FRIDAY
12 p.m. – 1 p.m.
Brown Bag Seminar
Speaker: Kelly Caylor
Location: E-219 Engineering quad
In what’s become a kind of staple for the Weekend Page, we once again hit the Brown Bag Seminar. The burning question is: what is it!? Today… I’m a say… puppetmaking. Engineers stand at tables with brown bags, buttons, yarn, glitter, googly eyes, markers, construction paper, and a quantity of elmer’s glue that probably seemed sufficient to the person planning the seminar but is in fact just short enough to be an issue. A sharing issue. After their puppets are completed, the engineers will be led into small group therapy sessions where they will use their puppets as a safe means of expressing themselves.
Sample excerpt from a BSE student, speaking through a puppet, under hypnosis:
Therapist: What do you do when you can’t complete the problem set?
Student: I- I cut myself.
Therapist: Why do you cut yourself?
Student: To remind myself that- To remind myself that-
Therapist: -that you have a penis?
Student: WHAT!?
12:30pm-2pm
Biodefense Challenge
Speaker: Speakers: Eileen Choffnes, Senior Program Officer, Office of Policy and Global Affairs, NAS and Guy Roberts, Principal Director, Negotiations Policy, Office of the Secretary of Defense Chair: Lee Silver, Professor of Molecular Biology and Public Affairs, Princeton University
Location: Carl Ichan Laboratory, room 280
Sponsor: The Program on Science and Global Security and the Carnegie Corporation of New York
Charge: no charge
Audience: anyone with an interest
Additional Information: Lunch will be served
Can Professor Lee Silver chug fifty vials of sarin precursor in three minutes? Will Guy Roberts walk across the tightrope, grab the antidote, and then swim back to a crazed and feverish Eileen Choffnes and inject her with it before she breaks her own spine from VX convulsions? Find out tomorrow on Biodefense Challenge! Hosted by Donny Jeffcoat of “Wild and Crazy Kids” fame, Biodefense Challenge! pits teams of policymakers and scientists against each other for thirty minutes of biological weapons-packed intensity! Tom Ridge makes a guest appearance as the guy in the dunk tank- of cholera!
12:30 p.m.
GALLERY TALK – \”Emil Nolde: Artist in Hitler\’s Germany\”
Speaker: Klaus Florey
Affiliation: Museum docent
Location: Princeton University Art Museum
Sponsor: Docent Association of the Princeton University Art Museum
Charge: Free of charge
Audience: Open to the public
Additional Information: (609) 258-3788
It wasn’t Emil Nolde’s fault. He was painting by numbers- just following orders! He just thought he was applying different colors of acrylic paint onto a canvas according to the instructions on a small paper leaflet. He had no idea he was painting the Brandenburg Gate at dawn. Just like that Sublime song about the Rodney King riots, Emil Nolde got all his art supplies during Kristallnacht. Don’t ask Emil what his canvas is made of.
3 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Algebraic Geometry Seminar:The algebraic approach to the universality theorem
Speaker: Ai-Ko Liu
Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley
Location: Fine Hall 314
Sponsor: Mathematics Department
Additional Information: See the Math Seminar web site.
I call you Ai-Ko Liu. I call you Ai-Ko Liu. Or: I kill you, Ai-Ko Liu! I kill Liu! I kill Liu! That was fun. I don’t want to offend or alienate any of my readers, so I’ll try to put this next joke delicately: Ai-Ko Liu is giving a talk on the “universality theorem”. So, the question you want to ask yourself is, “Can I tell if Ai-Ko Liu is a ‘calculus professor’ or a ‘geometry professor’, or Korean?” Universality Theorem. Get it?
