In case you missed it

Here's some links to the Evolution video, "What About God?"



Part One


Part Two


Part Three

Optional - Part Four


I love embedded videos!

Things discovered by accident

Thanks to Mike Blake for these links.

These links pertain to the discussion in class I though you might find them interesting
http://science.howstuffworks.com/9-things-invented-or-discovered-by-accident.htm

look at the The vulcanization process that is what I was talking about in class
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Goodyear

Some other Discoveries
Polyethylene (PE) was invented by accident 75 years ago

X-Rays:
Imagine breaking a bone and not having your doctor perform an X-ray to show where the fracture occurred. That could have been the case had German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen never accidentally discovered that X-rays can be seen through solid objects. Roentgen was experimenting at the time with cathode-ray tubes (CRT), which are now most commonly known for their use in TV screens. During his experiments, Roentgen noticed that some light was able to penetrate cardboard, wood, and even his hand. He took early X-rays of the bones of his wife's hand and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1901 for his work.


Penicillin:
Alexander Fleming's unexpected discovery of penicillin is possibly one of the most famous. Fleming was conducting research on the flu and notice that mold was growing in one of his petri dishes. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the area with the mold had no bacteria. After further tests, Fleming determined that penicillin could be used to fight bacterial infections, and it is still used today to treat pneumonia, and ear, skin, and throat infections.


Smallpox vaccine:
Over the centuries, smallpox may have killed more people than all other contagious diseases combined, according to the National Institutes of Health. It was a particularly deadly disease in the 18th century--until British scientist Edward Jenner stumbled upon the vaccine. Jenner had overheard a milkmaid say the people who had cowpox, which was relatively harmless, never contracted smallpox. Armed with this information, Jenner experimented by infecting an 8-year-old boy with cowpox and then exposing him to smallpox. Thanks to Jenner's vaccine, smallpox has been virtually eliminated today.

Coumadin:
The blood thinner warfarin, also known by its brand name Coumadin, has an interesting history. It was once also used in rat poisons, discovered when farmers noticed that their cows were dying after eating a type of clover. It was later realized that a particular chemical in the plant prevented their blood from clotting and caused them to hemorrhage. Since the chemical was capable of killing cows, they began using it to kill rats. However, it was later discovered that in proper doses, warfarin could be beneficial to people who are at risk of blood clots, and in 1952, it was first used as a blood thinning agent on humans.

Colbert Nation takes on Evolution

Stephen Colbert and scientist Kenneth Miller discuss evolution.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Kenneth Miller

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Joke of the Day
Stand-Up Comedy

2006.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Kenneth Miller

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Joke of the Day
Stand-Up Comedy

2008. Enjoy.

Blog #16 - 4 Questions on profit and salaries

Please pick one of the following questions that we discussed in class on Wednesday:



1. Marx believed that profit = exploitation, b/c the people who took the profit didn't necessarily earn it. The workers never get a share of the profit (or rarely do like the Big 3's profit sharing checks), so Marx believed that the owners didn't deserve those profits.
- Do you agree with Marx? Why or why not?

A Swedish website explains profit = exploitation better than I did: http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/marx.htm

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's take on Marx: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#3



2. One of the qualifications for taking federal bailout funds is that CEOs' salaries are limited to $500,000 / year. Do you think that this limitation on CEOs' salaries is a good or bad idea? Why?

"Why CEOs Are Overpaid" article - http://management.about.com/cs/generalmanagement/a/CEOsOverpaid.htm

Top TARP handouts, top CEOs salaries, CNN - http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/11/banks.ceos/index.html



3. Some people look at the expenses that companies have spent and feel that certain people are extremely overpaid. Why do some CEOs get paid millions even while their company is failing? Forbes magazine ranks the best-performing CEOs and the most overpaid leaders of failing companies. Some people have been talking about limiting all salaries, regardless of industry. What do you think about that? Why?

New York Times' article, "You Try To Live on $500K in This Town."


4. Do you think the gap / disparity between salaries (for example, between entertainers or sports figures and doctors, lawyers, etc.) is justifiable, especially in today's economy?

Russell Bishop's article, "What Myth Are You Stuck In?" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-bishop/todays-economy-what-myth_b_168959.html

Debate: atheism (Christopher Hitchens) vs. religion (Dinesh D'Souza)

What's so great about God? is the subject of this video debate posted on Feb. 23, 2009.

