I really hate losing things. When I misplace something, even something small like a water bottle, I retrace my steps obsessively and try to imagine all the possible places the object could be. Sometimes I even dream about finding it, only to wake up and realize that I’m still missing—and mourning—whatever I’ve lost.

Although my reactions are dramatic, I’ve never lost anything really important. An umbrella or a favorite pen, sure, but no phones, prized possessions, or parts of my body.

Anti-circumcision protestors have a lot more (or a lot less) to grieve. In this week’s issue, Sarah Holder, SY ’17, follows the Bloodstained Men, a group that considers the circumcision of newborn babies morally wrong.

The debate about loss continues in Features, where Calvin Harrison, CC ’17, investigates wage theft in New Haven and Alex Zafran, ES ’19, considers the ethics of adding an ethnic studies requirement to the Yale undergraduate curriculum.

Students and faculty provide some lessons outside the classroom in the Culture section with recommendations for books, journalism, videos, and art that relate to recent conversations about race on campus.

In Voices, Oliver Preston, JE ’16, describes his experience on a family trip. Sophie Haigney, ES ’17, interviews David Remnick, the Editor-in-Chief of The New Yorker.

Finally, Alexander Mutuc, BR ’18, finds what he thought he was missing—a sense of community at Yale.

The Herald is online this week, so click around and enjoy. And if you lose something this weekend, don’t worry. That is, unless you dream about it.

Cheers,

Claire Goldsmith

Opinion Editor

Do you like hiding in a small, dark room where no one will hand you flyers? After Sunday’s Extracurricular Bazaar (sorry, the “Bazaar of Registered Undergraduate Organizations”), that’s the only kind of activity I’m looking for.

What exactly makes that unforgettable event so overwhelming, so hectic, so full of Mixed Company? Poster board as far as the eye can see, The Logos all designed to catch your eye, every WORD a practiced pitch to ensnare freshmen. Between the poor acoustics of Payne-Whitney and the frenzied hum of a thousand questions, it’s hard to Hear Your Song.

Amid its overflowing frenzy, the Bazaar managed to showcase some of Yale’s best-marketed but least understood groups. The Guild of Carillonneurs, who ring the Harkness Tower bells, strode through the gym underneath hats that bore replicas of the tower. Yale Climbing Team members bravely attempted a momentous summit of the basketball hoop on the left side of the gym. The stoics of Yale Fly-Fishing patiently awaited nibbles from the school that surrounded them. For these groups, the event is great exposure. So why, year after year, do we keep Steppin’ Out of the gym exhausted and forsaken?

The terror lies not in the purpose of the event but the extent to which it’s taken. The immense scale of the gym allows the event to become one impermeably large mob. Maze-like table layouts defy all notions of efficiency, forcing freshmen to veer around the Margins in hopes of stumbling upon a hidden gem. Drums drown out the Pitches and Tones of each tutor’s enthusiastic exhortation, eager boys in suits Y Pop-Up to ask if you’re conservative, and representatives accost you in all corners of the room.

I’ll admit I played a role in this court-level tumult. For the entire three hours of the Bazaar, I stood primed behind the Yale Herald table, luring new Taps with promises of journalism in which their unique voices could be heard. And, while the Culture section does indeed present humorous takes on events and slices of life at Yale, I felt less and less “authentic” the longer I smiled while waxing poetic about the publication.

Even the makings of a very classy cheese plate (thank you, Slavic Chorus and Yale Chabad) did nothing to improve my mood. Candy, confetti, and copious cheer mask the real flaws of the Bazaar. It’s not about Building Bridges between freshmen and the older students who lead groups that pique their interest; all that matters is the number of names each organization collects.

The emails go onto the panlists and the panlists ask you to apply, and those who get into the group will spearhead the sign-up bonanza a year later. The cycle repeats itself—until we decide to start a revolution. It Ends Today!

Unless we collectively decide to march to the beat of A Different Drum Dance Company, to create a new Vision of this meet-and-greet, we’re stuck in this charade. The Good Show that we put on, the façade of rehearsal and matching t-shirts, overpowers our genuine intellectual interest in each group’s mission. At Yale, Mind Matters; why not at the Bazaar?

What crime would you commit if you knew you wouldn’t get caught?” My mother asked me this question when I was eight years old, prompting a long string of thoughts about ethics, getaways, and her avant-garde parenting style. After some thought, I settled on an an­swer: a combination of art forgery and theft, wherein I would copy a priceless artwork, steal the original from its lauded museum home, and replace it with my (obvi­ously masterful) fake.

To that end, I was hoping that last Saturday’s “Im­postors in the Gallery” lecture and workshop hosted by Yale STEAM would teach me how to reverse engi­neer the perfect forgery. The group tries to unite the arts with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. Dr. Ian Mc­Clure, the Susan Morse Hilles Chief Conserva­tor at the Yale University Art Gallery, described the various techniques he and the other conserva­tion specialists use when they suspect that a work is a copy.

Using my burgeon­ing forgery skills, I lied my way through an ap­plication and got into the workshop at the last minute (sorry, Yale STEAM). Aniko Bezur and Jens Stenger, two of the conservators at Yale’s West Campus Institute for the Pres­ervation of Cultural Heritage, walked us through the process of corroborating a work’s authenticity. I took notes on how to bam­boozle the experts.

Step One: Paint on rotten wood. McClure pointed out the importance of the quality of the wood in deter­mining if an object is authentic. Old panels are usu­ally eaten through by woodworms, and certain types of wood were used in different locations and eras—for example, there has always been a split in materials used north and south of the Alps. (His description gave rise to one of my most pretentious sentences ever, which included the phrase “intrinsic artisanal proclivity for poplar.”)

