans serif typeface against a black background. While Elkins’s portraits are in part powerful because they highlight the individuality of each inmate, these try to communicate the shared humanity between the prisoners and their audience through this shared emotion. The bleakness of the screen underlines the point also that these are last words, that while these people killed others, their lives are now over, available for mourning as well. If you sit and watch the page for several minutes, you’re likely to see certain repetitions: different spellings of “I love y’all,” gratitude for love and support, empathy with the victims’ families. Because these statements are all online, the viewer can choose to try and find out who said what, but the work relies on removing the statements from their specific individual context.

Image Credit: Screenshot from Tiny Subversions

The gradual appearance and disappearance of the text as shown here runs similar to a movie credit sequence, giving you a minute to consider an individual sentence before it gradually fades, to be replaced by another. The effect is somewhat mournful, and gives a completely different context and feeling to the language than something like this Wordle, which highlights in a different way how prominent the word “love” is in these final statements.

What strikes me as interesting about these different pieces is that all rely on the visual impact of the physical word to perform their plea for empathy or understanding. While the final statement is clearly an important rhetorical act for these individuals, the presentation and recontextualization of their words in visual forms turns these moments into an implicit critique of a dehumanizing process, even if only rarely do the inmates themselves protest the processes entrapping them.

Negotiating Modesty: Reading Mormon Fashion Blogs as Visual Rhetoric

Laura Thain — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:22:32 +0000

Image Source: Clothed Much

Fashion blogs have proliferated the internet since its inception; the rhetoric of the genre is as multifaceted as its participants, most of whom are women. Daily fashion blogging, in which the blogger takes regular photos of the outfit she assembles each morning, is a popular iteration of the genre. Obviously much of the blogger’s value systems is exhibited through the personal ethos she cultivates on these blogs; the way the blogger frames the narrative of the outfit in terms of its relationship to her day-to-day activities reveals much about these value systems, as well. An interesting subculture has received a substantial amount of attention in the fashion blogging community recently, and that is modesty blogging. All the modesty blogs I’ve come across are motivated by religious restriction; the vast majority of these base their definitions of modest clothing upon the tenets of the Mormon church. Of course, the situated ethos of modesty blogging must negotiate an inherent contradiction between two competing definitions of modest: the function of modest dress as a physical representation of religious belief and the concept of modesty as the quality of being unassuming, scrupulous, and free from presumption. What does it mean to take pride in modest dress, to wear it as a badge of individualism and difference? And how can we read these modesty blogs in terms of visual culture? Join me as I take you on a journey into another strange corner of the internet: Mormon fashion blogging.

Image Source: Cats and Cardigans

We might make a few generalizations about popular fashion blogs: most successful blogs attract their audiences with an ethos that exhibits an internally consistent personal style (what we might call a “style narrative”) that is accomplished by innovative pairings. Thus, the blog initially attracts an audience with the familiar—a “style narrative” of, for example, grunge, retro, hipster, or editorial—and keeps their interest with the unfamiliar—a scarf made into a bolero or a vintage headband woven into a punk outfit. We might, then, loosely read the ethos of these blogs as “text” in terms of Barthes’ conforming/cutting edge dichotomy in The Pleasure of the Text. This makes the case of modesty fashion blogs especially interesting, because the “cutting edge” component of these blog’s ethos is, in fact, a conservative reaction to counterculture—it operates on the fantasy of return to a dress standard of the past (although its location in the past is certainly ambiguous). The familiar, plagiarizing edge is, in fact, the way that these modesty blogs attempt to participate in mainstream discourse—a discourse that is often countercultural (hipster, grunge, retro). Their popularity comes in large part from the way these blogs resemble in their formal elements many other successful fashion blogs, but are able to translate their audience’s desire for surprise and innovation into a restricted code of dress.

