Thursday, September 24, 2009

Nuclear Arms

The worldpress.com had an article by The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/world/25prexy.html?_r=1&hp&ex=&ei=&partner) called "U.N. Security Council Adopts Measure on Nuclear Arms".

The article was a straightforward report of the U.N. coucil meet lead by Barack Obama. I think that it is all well and fine that these people can sit around a desk and say they are going to stop nuclear polifieration. They are concerned about private groups developeing nuclear warheads. I honestly think it is very hypocritical for a group of countries where 90% of them have nuclear weapons to say that others cannot make them. I think that countries need to practice what they preach.

If nuclear weapons are bad then why have them? The argument is that "well, the bad guys have them". Basically, in the event of a nuclear attack we want to be able to fire back. I ask what good does that do? Have they never seen the movie War Games? Nuclear War ends in devastation for all. So, why does it matter if they have them? If they use theirs, we will use ours. It is a common fact. Why have them in the first place then?

I know a decent amount of physics, and the process of nuclear fission and atom splitting which is used to create nuclear weapons is an exact science; however, in order for this to work there have to be EXACT conditions. How do they expect private citizens to be capable of having the faclities to create these weapons without their government knowing? For that matter without the rest of the governments of the world knowing?

I think this whole nuclear arms debate and laws goes back to merchantilism. Basically, if someone else has the wealth then you DON'T HAVE IT. Therefore, you must bully them out of it. If you have nuclear weapons and they don't and you say "give me or we blow you up" you give it to them. That's why a world without weapons would not work. There will always be bullies in the world.

Guerilla in Action!








Just some of the images from my Guerilla Project in action. This is only from one of the sites, I did it in 3 different bathrooms.
So for my project, I launched it as an educational campaign; however, it quickly took on two forms. I like to analyize society most of the time and figure out what a specific audience is thinking. When I set up my different locations I went through and I set it up so that there was the exact same conditions in each bathroom. I put the same stickers in the realitivly same positions across the mirrors and I placed the main sticker either on a mirror or papertowel dispenser. From there throughout the day I periodically checked all three locations to see which stickers were taken down first.
What I found was in all three bathrooms the more direct statement stickers were removed first. The sticker that said "Are You doing this to 'fit in'" was the first sticker every single time to dissappear. The ones that said "Are You doing this for your Boyfriend/Best friend" stickers were always removed second followed by the large stickers over the mirrors. The ones that said "roommate" or "mom" were always removed towards the end.
I also tracked during the day which buildings stickers were the first to be removed. The Arts Building was the first to have all their stickers entirely removed on Wednesday evening, the Union 2nd floor bathroom still had stickers remaing (though not many) towards Thursday morning and the CLA building 3rd floor bathroom (and yes this is the busiest bathroom in that entire building to make it fair to the other two locations) were still in place when I checked on Thursday Morning. I don't know what to make from this because it seems to be relatively different audiences. The CLA building has many sociological and historical classes. The Arts building is obviously classes revolving around the arts and the Union in my opinion is a general sample of the student population/administration. The fact that the Arts building stickers were removed first actually surprised me. I half expected them to last the longest. The CLA stickers lasted as long as I thought they would. I have noticed that not as many women wear make-up in that building.
This has me thinking that for future projects that different buildings of the school have different audiences. I did not have enough supplies to do Smith building but its my assumption that it would have followed much the same path as the CLA building. Smith is predominantly science classes which I think has a similar audience to the historical classes.
In summary, I think the project was quite successful. The blog I set up for this project had 102 hits as of 1:02 pm, on Thursday (http://www.makeupmakebelieve.blogspot.com/). The sticker set I put up for download had been downloaded 13 times (there is currently a problem with downloading the sticker set that I was notified about which I am trying to correct). I think in the future I should have put pamphlets with them as well which would have given people a tangible item to take with them after the make-up sets had run out. In total only 30 people left with stickered cosmetics which I think I could have done better there.