Step Two: Add unnecessary changes to the prelimi­nary sketch. Bezur and Stenger used an infrared cam­era on a segment of a Miguel Ximenez altarpiece to show its carbon underpainting. Under infrared light, paint becomes transparent, but carbon materials, which were typically used to sketch the composition before painters began, are still visible. In most origi­nal works, the underpainting has a sketch-like quality with noticeable adjustments and changes in the com­position. Copies, I learned, are much more precise, because the artist knows exactly what form the figures should take.

Step Three: Mix metals. Every color of paint uses various minerals in its pigment, and conservators test tiny paint samples to ensure that the yellows or reds are made of the materials available to the artist at the time. They also showed us how lead, zinc, and titani­um whites fluoresce differently under ultraviolet light. Sadly though, my UV glasses made me look more like a dork than a cool, evil mastermind.

It might not matter, howev­er, because I don’t think I’ll be ready to scheme anytime soon. McClure got very absorbed in looking at a painting under a high-power microscope and forgot all about forgery in his rapture over its waxy coating. At that point, he lost me. As much as I love talking about cleaning art, I really just want­ed to plan an Ocean’s Twelve-style heist. Until I get more tips, my career as an inter­national art thief will have to wait. One day, Mom, one day.

Whn I wore a beanie to Toad’s this week, I fit right in.

Granted, it was no “College Dance Party” but rather a 9 p.m. concert on a Sunday called Shpongletron. I expected a little weirdness, but my first look under the wan green lighting revealed a whole new world. Approximately a third of my fellow concert-goers wore bean­ies as well, but theirs were distinguished from mine because they featured pins like the kind on lanyards at Disney World. Girls twirled hula-hoops around their limbs in intricate routines. A man began pouring glitter into his palms from an industrial-size container. One woman walked in wearing a full bear costume.

A boy wearing Mylar hit on me and then asked why I was there (apparently, notebooks are unusual even at Sunday Toad’s). Turns out Tim was a big fan of Shpongle—he saw them at Toad’s last year, too—and he explained the mysteries behind the concert’s confounding title: Shpongle, he said, is the artist, and the Shpongletron is his canvas.

This tour, named Shpongletron 3.1, is the third iteration of a collaboration between Zeb­bler and Shpongle. Zebbler, a video artist origi­nally from Belarus, creates the dizzying displays of light and color that are projected onto the Shpongletron. In a demonstration of both his technical skill and outlandish creations, Zeb­bler also designed the LED advertisements that caused a city-wide bomb scare in Boston in January 2007. He put signs covered in circuit boards and blinking lights in subway stations, on bridges, and in public spaces, prompting cautious cops to shut down the city and send in bomb squads.

Psychedelic musicians Simon Posford (aka Hallucinogen) and Raja Ram joined to form Shpongle and became the originators of “psy­bient” music, which is a combination of psy­chedelic trance, ambient, and world music. Ram conceives of overarching musical ideas and also creates brief flute samples; Posford works in the studio, handles the synthesiz­ers, and runs the live shows. He is the one who Shpongles.

His DJ booth, the Shpongletron itself, looks like a massive white camping tent that was set up really, really badly on the Toad’s stage. Imagine the tent sprouting irregular wings and growing eyes. Then, envision the surface of the tent erupting into a flurry of neon animal skin patterns and picture the eyes shooting lasers.

But before my wildest Shpongle dreams could be realized, I was treated to the musical stylings of the opener, phutureprimitive. Phu­tureprimitive, “real” name DJ Rain (actual real name unknown), describes his music on his website as “dripping wet love drops of nasty mind melting sonic bliss.”

I didn’t find it particularly blissful. My neighbor’s default dance move resembled vio­lent thrashings, and phutureprimitive’s heavy beats got him a little too energized. All was remedied, however, when phutureprimitive wrapped up his set and left us on an inspira­tional note. “Maya Angelou once said, ‘Music is my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to everything,’” he misquoted over the final booms. “With that said, who believes music is the way to heal?” Cheers from the dance floor signaled agreement. He grinned before an­nouncing that Shpongletron would soon begin. “Take that home and shine your love tomorrow!”

After the break, during which anticipation (and the crowd) had gotten very high, the room finally went dark. Posford climbed onto the stage and asked, in a gravelly British accent, “Are we ready to get Shpongled?” The crowd erupted in cheers, and one of the hula-hoop girls screamed “Shpongle me!”

The experience of Shpongle’s music is best articulated by lyrics from their 2001 hit “Star Shpongled Banner” from the album Tales of the Inexpressible:

“It was kind of the most profound experience I’ve had in me life, like…

I am a shaman magician

The sun is purple

3D dimensions

I am for mental extensions

You know, the mind has a thousand eyes.

Oh oh oh oooh, que terror!”

Posford has a serious cult following. Girls in the crowd screamed “I love you, Simon!” and I realized that the preponderance of hatpins was actually an homage: Shpongle wears a fedora with several spiky pins arranged around the sides, cutting a striking silhouette as he DJed in front of the ever-changing patterns on the screens.

A die-hard fan in the crowd next to me shrieked along to one of the songs, seeming to suggest that the best way to commune with Shpongle was via howl. Another man with a ponytail held a monocle-sized kaleidoscope on a beaded bracelet up to his right eye and turned it slowly as he gazed at the Shpongle­tron. “Wooooow,” he intoned.

Wow was right. Shpongle was shpectacu­larly weird, but it was also kind of awesome. I have no idea how so many psybient music fans crawled out of the Elm City woodwork, or why they were all so boundlessly enthusiastic—al­though given that Shpongle hat pins are for sale in Reddit’s LSD Appreciation community, I could make some educated guesses.