Large sailing ships : a fluid dynamic investigation

Imperial Users onl

High Priorities: Land Use, Marijuana, and Meta-Values

This Note will examine the motivations surrounding the adoption of zoning ordinances pertaining to the production and sale of marijuana through the lens of John Dewey’s theory of valuation. Applying Dewey’s theory to the zoning ordinances of a sampling of state and local governments, I will argue first that the choice of land uses to be regulated and restricted through local zoning ordinances is ultimately referable to values held by the community in which the ordinances are enacted. Second, I will argue that the decisions made on the state level carry more “value” as defined by Dewey’s theory and are, thus, entitled to greater weight if local zoning ordinances conflict with state law

Political consultants, negative advertisements, and the Mitten State

The 2012 Presidential election pitted the incumbent Barack Obama against the former Governor of Massachusetts and Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. Fresh off of a historic first term as the United States’ first and only African-American President, Obama was looking to secure another four years in the White House. The public faces of these campaigns, however, blocked from the view of the important, behind the scenes role of political consultants. The political consulting industry has come to be a main feature of campaigns. In the 2012 Presidential election, “consulting firms billed federal candidates, parties and super PACs more than $3.6 billion for products and services. Of this, more than seventy percent went to firms specializing in the production and placement of media.” The amount spent, both from the campaigns and from outside organizations, far exceeded spending on the placement of advertisements that occurred in previous elections. Researchers from Wesleyan University found that “spending by groups in support of the GOP nominee in 2012 is up over 3,000 percent from 2008.” Many of these outside groups also hire consultants and other staff to produce, place, and run advertisements. This includes the background work of message testing, polling, electorate research, and other work that political consultants and outside firms typically conduct. Somewhere along the way, campaign ads have been shaped by the influence of a political consultant. And what type of ads were being placed in 2012? According to the data, attack ads constituted 63 percent of ads placed supporting Obama and 61 percent ads supporting Romney

A Part Apart

I am fascinated by connections. Things that click, snap, slide, and hold. I care about the ways in which objects meet, looking for answers in the space between. What binds one thing to another? I believe the world is presented to us in pieces. It’s hard to say how it all comes together. It\u27s easy to believe things are shapeless and detached from each other. Connection is a bridge, a way of linking one thing to another that reveals interdependence, and eventually moves outwards to express a correlation between pieces, once assumed to be discrete and isolated. This work is interested in exploring the form of connection. What does connection look like, and how can the objects I produce move within and beyond the material world to convey things that may be abstract but are more intimate, including a tie to people and place? Pulling from a history of art that bridges the space between pop and minimalism, I seek to find ways of expressing links to people and places that are inspired by a web of meaning on the West Coast and beyond