Like many other MIT students, I’m looking for real work experience, because, let’s be realistic here, my undergrad degree in media studies isn’t going to put me at a competitive advantage in today’s world. So, when I heard about the MasterCard internship I was intrigued to say the least. Until I realized what I had to do to apply and how the selection process was going to work. Continue reading
It starts with a black screen. Sirens and the clattering of debris make use of the state of the art sound system.
September 11, 2001.
An emergency responder speaks to a woman trapped on a floor above the impact. They talk back and forth in their 2001 voices. Context is given as her words beat against the screen that is still black, inside your head, and the walls of the theatre that already feel too close. Continue reading
Last week, men’s rights activists (MRAs) achieved some marginal media exposure when the Twitter hashtag “INeedMasculismBecause,” initially a prank set about by users of the well-trafficked imageboard 4chan, was co-opted in earnest by a number of individuals professing our culture’s widespread subjugation of men. Thankfully, it seems not all publicity is good publicity when it comes to the imaginary war on masculinity; shortly after the hashtag gained steam, it was hijacked and repurposed by masses of users eager to lampoon the often misogynist tenets of the men’s rights movement. Within hours, satirical tweets dwarfed the zealous ululations of male persecution. Perhaps most striking was the challenge in differentiating some of the more hyperbolic sardonic comments from their equally hyperbolic legitimate counterparts.
Photo by Angela Mullins/Metro
If you’ve been all wrapped up in the spectacular USC election action lately, you may have missed out on the bout of Trudeaumania that hit the Spoke this past Wednesday. Justin Trudeau, one of nine various candidates running for leadership of the Liberal Party, spoke to students and members of the London community about re-connection, bouncing back from cynicism, and re-engaging themselves in the politics of the true north strong and free. Continue reading
Patterns of North American Pseudo-Coverage: What is really being done?
Some say that this generation of Facebookers, Tweeters, Instagrammers, and Tumblr-ers is becoming more vain with every post, like, and reblog. They say that today’s young adults have never known a time when the world took priority over self. But what if this concern extends further than the average media consumer; what if it encompasses the very news system by which we gain information, the system by which we come to know our world and our position in it? Continue reading
If you were watching the stock markets the day after Obama won the 2012 election, you would have noticed an interesting reaction to the news. Wall Street threw a temper tantrum; the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plummeted more than 300 points during the course of the day’s trading. The DJIA, NASDAQ 100, and the S&P 500 are averages calculated from the stock prices of a number of successful companies and are considered somewhat of a barometer of how the overall markets are doing.
The stock markets are supposed to reflect the current or expected future value of the companies listed on them and can be influenced by a number of external factors. As indicated by the après-election drop, politics is one of them, and I have three theories as to why this particular politics-related drop occurred and why we should care.
Heading into Wednesday’s election, polls indicate that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are deadlocked at 48 percent of “likely” voters. This begs two important questions: 1) Who is going to win the 2012 Presidential election and thereby assume the title “Leader of the Free World?” 2) Who are the other 4 percent of “likely” voters casting their ballot for? I predict exit polling will reveal the runners-up to be “Steve Jobs,” “Mr. Reagan” and “No.”
For a lot of other university undergraduates, this may feel like your “first” U.S. presidential election. In 2008, I was in my last year of high school, and I was pretty sure that I was very politically savvy. I had earned this election gravitas by watching Sarah Silverman’s “The Great Schlep” and putting an Obama ’08 sticker on one of my binders. So, yeah, I was basically a pundit. The truth is, if you had put me in front of a firing squad and asked me to identify who Nancy Pelosi was, my answer would probably have been “A brand of pasta sauce.” Continue reading
The debate last night was on foreign policy, but it would be hard to know unless you happened to see that the banner said The Presidential Debate on Foreign Policy or noticed the throbbing vein in moderator Bob Scheiffer’s forehead. Both candidates kept twisting every question back to domestic policy issues ranging from education to the economy to the energy crisis. This is probably because if they had not done so, they would have had to change the title to The Presidential Agreement on World Peace and Iran Sucks. Continue reading
Full disclosure: I missed the first twenty minutes of the debate while commuting home. I live in White Oaks, which for most of you at UWO is like that grey, unexplored part of maps from the Middle Ages where they asked the monk with the scariest handwriting to scribe ‘Here Be Dragons.’ If I omitted any interesting XX chromosome moments in the first bit (Oprah coming to LOL with her BFF Barack, Candy Crowley z-snapping at the candidates) please comment below.
Today, I’m just going to talk about women, but I wish I could write more about the Presidential debate. There are so, so many things about the words that the candidates said that were interesting/hilarious/wrong/thought-provoking that deserve more than some sort of horrifically spinning graphic on CNN’s “The Situation Room” (or as I like to call it, “The Stimulation Room.” We get it Wolf, you have touch screens. Stop zooming in on things). But it’s 1:00 in the morning and midterms are looming and it is absolutely unacceptable to go one more night without showering. The showering threshold has been reached. So I can’t talk about the Benghazi Brawl or Mitt Romney’s reverent admiration of Canadian corporate tax breaks (ohhh nooo) or the idea of illegal immigrants “earning” citizenship through military service (what?). I JUST CAN’T, OKAY? So go shop through another binder, because this lady is wrecked. Continue reading
The American Vice Presidential debate aired Thursday night, one and a half weeks after the first, wildly underwhelming Presidential debate. It was never possible for the battle of the VPs this time around to compare to 2008, because nothing else could ever result in an eight-month-pregnant Amy Poehler rapping in front of Eskimos.
That said, if you are willing to reluctantly trade in the red power suits and vaguely Minnesotan accent of Sarah Palin for the hypnotizing blue eyes and helmet hair of Paul Ryan, you will be rewarded with a much more engaging discussion between candidates (even though Ryan’s opponent is still Joe “Intermittent Tourette’s” Biden). Here is an mitZine recap of the good, the bad and the ridiculous from last night’s debate. Continue reading
