RAYS OF SUNSHINE.

To be or not to be? To create or to destroy? To understand or to dismiss? These are the questions that I think of when I think of artistic freedom and cultural competency. The events worldwide this past week say much about how sophisticated world politics has become as well as the snowball effect of technology and media on human behavior. I am talking about the Parisian killings at "Charlie Hebdo" last Wednesday, January 7th, and the struggle between freedom of expression and maintaining human decency. Here is Vox Media's in-depth coverage of the whole situation on a timeline:  http://www.vox.com/2015/1/7/7507849/charlie-hebdo-attack-terrorists-paris-shooting  From @BBCNews When we were kids, we were taught simple life lessons like "Say what you mean, and mean what you say because the people who mind don't matter, and the people who matter don't mind," and "If you have nothing nice to say, it's best to say nothing at all." This ...

Oftentimes, by virtue of being an internet-junkie, I pick up sayings and isms and things without really realizing where they originated. My brain is like Nicholas Allen's from Andrew Clements' brilliant book Frindle , I make up neologisms because they are fun, and use them often because I love and value cultural soupage of verbage. (See? Can't help it!)  So here are a few of my favorite more recent etymological anomalies  that I tend to drop every other word. #SariNOTsorry ;)  #LOWKEY I say this a lot. It's intended usage, according to urbandictionary, is to indicate that something is meant to be kept quiet or secret, or on the down-low .  Whate'er, I use it as a like or um or when I'm tryna talk quieter, but fail miserably.  #swaggher (& by extension,  #swoopswoop)   this has a very clear origin story. I re-watched the video above with new friends in chicago, and realized that the term "swaggher" and "swoopswoop" had the...

I say this yearly now, but my heart can't take it. Every year people honor the victims and heroes of NYC, and while I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment, it ignores an aching sore in the American hear-- what about Balbir Singh Sodhi, an elderly Sikh-American racially targeted the next days after 9/11? What about the thousands of hate crimes and racially charged incidents all over the United States, United Kingdom, and the world over? What about the communalism and divisiveness that has only grown more pointed since 9/11? Last year was the 10th anniversary. One decade. The mayor Antonio Villaraigosa came to USC to make a speech. There were initiatives made, promises whispered, the resounding response seemed like it had a reasonable chance for success. One year later, and we have already grown complacent. We have barely integrated our new charges into those established initiatives. We have barely brought up this national tragedy, relegating it to a generic Facebook post ...

So, first there was Aurora. A small mountain town in the middle of Colorado. 12 people dead. The killer apprehended and under trial. A Phd student in Neuroscience who secured a National Institutes of Health grant-- a very prestigious opportunity. A lonely man, distraught about being alone in an isolating environment, heralded by the media as a " poor boy who lost his way". There is much more to this story than simply a boy who lost his way back to sanity and reality. The truth of the matter is that we track all Arab-Americans and South Asians in this country due to a xenophobic fear, but we cease to regulate those who seem harmless: i.e. white males. Our inability to seek them out as a threat, married with their penchant for feeling privilege and ownership over public spaces causes an epidemic of sad white male trigger-happy enemies. In Aurora, his personal become most political. The theatrics of his modes operandi only further isolated this incident. People began t...