Picture from Initial Attempts at BlogDH Post

Monday afternoon, BlogDailyHerald had plans to put up a post about Brian Moynihan ’81′s, CEO of Bank of America, coming to speak at Brown.  Just before we published the post, a variety of writers received an influx of emails from various TA’s, friends, and strangers on the street that the speech, which had been publicized by flyers around the campus, was in fact a hoax.

While this may seem slightly alarming, there is a precedent for this kind of widespread duping of Brown University by Brown University.  In October 2010, a letter was posted in Keeney announcing the impending installation of surveillance cameras throughout the quad. Also a hoax, this experiment had been part of an MCM class, MCM1700: “Techniques of Surveillance“ (taught by Mark Tribe), in order to see how people reacted to knowing they were being watched.

This semester, Tribe is teaching MCM1700P: “Radical Media.” The course investigates the way in which media can facilitate social action and become part of political discourse (lolz, MCM). One of the projects for the class is described on the course wiki page as requiring students take on a “socially engaged project,” record its results on video and post it online. Is anyone else getting déjà vu?

I have no context for this inscrutable yet engrossing video of Dean Bergeron reciting a text by Ranier Maria Rilke. My personal favorite part begins at 8:25…

The biblical writings on the Frisc wall

We’re used to seeing strange writing on library walls (Rock bathroom stalls, anyone?) but an unusual stencil in the SciLi leaves  a lot of burning questions for anyone bored enough to be looking at the concrete walls in the wee hours of the morning. Discreetly hidden on one of the stone columns of the Friedman Study Center, the small stencil shows a couple lines of Latin text followed only by this explanation – “The End of the Forty-Two Line Bible.” The Forty-Two Line Bible refers to the Guternberg Bible, the first book printed using Gutenberg’s revolutionary movable type printing press. The remaining copies of the Gutenberg Bible are now considered the rarest and most valuable books in the world. But the question remains – why is the end of the Gutenberg Bible printed on the SciLi’s wall? Is it a reference to the importance of Gutenberg’s invention and the printed word? Is it meant to be a religious statement? Perhaps both? Mysteries remain, though, if anyone knows Latin (and cares enough), we can at least know what the end of The Forty-Two Line Bible is.

Over the weekend, a mysterious glass structure went up on the Main Green. It started as just a stage, but then glass walls went up along with it, and eventually a glass rooftop, too. So what is this glass building? Nobody really seems to know. Some speculated that it was associated with this past weekend’s A Better World by Design, but it wasn’t. Others now think that it’s for a fundraiser, while some have speculated that it’s for a wedding or some other kind of private event.

If you have any insight, share it in the comments!

At about 2:00 this afternoon a group of students wearing anything from red and pink pool tubes to red boots to just red cloth draped over them congregated in Faunce Arch and slowly made their way to the Main Green, dancing, swaying their arms, and screaming every so often. A massive tour group as well as some other Brown students stopped to watch. Many pulled out their camera phones. This continued for about 10 minutes at which time they sort of just dispersed. I think they were supposed to represent blood flowing through the body or something…not quite sure.

— Gili Kliger

Update: This facebook message provides a partial, cryptic explanation:

“1:45 faunce, a celebration of the sanguine, a bloody battle of passion, a passing time you will never forget.

yours in blood,
brown university movement experiments”

Phoebe Neel / Herald

The title pretty much says it all. At noon today, protesters on the main green were holding signs reading, “Rainbows Not Bodies” and handing out pamphlets with pictures of the Olsen twins, a cow, and a character from The Lion King on the inside. On the inside were lyrics from Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” and on the back were lyrics from Gnarls Barkley’s “Going On.”

Um. Anyone have any clue what this is all about? MCM project? Performance art? Insights very welcomed in the comments.

— Thea Aguiar

UPDATE: Roughly thirteen avant-garde idealists took to the Main Green Tuesday afternoon to exercise their freedom of speech, expressing dissatisfaction and anger about inaction and ineptitude in the ongoing battle against a variety of vague and fantastical causes, ranging from apathy to monarchy. Who were these young visionaries with such excellent taste in glitter makeup? They kept mum, but the exceptional quality of their screenprinted electric pink literature, as well as the words of an anonymous tipster, exposed them as RISD students. Performance art piece? Or well-directed jab at our progressive love for protesting? We’ll never know, but looks like we’ve got competition for the most outspokent institution on College Hill.

— Phoebe Neel