Image Source: Cotton and Curls

Most Mormon fashion blogs define immodest clothing as anything low-cut, sleeveless, backless, or too short—some combine a series of positive descriptions along with the negative (for instance “long skirts” or “skirts below the knee” rather than “no skirts above the knee”). Most do not address fit but instead warn against “revealing” clothing. Concrete restrictions almost always regard coverage, rather than the tightness or fit of clothing. This ethos in general is oriented around fulfilling a minimum requirement of modesty, and the boundary of that minimum requirement is represented physically by the temple garment, an undergarment standardized and manufactured by the central Church. Women begin wearing this garment daily when they receive their endowment, which for most coincides with their marriage. We can reasonably assume that most of these bloggers wear temple garments, as they advertise their status as Temple-married women, but it is worth mentioning that almost none of these bloggers mention the temple garment or the way it might restrict their code of dress; rather, these women speak of their restricted dress as a lifelong commitment predating their temple endowment, and a code of modesty that is self-defined and self-enforced. (Many of these blogs begin their "about me" with some variation of “Modesty means ____ to me…”).

The deferral of the issue of temple garments is not only a reflection of their sacred status among church members (it is in general considered inappropriate to speak about temple garments to non-members, and is considered offensive to display visual representations of them)—it is also indicative of these women attempting to find a place in mainstream fashion discourse; to not be noticed for their wardrobe restriction but for their good sense of style. The rhetoric of these blogs might be condensed as such: “I am reflecting an internal commitment to God in my physical appearance, but I do this so well that you would not notice unless I told you explicitly.” This rhetorical mechanism seems to operate to ease the tension between competing modesty discourses I have outlined above: these bloggers can take personal, inner pride in their commitment to modesty without bringing attention to their difference (and thus translating pride of self into the public sphere). Counterintuitively, this is accomplished by assimilating successfully into the fashionable discourse of the mainstream.

Image Source: wearing it on my sleeves

But there is a way in which this attitude can be read as subversive in terms of Church doctrine, especially when one considers the history of sumptuary laws in the Mormon Church. (There is a useful article in the Mormon periodical Dialogue that outlines the subject in more detail.) Though we might imagine the discourse on modesty to call back to the conservativism of the Einsenhower era, this is not the locus of the nostalgia for modest behavior—it is, in fact, its origin. The first explicit call to modest dress occured in 1951, when Church authority Spencer W. Kimball extolled young, unmarried Mormon women to distinguish themselves from their non-member peers explicitly through a more conservative code of dress:

"There is no reason why women need to wear a low-cut or otherwise revealing gown just because it is the worldly style. We can create a style of our own."

It is important to note that this address, given at a BYU devotional, was aimed mostly at unmarried young women. As Kimball argues,

"We knew of one mother who remonstrated with her lovely daughter who intended to buy a modest evening gown. The mother pleaded: 'Darling, now is the time to show your pretty shoulders and back and neck. When you are married in the temple that will be time enough to begin wearing conservative clothes.' What can be expected of the new generation if the mothers lead their own offspring from the path of right?...The fellows could show courage and good judgment if they encouraged their young women friends to wear modest clothing. If a young man would not date a young woman who is improperly clothed, the style would change very soon."

Kimball assumes that women who are married are already living the law of modesty because of the nature of their temple garments; here, as in most of the discourse that follows, the concern is that unmarried women might delay that sense of responsibility until after they take their temple vows.

The loose standards that Kimball sets out are a reaction against, rather than a return to, the styles of the 1950s—in fact, his distaste for revealing clothing resembles a return to the fashion of the 1910s, before hemlines were raised and bustlines lowered in the so-called Roaring 20s. And it is certainly of some significance that Kimball himself experienced adolescence in the 1910s—he is demanding, to some extent, a return to the conceptions of modesty that existed during his own days of courtship.

Yet Kimball’s call to arms is all very general. The restrictions that modesty fashion bloggers set out above—specific prohibitions against revealing this part of the body or that—are simply not extant in this early discourse. In fact, the next significant prohibitions against immodesty among LDS youth are even less specific than Kimball’s address above. Let us examine the 1965 iteration of a pamphlet still published today called “For The Strength of Youth,” which serves to outline the standards which young Mormons are expected to uphold.

