From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Theory Cartoons—Gluten-Free

Click here for the "Theory Cartoons" Resource Center (all posts available)
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Theory Cartoons" (coming soon)
This is a "small" (小) post—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.
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On this date in Round and Square History 
3 May 2013—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 05-03
3 May 2012—La Pensée Cyclique: Mulan Granet (e)
3 May 2011—Remonstrance: King Lear
[a] The New Yorker 28 April 2014
This one reminds me of another favorite New Yorker cartoon. It went something like this. A waiter appears at the table and asks [I quote/paraphrase from memory]: "Would you like your organic green tea with lemon or just the usual dollop of smug self-satisfaction?"
[b] Conspicuous Cup-sumption RF

So what is it with eating, drinking, exercising, or just being "right," even as the rest of the trampled masses keeps eating potato chips, drinking Big Gulp sodas, sitting corpulently on the sofa, and being otherwise not-in-the-know?

There is something distinctively "first world" to this, of course, but there is more, too. 

In a funny sort of way that Thorstein Veblen would have recognized in terms of behavior (but not details), it is all about separating oneself from others.

In this case, it's "conspicuous non-consumption" (also a favorite New Yorker cartoon from about a decade back), and in a way that aligns with all sorts of conformity, even as it raises the speaker out (and up) from the huddled, chunky, masses.

I'll leave the rest for Social and Cultural Theory class.
[c] Awaiting crust RF

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