joneilortiz

joneilortiz is a PhD student in the Film & Media department at the University of Pittsburgh.

Brad DeLong’s Lecture on Marx

Brad DeLong, whose blog I otherwise follow for its sober commentary on the economic collapse, yesterday posted what can only be considered an overly-simplistic and by all accounts intellectually-insulting paper on Karl Marx. At one point, he even stoops to entertaining Paul Samuelson’s “joke” that Marx was but a “minor post-Ricardian theorist”.
In any event, it makes for [...]

Petairways for Pawsengers

Makes perfect sense to me. I’ve always been suspicious of the airline “baggage” conditions for pets, and I know more than a few people who consciously or unconsciously don’t travel for pet-related reasons.
Petairways:
Each time pets move anywhere, from the Pet Lounge to the pet limo or from the pet limo to the plane, we track and record [...]

Lessing on Lessing, in the Hamburg Dramaturgy

If you know Lessing principally as the author of the Laocoon (as I did), then Hamburg Dramaturgy, a collection of his popular theater reviews, is sure to cast him in a stunning new light. Who knew Lessing was such a wit? (I, at least, did not.) Though he is still known for his ironic literary style, the academic [...]

Material Formation in Design

P1020372, originally uploaded by _Elijah.
“Elijah Porter, a student at the Yale School of Architecture, has a great Flickr set up called Material Formation in Design. It features several awesome examples of how strategic cutting can transform a solid surface into a porous structure. In the specific case of the image featured above, you’re looking at [...]

Preserving Virtual Worlds

The Preserving Virtual Worlds project addresses a long-standing, ironic problem of online life: its resistance to archiving.
Interactive media are highly complex and at high risk for loss as technologies rapidly become obsolete. The Preserving Virtual Worlds project will explore methods for preserving digital games and interactive fiction. Major activities will include developing basic standards for [...]

Nicholas Kristof on Animal Rights?

Even Nicholas Kristof is acknowledging animal rights as a legitimate, opposed to ‘absurd’ or ‘radical’, cause. He even muses over the historical nature of what we happen to consider a self-evident, obvious ‘right’.
For most of history, all of this would have been unimaginable even to people of the most refined ethical sensibility (granted, for many [...]

Making visible embryos

Popular culture tends to think of ultrasound imagery as objective, immutable, authoritative when, in fact, it’s but one stage in a long historical process of ‘embryo visualization’, as scrupulously documented in the current Making Visible Embryos exhibition:
Developing embryos were first drawn in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Modern medicine and biology exploited technical innovations as pictures and [...]

Vegan Contraceptives

An essential animal-friendly personal care product that’s often overlooked:
Contraceptives may have been tested on animals or contain animal-derived ingredients. Condoms are usually made from latex. Although not present in the finished product, most condoms utilise casein, a milk protein, during processing. Some also contain milk powder.
Glyde health are registered with The Vegan Society and are thus [...]

A History of Wages in the Financial Sector, 1909-2006

A history of wages in the financial sector:
“Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909-2006″ by Thomas Philippon, Ariell Reshef
Abstract: We use detailed information about wages, education and occupations to shed light on the evolution of the U.S. financial sector over the past century. We uncover a set of new, interrelated stylized facts: [...]

Measuring Rates of Return for Lobbying Expenditures

Not only does lobbying pay well, it can be measured:
“Measuring Rates of Return for Lobbying Expenditures: An Empirical Analysis Under the American Jobs Creation Act” by Raquel Alexander, Stephen Mazza, Susan Scholz
Abstract: The lobbying industry has experienced exponential growth within the past decade. The general public, the media, and special interest groups perceive lobbying to [...]

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