本. My friend tells me that in Chinese, this character has no standing translation of its own. One of the basic principles about Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (CJKV) writing systems is that some characters can only signify words if attached to other characters. They are things that cannot mean anything without a semantic context. However, […]
unmascing pt. I: The Comprehensive Vassar Boys Chart
Introduction to unmascing, a series by Saskia Globig It started as a joke. My friend Klara grabbed a piece of chart paper and, pretending to be a teacher, drew a flow chart of “types” of boys at Vassar. The implication was that all of them were annoying. I’ve seen myself and my friends repeatedly exasperated […]
Trace the Money: Flowers
Part 1 Paranoia My name is Trace Cantrell, and I’d like to welcome you to Trace the Money, an investigative journalism project that aims to uncover the hidden truths behind the upkeep, downkeep, and side to side keep of this institution. For this segment, we’re looking at flowers. You know flowers. Those little pink and […]
Psychogeographies
Editor’s Note: We transform “spaces” into “places” through the experiences we have in them. In between our “places” are voids of the unmemorable; areas in between “place” are just “space” to us. The students in Imagining Cities, a course taught by Hua Hsu, talk a lot about place-making. When I took this class last semester, we created “psychogeographies,” […]
The Framing of Climate Change: Why We Must Emphasize Pollution Over Polar Bears
No matter what unqualified politicians may say, climate change is an undeniable fact. Scientists have confirmed that the Earth’s temperature has been rising rapidly over the past several decades, and more than 97% of active climate scientists agree that these trends “are extremely likely due to human activity.” Samples from ice cores collected in Greenland […]
What “Home” Means to Me
Since leaving Los Angeles for college, I’ve thought a lot about what “home” means to me. When I was a kid, home was a place: a one-story, ranch-style house with a white picket fence, a dog named Charlie, and a couple cats. It was the place where I ate, slept, did homework, did nothing, watched […]