Redfern Art Extravaganza HW: 30

A few days ago Keene State College held a series of symposiums for the students and faculty. I first attended a lecture on voting fairness and all of the different types of voting and how they differ. The speaker Vince ferlini covered four different types of voting; plurality method, Plurality-With-Elimination, Pairwise Comparison, Borde Count Method. The symposium was in a way confusing to me, because of the way Ferlini explained each method. He made it seem that depending on which method someone picks they can sway the result. By the end of the presentation I wasn’t shore if voting is phony and these different ways can favor whom ever someone wants to be favored. Ferlini spoke with a deep knowledge of the subject, I went into the presentation knowing nothing and this might have made it more difficult for me to understand him.
The second symposium that I attended was, Animation as Political and Social Constructions. Jiwon Ahn, Sander Lee, and Mark Timney are the Keene State professors who presented the symposium. Unfortunately I missed the first speaker Jiwon Ahn, but I was able to see the other two presentations. The first presentation dealt with America’s portrayal of the rise of Hitler through children cartoons. He showed two short clips of cartoons that played during the time of the Holocaust, one of Bugs Bunny and one of Donald Duck. Both sent the message that America is better then the holocaust, and the only power that can stop Hitler. This message isn’t the best to be sending kids or to be joking around about. The last presentation by Mark Timney, discussed south park episodes including one that her showed the audience. He felt that the controversial show instills moral lessons in each episode. Not just simple lessons such as sharing and caring but also political lessons as well. The episode Timney showed was about the fight between peace and war protesters. The episode ends with both sides agreeing that it is ok to have debatable opinions. Even if the presentation didn’t have a point, it was still a good time to watch an episode of South Park.