Image Credit: Barncow

Note the text’s deferral of specific criteria (“it is difficult to make an over-all statement concerning modest standards of dress, because modesty cannot be determined by inches or fit since that which looks modest on one person may not be so on another…”). Instead, the text chooses to deliberately define modesty against the standards of the countercultural movements of the 1960s. It warns against “grubby” fashion, implores women to maintain traditional mores of femininity in their dress, and considers androgyny to be the greatest threat to the modesty of young women.

Image Credit: Barncow

The pamphlet also extols young women to “dress to enhance their natural beauty and femininity…Few girls or women ever look well in backless or strapless dresses. Such styles often make the figure look ungainly or large, or they show the bony structures of the body…Clothes should be comfortable and attractive without calling attention [to the body].” It is also careful to warn women against wearing pants outside of athletic activity: “Pants…are not desirable attire for shopping, at school, in the library, in cafeterias or restaurants.”

Thus we can see that in the 1960s, second-wave feminism and androgynous dress were the chief modes of discourse that the Church set to dress its women against. The letter of the law in these pamphlets is far less respected than the spirit of the law, and the “law” is an attractive but non-sexualized, and therefore sanitized, femininity. Counterculture was at the top of the immodest hierarchy.

Image Source: Haircut and General Attitude

Not so today. Mormon women increasingly define modesty in terms of explicit clothing guidelines (inseam lengths, coverage) rather than cultural association; no longer is clothing a statement of conservative reaction to the styles of counterculture but instead a playful interpretation of them. Cultural associates of modes of dress cease to be called into question within this dialogue; instead, the temple garment becomes the silent marker of how much skin is “too much.” Anything that covers these undergarments constitutes modest dress.

I see the discourse on modesty in the present day taking place, then, in two separate spheres. On the one hand, church-sanctioned periodicals continue to emphasize the function of modesty as a marker of difference against counterculture, although this is a trope that has all but lost its meaning. Meanwhile, fashionable young Mormon women often embrace an identity that is countercultural—they embrace their ability to participate in cutting-edge fashion while still adhering to the explicit restrictions of their faith.

It seems to me that one significant effect of this is, in fact, a return, in a sense, to Kimball’s initial exortations to unmarried women. To the insider Mormon community, these young married bloggers are in a sense instructing their younger or unmarried peers how to live the letter of the law of modesty before they take their temple vows and don their temple garments. For the fashion blogging audience at large, these women express their identity through their commitment to modesty by showing how easily the rhetoric of modesty can fit into the tenets of mainstream fashion; the commitment to coverage exists as a challenge or unexpected element in this endeavor that only enhances their ethos, rather than undermining it, in the mainstream. Modesty then ultimately exists as a function of creativity rather than restriction. And though most of these women are probably unaware of the complex rhetorical history that makes such an ethos possible, they are nonetheless operating in a space in which the definition of modesty has drastically shifted over time, making it possible for these women to, as Benjamin Franklin might say, take pride in their humility—to have no reservations in being immodest in demeanor about their modesty in dress. I will at the very least claim this: that the function of modesty as difference has taken a countercultural turn, and, if a woman being refused entry to a BYU testing center for wearing skinny jeans is any indication, the rhetoric of modesty within the Mormon community is very much a battleground in which the rules of engagement are still being hammered out.

For the Love of SF

Calliope — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:41:58 +0000

Image Credit: Facebook.com

About half of my Facebook friends live in the SF Bay Area, and out of everyone they are by far the most active posters. They're constantly touting political views, promoting their startups, recommending good reads, and most of all reminding everyone through pictures and status updates that they live in the "best" city in the country (Businessweek made it official with their city rankings for 2012). As a former resident of SF who once drank the Kool-Aid, it's hard not to sound bitter and hypocritical about the locals' enthusiasm. Who knows, maybe instead of Kool-aid, now I'm just sucking on sour grapes. Let me be clear: there's no reason why San Franciscans shouldn't love there city. It is indisputably one of the most beautiful urban centers in the country. Pastel-colored buildings decorate its famous hills, which look out over the Pacific ocean and the wrap-around bay. And it boasts world-class universities, progressive politics, and vibrant international communities, all of which attract a distinctly intellectual, liberal, and enterprising kind of person. Like I said, it makes perfect sense that SF residents love their city, and that they would want to share this pride through social media. Most of the time I’m grateful for their posts because they offer me a way to vicariously experience the beautiful and eclectic place where I came of age. But the pictures also consistently make me laugh, and I confess they increasingly make me groan. This post will explore why that is.

