The Dartmouth Observer |
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Commentary on politics, history, culture, and literature by two Dartmouth graduates and their buddies
WHO WE ARE Chien Wen Kung graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004 and majored in History and English. He is currently a civil servant in Singapore. Someday, he hopes to pursue a PhD in History. John Stevenson graduated from Dartmouth College in 2005 with a BA in Government and War and Peace Studies. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He hopes to pursue a career in teaching and research. Kwame A. Holmes did not graduate from Dartmouth. However, after graduating from Florida A+M University in 2003, he began a doctorate in history at the University of Illinois--Urbana Champaign. Having moved to Chicago to write a dissertation on Black-Gay-Urban life in Washington D.C., he attached himself to the leg of John Stevenson and is thrilled to sporadically blog on the Dartmouth Observer. Feel free to email him comments, criticisms, spelling/grammar suggestions. BLOGS/WEBSITES WE READ The American Scene Arts & Letters Daily Agenda Gap Stephen Bainbridge Jack Balkin Becker and Posner Belgravia Dispatch Black Prof The Corner Demosthenes Daniel Drezner Five Rupees Free Dartmouth Galley Slaves Instapundit Mickey Kaus The Little Green Blog Left2Right Joe Malchow Josh Marshall OxBlog Bradford Plumer Political Theory Daily Info Andrew Samwick Right Reason Andrew Seal Andrew Sullivan Supreme Court Blog Tapped Tech Central Station UChicago Law Faculty Blog Volokh Conspiracy Washington Monthly Winds of Change Matthew Yglesias ARCHIVES BOOKS WE'RE READING CW's Books John's Books STUFF Site Feed    |
Friday, February 03, 2006
Do Pictures Add to the Blogging Experience? As many of you faithful readers may have noticed, I have begun to incorporate pictures and comics as additional commentary on this blog. You may be wandering why have I done that? There are four reasons for this change. The first is that pictures break the uniform flow of text. While I generally enjoy my writing, looking a page of titles and text makes the blog seems more stuffy than it needs to. The weight of the blog stems from the hefty topics it decides to lift. The second is that pictures grant you a concrete snapshot of the images that I believe define the debates upon which I comment and to which I hope to add. Thus, if we take a recent post of mine, Does Being Gay Make You an Enemy of the People?, I have four pictures to accompany that post. The first picture juxtaposes the military nature of the management of New Orlean's displaced, while portraying the displaced in more dignity than the pictures of darkened bloated bodies floating in the water. The second picture, with the sign "We all deserve the freedom to marry", accomplishes two very important conceptual moves for me. One, the sign itself connects the issue of marriage to the issue of positive rights; the push for gay marriage, then, is a push for equality of freedoms granted by the government. Two, this ideal of positive liberty under conditions of equality hangs under the American flag, suggesting that there is nothing foreign to American politics about this ideal. The third is that pictures connect images of the politicians about whom I comment--Bush, Hilary Clinton, Condi Rice, John McCain--to my argument about them. I try and search for pictures that do not demean my subject, or, unnecessarily paint them in a bad light. Fourth, and finally, comics allow me to juxtapose bitter ironies. The comic accompanying my post, How Domestic Pressures Against the Iraq War Will Cause Mass Killing, best demonstrates my case. All in all, I hope that the use of pictures improves your reading experience of this blog while further illuminating the thought processes which motivate me to both scholarship and civic engagement. |