Archive for January, 2010
Friday, January 8th, 2010
In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds — and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realize.
In watching this video (18 minutes) take notes. In doing so, consider the following questions:
- What is the relationship between language and thought?
- What is the relationship between language and human interaction?
- How and why do we “veil” our speech?
- How would the human experience (both personal and political) be different if language only had literal/direct connotations?
- What is Pinker’s thesis and what is philosophical about it?
Bring your notes and your responses to these questions to our next session.
Posted in Philosophy Society | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
Marx is so embedded in our Western cast of thought that few people are even aware of their debt to him. Everybody I know now believes that their attitudes are to an extent a creation of their material circumstances … “that, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness”, as Marx wrote—and that changes in the way things are produced profoundly affect the affairs of humanity even outside the workshop or factory.
Read Hitchens’ piece (from The Nation, 2009)
Posted in USH: Immigration, Industrialization and Urbanization, World Civ-Emergence of Industrial Capitalism | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
Jackson was a natural populist, but he also had a fiercely autocratic streak. One enemy likened him to an “exasperated rhinoceros.”
Read this piece on Jackson’s attack on civil liberties from the New Yorker
Posted in USH: Jackson Years | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
For all the advances and wonders of our global era, Christians, Jews, and Muslims seem ever more locked in mortal combat. But history suggests a happier outcome for the Peoples of the Book. As technological evolution has brought communities, nations, and faiths into closer contact, it is the prophets of tolerance and love that have prospered, along with the religions they represent. Is globalization, in fact, God’s will?
Read on from The Nation
Posted in AP Post AP Seminar, USH: Imperialism, World Civ-Imperialism, World Civ-Modern Global Dilemmas | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
In the grotesque pageant of Iran’s show trials, former high officials—hollow-eyed, dressed in prison pajamas, and flanked by guards in uniform—sit in rows, listening to one another’s self-denunciations. Since the disputed Presidential elections of June 12th, about a hundred reformist politicians, journalists, student activists, and other dissidents have been accused of colluding with Western powers to overthrow the Islamic Republic. This month, a number of the accused have made videotaped confessions.
Laura Secor on Iranian Show Trials (2009, 2 pages)
Posted in AP Iran | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
In the rich world the idea of progress has become impoverished. Through complacency and bitter experience, the scope of progress has narrowed. The popular view is that, although technology and GDP advance, morals and society are treading water or, depending on your choice of newspaper, sinking back into decadence and barbarism. On the left of politics these days, “progress” comes with a pair of ironic quotation marks attached; on the right, “progressive” is a term of abuse.
The Economist’s nuanced view of modern progress
Posted in Other News, USH: Immigration, Industrialization and Urbanization, World Civ-Modern Global Dilemmas | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
Attempts to democratise the Communist Party have failed. Again
“INNER-PARTY democracy is the life of the party,” enthused China’s former president, Jiang Zemin, as he prepared to hand over to Hu Jintao seven years ago. It could, he said, promote democracy in the country as a whole. But Mr Hu’s cautious experiments with reform inside the party appear to have fizzled. So too, it seems, has his own commitment to the idea.
A 2 page summary of democracy in Communist China
Posted in AP China | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
Because America is so big and diverse, immigrants have an incredible array of choices. The proportion of Americans who are foreign-born, at 13%, is higher than the rich-country average of 8.4%. In absolute terms, the gulf is much wider. America’s foreign-born population of 38m is nearly four times larger than those of Russia or Germany, the nearest contenders. It dwarfs the number of migrants in Japan (below 2m) or China (under 1m). The recession has dramatically slowed the influx of immigrants and prompted quite a few to move back to Mexico. But the economy will eventually recover and the influx will resume.
The Economist on immigration to the US. Very interesting.
Posted in USH: Immigration, Industrialization and Urbanization | No Comments »