People who live in SF--and I'm not talking about newcomers--love to take pictures of the city's landmarks and breathtaking overlooks, and share them on Facebook. I understand the impulse to snap a photo of a lovely view; but to constantly share pictures of famous places as if no one had ever seen them before, raises some questions. How many longtime Manhattanites share personal photographs of the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty? I'd wager relatively few. Yet, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marina, Coit Tower and the Ferry Building are all over my Facebook and Instagram feeds. None of my friends are particularly good photographers, either, so it's unclear why their pictures of these places would offer viewers a novel experience of them.

Image Credit: Facebook.com

But I'm coming at this from the wrong angle. These photos aren't being posted to indulge the viewer's sense of curiosity about San Francisco. They're being used as evidence for ethical appeals about the person who is posting them, evidence that these treasures are "in my backyard, and part of my everyday life"--proof that "I chose and can afford to live in the most celebrated city in America." The Facebook photos are also evidence of the person's immediate location, which has become a social commodity and a valuable asset to companies like Foursquare that trade in "check-ins." The picture above with its unassumingly assuming caption, "Golden Gate from the St. Francis yacht club," serves as evidence that the photographer was at a yacht club, whose proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge implies that it is an especially exclusive one.

Image Credit: Facebook.com

The caption for this snapshot of the Ferry Building and the distant East Bay uses an intentionally transparent form of understatement. The view from this Facebook user's office is anything but shabby, and the picture establishes that the photographer works high up in a building that must have an extraordinarily high rent.

Image Credit: Facebook.com

This user hits us with a 1-2 punch of SF-related imagery. Her profile picture features the iconic Golden Gate Bridge while the Ferry Building clock tower looms in the background. Her choice to surround herself, virtually, in loco-specific images indicates that her joyous hair-toss in the photograph expresses her feelings about the city.

Image Credit: Facebook.com

Here we have another enthusiast--let's call her the SF hugger--whose wide grin, we are led to conclude, is related to the cityscape behind her, which she gestures at with outspread arms. These kind of photos make me laugh and sigh irritatedly (if you allow that those two respitory events can happen at once). They attempt to suggest something about a person's life in a city--that it is free and joyful?--beyond the moment in which the photograph was taken. But this message is undercut by the incredibly staged and exaggerated aspect of the figure's pose.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is: Citizens of SF, we know you live in a beautiful city. It has been well-documented by thousands of instagramming yuppies before you. Your ethos is not enhanced by standing (or gesticulating wildly) in front of the city, whose skyline you have transformed into a status symbol, and the danger of posting photos like these is that your friends will rhetorically analyze you.

Dressing to Dissent at the United Nations

Chris Ortiz y Prentice — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 15:22:24 +0000

Image Credit: United Nations webtv.un.org

Almost every male speaker to the September Summit of the General Assembly of the United Nations wore a suit and tie. It is easy to overlook this fact, so widespread is the convention, so rare the defiance. But what heads of state wear in front of one another shows something peculiar about the modern nation state. Leaders are, by and large, drawn from the cultural and economic elite. What all this suit-and-tie wearing indicates, however, is that the ruling class of the modern nation-state must subscribe, or seem to subscribe, to middle class or “business” virtues, like hard work, entrepreneurship, merit, and self-effacement. When a male leader chooses not to don a suit and tie, a choice made by President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pictured above), he is really saying something: but what, exactly, is he saying?

Take, for example, the suit and tie worn by U.S. President Barack Obama for his address to the world on September 25.

