pinker's caricature

(test post)

When I first visited Steven Pinker's website I thought it was a little dorky that he used a caricature of himself as his bio picture, but after reading the selection for class, I think it was more telling than that.

The sense of humor and lightness given off my the caricature shows up again in the tone of his writing (or I think maybe it was a speech, so in this case, speaking). He has away of tossing in jokes and Far Side cartoons that makes you like him, believe him, and start to think, "yes, we can all just relax, it's our genes, what are we to do anyhow." MIT, Harvard, MIT...this guy must know what he is talking about. But the more I think about the article, the more I feel it is caricature-esque. He draws black and white extremes--you are either paranoid about how you raise your kid, or you beat your kid, as if there is no in-between gradation, similar to how a caricature draws out your three biggest characteristics and minimizes the rest. . . His "pop" sensibility was engaging at first and grating by the end--seeming to lack a sense of nuance about humanity, and, I think, assuming too much that neuroscience contains the whole of everything.

(Though I will add that he takes some beautiful photographs)

--julie kesti