I liked the essay question about meaning and truth. It reminded me of the tutorial meeting where we discussed the difference. Meaning being something that can be precieved as more subjective and truth seeming to required hard facts to back it up.

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Simulacra and Simulations

This was a very lengthy and difficult read, However, once you get past the wordiness and jargon, Baudrillard has a very good point. The part about political incantation was interesting, even though I don't know all the details about watergate, I guess you could apply it to the whole Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, ie "scandal as a means to regenerate a moral and political principle"...scandal being used by media and government to illustrate how your morals are being corrupted. the reality isn't what happened anymore, it's about threatening teh "moral fabric". This same tactic has been used to justify opposition to same-sex marrage recently.

Another part I found interesting, was the part about hypochondria. If you have all the sympotoms of an illness, do you not then have the illness, since that is how illnesses are diagnosed and categorized by your symptoms. Michael's example of the show House really illustrates this view.

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