Image Credit: United Nations webtv.un.org

President Obama's suit does not strike me as ostentatious; stylistically, it does not depart from the appearance of workaday, professional attire. (Note, however, how neatly tailored and solidly constructed the clothes are. Not every workaday businessman can afford such a suit!)

Let us take President Obama as the rule and President Ahmadinejad as the exception that proves the rule. Now, what was the historical process by which suit-wearing became the standard for heads of state? Let us speculate.

I would argue that to arrive at an answer which would explain both Ahmadinejad's and Obama's sartorial selections, we need to describe two interelated historical processes, one pertaining to the imperialist nation-states of the Nineteenth Century, the other to the nation-states formed through decolonization in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

Of first importance, in the imperialist case, was the long process by which the traditional power formations of the aristocracies--based on tradition, heredity wealth and landholding--were transformed into power formations of the monied classes. This transition was no neat break, including as it did, urbanization and industrialization, the rise of literacy and the popular press, the networking of global cities through shipping, railroad, mail and telegram, the increasing importance of credit to the state, the ousting from parliamentary structures of “gentlemen” by lawyers, bankers, and labor-leaders; in a word, everything (and it’s a lot) that comes as money plays more and more the determining role in social ascendancy. It was a complex historical process inflected by place and contingency; but roughly speaking, the ruling class was kings and barons and lords, and then it became businessmen and buerocratic professionals. The leaders of today's "super-power" nations wear suits, and that includes China, as instanced by Premiere Wen Jiabao (pictured below):

Image Credit: United Nations webtv.un.org

As for the male leaders of decolonized nation-states, I speculate that they wear suits-and-ties as the price of entry, as it were, into "respectable" standing at the United Nations. In a word, wearing a suit-and-tie is a matter of hegemony.

Inflecting these large, world-historical processes--the ascendance of middle-class hegemony as it played out in the West and in the era of decolonization--are other factors, including culture and gender. For of course, not every head of state or person of power wears a suit to the UN. Sometimes the choice of garb would appear to reflect culture of origin, as in the case of Lyonchoen Jigmi Yoezer Thinley, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bhutan (pictured below).

Image Credit: UN webtv.un.org

The military dictators wear uniforms. Many of the women wear the female equivalent of the suit-and-tie, as instanced by Dessima Williams, Permanent Representative of Grenada to the UN:

Image Credit: UN webtv.un.org

And, of course, to really explain why a person wears a particular article of clothing to the General Assembly we would have to tell add the histories by which "female suits" or military uniforms became available as options but also personal and family histories and psychologies, contemporary networks of clothes production and consumption, and maybe even a little randomness.

But accounting for all the different variations on suits and the military dictators and the cultural-garb--each of which could bear more analysis--there remains a specific kind of outlier, and that is the person who references the suit while flaunting its conventions. It is these I would point your attention to; these are the ones dressing to dissent, these are the leaders who are highlighting a difference from the world-hegemony that says modern leaders are business people (if they are not military dictators).

Ahmadinejad wears no tie in front of the UN, and the reason is historical and ideological, just as I have posited: according to the BBC and the Guardian, Iran banned the sale of ties after the 1979 Islamlic Revolution in order to signal non-alliance with the West.

Dressing to dissent at the UN, by my analysis, requires gesturing towards the suit-and-tie but flaunting its conventions. President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez achieves this not by foregoing the tie but through tie selection:

Image Credit: UN webtv.un.org

Chavez's bright, broad red tie is no business man's: it is a flaunt at the "leaders-are-professionals" hegemony of the United Nations.

Let us conclude with a final instance that stretches my theory. Pictured below is the late Noble Prize Winner Wangari Muta Maathai, founder of the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya, a non-violent protester and person of great influence. (There is a very moving Independent Lens documentary about this incredible person entitled "Taking Root.")

