We opened class today with Foucalut’s quotation “inspect functions ceasely”. Before we got a better explanation, I thought that this was similar to what I had learned my senior year in high school AP statistics class. We were pressed to understand that just because there was a relationship didn’t mean that there was a correlation between the two (for example, just because kids that eat ice cream have proven statistics to not be as sick as those that don’t consume ice cream regularly, that doesn’t mean that ice cream cures the common cold, instead people are more likely to eat ice cream in the summer and are also less prone to sickness in the summer). However wrong that may have seemed for me to think at the time, it is sort of relevant to the meaning we discussed in class. We talked about the dependence on a constant inspection (using the example of a census during times like the Black Plague). My stat class example works here though too because we were taught always to put the data under constant investigation and not accept what was simply 2-d but to investigate deeper and find possible other relationships or correlations that the graph might show.
Secondly, it is unfortunate that I guessed immediately what Doc Rog was referring to when ETA scans the airport which is for stereotypes of people that have committed crimes (most likely people of middle-eastern decent or people who are dirty and not pulled together properly). The constant assumption on society is that there is binary opposition to everything (winner vs. loser, American vs. terrorist) as well as branding, which the tagged terrorist aforementioned fall under the category of. Stereotypes exist for a reason, often times they are true which is why I don’t foresee branding or binary division disappearing any time soon, especially when it comes to safety like in our public transportation systems.
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