One thing I do not expect from contemporary Norway is art that celebrates American values. But the Academy Award-nominated film, Elling (from 2001) is an exception. Or so it seems to me.
Daily Archives: July 14, 2010
‘Alternating Worlds’—Gary Wolf and the Definition of Humanity
Alternating Worlds by Gary Wolf iUniverse, Inc. ISBN-10: 0-595-34002-4 ISBN-13: 978-0595340026 December 2004 182 pages Trade paperback: $13.95 at Amazon.com “Everything you touch turns to gold. You could afford to retire in the grandest style and engage in any pursuit. Yet you become embroiled in the petty quarrels of a fallen civilization.” “Fiction,” according to Jessamyn West, “reveals truth that reality obscures.” The same could go for fiction’s inchoate and obstreperous offspring, science fiction (SF). Gary Wolf just keeps on putting the fiction—as defined by Jessamyn West—back into science fiction. For a generation that defines SF as Star Wars shoot-’em-up adventure, Gary Wolf’s work could come as something of a shock. “Sci-fi” that actually explores themes of identity, social structure, culture, politics, art, personality, and other timeless aspects of human nature? Can SF do that? Wolf’s fiction does it, and in so doing fulfills the latent potential in science fiction to comment on the world in a meaningful way. Graham Rohde is one of the most respected art and antique dealers of the twenty-fourth century. Son of an eminent scholar, he is one of the period’s leading art historians. Rohde spends his time traveling across the Galaxy, buying and selling
Academia’s Phony ‘Diversity’ Prejudices Documented
W. S. Moore III notes that campus diversity stops at the Mason-Dixon line and the white working classes. An essay at Minding the Campus this week, by Russell K. Nieli, reports that a pair of Princeton sociologists took a look at some highly competitive colleges and universities (average SAT: 1360) to see how diversity issues were reflected in admissions. The results didn’t really surprise me, but maybe they should have: On an “other things equal basis,” where adjustments are made for a variety of background factors, being Hispanic conferred an admissions boost over being white (for those who applied in 1997) equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1600), while being black rather than white conferred a 310 SAT point advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points. The fact that colleges stack their admissions process to reach certain demographic profiles is nothing new — just ask folks who were crowded out by the Ivies’ Jewish quotas in past decades. It’s depressing for those of us who believe that so-called elite schools should have elite students (an image these schools eagerly project), but it’s nothing new. Equally unsurprising is the observation that admissions
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