4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
\”Ignorance and Experience\”
Speaker: Daniel Stoljar
Affiliation: Australian National University (Visiting Professor, University of Michigan)
Location: McCosh 4
Sponsor: Department of Philosophy
Charge: no charge
Audience: open to all
Additional Information: http://web.princeton.edu/sites/philosph/talks.HTM
When Daniel Stoljar was a young man in Alice Springs, he would hike- against his parents’ permission- to the Aborigine shantytown out in the desert. There, he would rest his head in the lap of an old Aborigine woman, feeling the worn cloth of her tattered housecoat against his cheek, falling asleep as she would stroke his hair and tell him stories in a language he didn’t understand. One night he hiked out to the village to find it consumed by flames- the Aborigines were being cleared out because their town lay in the intended path of a new railroad. He called out the old woman’s name, but his cries were stifled by the roar of the flames. He was about to run headlong into the flaming village to try to save her, but he was stopped by a policeman who told him to “go along home”. Daniel Stoljar collapsed on the ground, and the deep orange flames were reflected in the tear-tracks running down his ruddy cheeks. Ignorance and Experience. Get it?
7 p.m.
American Pictures
Speaker: Jacob Holdt
Location: McCosh 50
Sponsor: Pace Center for Community Service, Dialogue @Princeton, and the Princeton Justice Project
Charge: Free.
Audience: Open to the public
What are American Pictures? Unable to take the suspense of those foreboding, cryptic posters, I decided to make up what it was in my head: part America’s Funniest Home Videos, part “where’s the social justice?” photoessay. A cat falls off of a tv and onto this woman just as she’s about to hit the crack pipe. Darn! This guy is trying to leave flowers at the improvised shrine of a fallen gang member, but his already-sagging pants fall down and he trips, knocking over candles, wreaths, photographs, etc. There’s a photo-montage set to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” that shows young prostitutes with vacant looks in their eyes. At the end of the showing, the audience votes on the best American Picture. My favorite: “Dumpster Surprise”.
8 p.m. – 11 p.m.
Queer Articulations Film Festival-Of Men and Gods and Wu Yen
Location: McCosh 10
I’m excited for this screening of “Of Men and Gods and Wu Yen”, which is actually the pilot episode for the upcoming television series “Queer Eye for the Chinese Folktale”. This episode deals with the folktale “Ai-Ko Liu and the Carp of Three Wishes”. Ai-Ko hopes to catch a Magic Carp, take it home to cook it, and then be surprised when at the last minute, the carp speaks to Ai-Ko Liu, saying that he’s a Magic Carp and that if his life is spared he will grant Ai-Ko Liu three wishes- and he wants to do it in style. Looks like a job for the Fab Five! Wind Spirit Tang helps Ai-Ko Liu get the feng shui of his small hut under control, and takes him to Doro, an ultramodern furniture store in Yunan Province, for just the right chaise-lounge. River Spirit Mar-Da explains the difference between plum wines and rice wines, and Jai counsels Ai-Ko on which wishes he might want to make. Tune in to see how it all ends up. Actually, I can tell you right now: Ai-Ko Liu’s wishes become increasingly narcissistic until, after some breaking point that leaves Ai-Ko with nothing again, Ai-Ko looks at his life and realizes he’s been “granted the greatest wish of all.” Fuck that, Ai-Ko. Stick the fish and get that cash!
Saturday
11 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
CHILDREN\’S TALK — \”How They Do That: From Tempera to Acrylics\”
Speaker: David Mackay
Affiliation: Museum docent
Location: Princeton University Art Museum
Sponsor: Docent Association of the Princeton University Art Museum
Charge: Free of charge
Audience: Children, ages five through nine
Additional Information: (609) 258-3788
This is the latest installment in the “How Do They Do That? Young People’s Learning Series. Earlier events included, “From Calf to Dinner”, “From Insipid to Vapid”, and “From Girdle to Corset”. I don’t really get why they only let children from ages five through nine participate in these things. Those probably woulda been interesting. Hmmm… how can I get into “From Tempera to Acrylics”??? I know! Me and two of my buddies will find a ridiculously long trenchcoat and a big hat, and stand on top of each other’s shoulders. The big dumb kid will be the “legs”, the “just-regular kid” will be the middle (and somehow the inside of the coat will be lit so everyone can see his worried face), and the leader-brains kid will be the “head”. No!- I want to look smaller, not bigger!Maybe I can get on my knees, tape sneakers to my knees, tuck my arms into the sleeves of my t-shirt, and go in there midget-style. That sounds pretty good for a Plan A. Maybe I can come disguised as an enormous pair of legs wearing striped stockings that has to take care of all the little kids in the nursery… Can a-you say “a-Plan a-B”??