Image Credit: UN webtv.un.org

Wangari Muta Maathai is wearing a dress not professional women's garb. Nor does it seem to me her clothing decision can be explained away as an innocuous gesture towards culture of origin, as can the King of Bhutan's. No, I think Wangari Muta Maathai is dressing to dissent in this instance, tactically using culture and gender to do so but without falling into the "exotic performance of culture/gender" that brings into hegemonic alliance other non-suit wearers. This is a tricky feat, and it is difficult to put a finger on just how she manages it. Nevertheless, it forms an additional option to flaunting-the-suit for those who wish to perform resistance to the hierarchies of the UN and indeed the world.

The Ethos of Hipster Dinosaurs

Cate Blouke — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:37:47 +0000

Image Credit: Imgur

H/T to Matt

For me, humor is one of the most powerful tools available for both pedagogy as well as social resistance. It seems appropriate therefore to introduce myself to the viz. blog with something a little offbeat and (potentially) funny.

The term “hipster” has experienced a resurgence in American vernacular in the last few years – at least I’ve heard it used with increasing regularity since I moved to Austin. For quite some time I found myself a bit perplexed about what people meant when they called a person a “hipster.” Since it generally seems to be used as a derogatory sobriquet, I felt it important to have a clear idea of what the term encapsulates.

As I should have known, the populist and notoriously un-academic resource, urbandictionary.com, offers an extensive and thorough discussion of the term. I was surprised by the thoughtfulness of several of the entries, and amused (as usual) by others. Much as I’d like to elaborate on those entries here, this is a visual rhetoric blog and I want to address the ways in which “hipsterism” is shaped by these images.

Image Credit: Imgur

What I find interesting here is the ways in which this series of images constructs hipsterism through visual cues and conversation bubbles. These “Hipster Dinosaurs” illustrate both a fashion sensibility tied to the hipster identity as well as an intellectual and anti-consumer attitude.

From these images, we gather that hipsters are coded as often (but not always) wearing thick-rimmed glasses, having manicured facial hair, smoking all-natural cigarettes and generally expressing intellectual disdain across a wide variety of subjects. However, finding humor in the pictures requires a foreknowledge of the identity.

Image Credit: Imgur

The use of dinosaurs is particularly intriguing. Since the term originated in the 1940s, is the use of dinosaurs meant to argue that contemporary hipsters are seeking to resuscitate an extinct species? Or, conversely, is it meant to indicate that hipsters are headed for extinction? Are they bound to be fossilized through their own intellectual elitism? Is it their own negativity that enables them to be put forth as a subject of ridicule?

Using coloring-book images and crayons to illustrate these drawings, the creator links the hipster persona with juvenility – seemingly the “know-it-all” attitude of youth. One could also argue that the act of creating such images is an equally juvenile and petulant response to a rather harmless subculture. This raises the question of authorial ethos. What assumptions can we make about the person that made these cartoons? Can we make any assumptions?

Humor generally relies on somebody being the butt of the joke, and who it is and is not appropriate to ridicule is an interesting question in the (post?) politically correct landscape. As is the question of who is allowed to do the ridiculing. The element of risk seems fundamentally linked to all forms of humor, but that very danger strikes me as the reason it is used and talked about so infrequently in academic discourse.

After writing this post, and getting ready to upload it, I found myself suddenly wondering if this was even appropriate to use. Would it offend someone? Would it get me in trouble? What if I self-identify as a hipster? Is self-mockery the only safe form of humor left?

Iranian Nuclear Facility Photo & Interpretation

Nate Kreuter — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:30:08 +0000

This morning I received an automatic update message from Imaging Notes, a remote sensing (satellite imaging) trade magazine. The lead-off story was about one of the alleged nuclear material refining facilities in Iran.

The image, and the annotations provided by a private company, are eerily similar to those Colin Powell used in his February, 2003 speech to the UN when he argued on behalf of the doctrine of pre-emptive war in Iraq. I point all of this out not to question the interpretation of the Iranian image, but simply to point out that as lay-people and citizens, we do not have the means to engage with the arguments presented in such images, but must take or refuse their content based with only our trust or mistrust in the party providing the image to guide us.