viz.

"A Tingle Table used by the IRS" — Image Credit: Eric Paul Zamora/Associated Press (at nytimes.com)

A peculiar find in David Foster Wallace’s archive at the Harry Ransom Center points to the intersection of two threads in Wallace’s thinking: questions of fraudulence and authenticity, and the notion of procedurality. Wallace frequently engaged and struggled with the former throughout his career, asking what it means to authentically engage another person and inhabit another consciousness without the needs, addictions, and deceptions of the self getting in the way. That is, what does it look like to operate outside of those mechanisms that turn us back inside of ourselves and translate our experience into the logic of the self?

Dartmouth has a very interesting website I just discovered that documents the manipulation of photos with examples spanning photography's history. The site is well worth checking out. Many of the examples provided touch on sensitive issues, making them potentially rich for an in-class discussion of what's at stake (rhetorically, politically, journalistically, historically) when photos are manipulated by photographers, news editors or political leaders.