There's an intro to the debate between famous atheist writer, Christopher Hitchens, and Dinesh D'Souza, best-selling conservative writer, that lasts about 12 minutes -if you want to skip it. The format goes 15 minutes for D'Souza, 15 for Hitchens, and then 5 each for rebuttal. Last, there's 15-20 minutes of direct debate and then 40 minutes of Q and A. This is a very fascinating and interesting debate that is in fashion today.


Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza at CU Boulder from Justin Leddick on Vimeo.

Check it out when you have some time. NOT REQUIRED!

Reading Assignments for the rest of the semester

Here's the semester's HW list.

Enlightenment for Monday 2/9

Romanticism for Wednesday 2/11

Blog #15 2/12

Kierkegaard for Friday 2/13 + fill in the blank notes.

Over break, read Marx and Darwin + read Newsweek Darwin article and answer questions.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/51285
Questions are due on Monday you get back, 2/23.

If you look at the class’s website or go to previous blog posts, you’ll see both of these either posted or links to them.

Freud for Wednesday 2/25

Our Own Time for Friday 2/27

Garden Party for Monday 3/2

Quiz on Tuesday, 3/3.

3rd Hour exam Thursday 3/5
4th Hour exam Friday 3/6
Review session Tuesday, 7:45 a.m. and Wednesday 2:50 p.m.

Modern critique of urban sophistication

Rousseau had mistrusted urban sophistication. Much of this comes from his view of mankind; when they leave a state of nature and move into civilization, they become corrupted because of competition over resources.

A modern example of Rousseau's critique of urban sophistication is a website called Stuff White People Like. Though it may sound like a website that supposedly paints with a broad paint brush, it actually goes after "a very specific demographic sliver of left-leaning, city-dwelling white folk" (Sternbergh, TNR). This demographic has been called yuppies or most recently grups. SWPL itself says that its website is "a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like. They are pretty predictable."

As with any critique, it may be insightful. It may offend. I hope it makes you laugh.

CNN's story on Christian Lander, author of SWPL - http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/01/29/stuff.white.people.like/
NPR's Feb. 2008 story on SWPL - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=33372288
The full list of what white people like - http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/
The New Republic's take on SWPL - http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=49eb53ed-afbc-4aae-bf17-6ffc44f40a48

Alternative Blog #15 - Is Science Taking Away All of Life's Mystery?

The creator of the X-Files, Chris Carter, once said in an interview that science has become the new religion because it seems to have all of the answers today. Want to know how something works? Look it up. Now, you can find out how just about anything works by searching for it on the internet - something as straight forward as changing the pull rope on a lawn mower engine (which I did this summer by myself but paid somebody $40 to do 5 years ago) to learning how to build a rocket engine (out of all different kinds of material -DISCLAIMER -DON'T BE STUPID AND DO THIS!).

The questions for you:
1. Do you agree that science has taken life's mysteries away or solved them? Why or why not?
2. Give me an example of an area of life that science will probably never be able to answer fully or completely.

Minimum 250 words. Due Thursday, 2/12. Thanks.



X-Files montague



Interview w/ Chris Carter and Frank Sponitz about the 2nd X-Files movie

Blog #15 - Question for a higher power - ask anything

So I'm sitting in the car and I hear the opening lines of a song by the Fray go like this...

"I found God on the corner of First and Amistad
Where the West was all but won
All alone, smoking his last cigarette
I said, 'Where you been?' He said, 'Ask anything.'"

Since we had been talking a lot about fate and free will and a lot about God's purpose in life lately and about how the empiricists and rationalists viewed it all, I figured that this would be the premise for a great blog question.

Suspend all disbelief, don't try to weasel out of it by looking for a loophole like you did with the trolley experiment; for the purpose of this experiment, please assume that a higher power exists. You don't have to believe in the higher power in order to ask it a question.

Every society and culture tries to answer the burning eternal questions. Every generation tries to find a new interpretation of the same answers and come up with a unique way of asking the same eternal questions in a different way. We see that with The Matrix, Lost, the Golden Compass, Heroes, and now (as I watch) the new Battlestar Galactica. So why would music be any different an expression of this yearning for understanding? It wouldn't, and I'm glad I found a contemporary song that captured one of those questions.

Think long and hard about it, because you only get one question to ask.

So please answer the following:

1. What would it be?

2. Why would you ask that question?

3. And what do you think the answer might be?

Minimum of 250 words total. Due by Thursday 2/12.

Blog #14 - How do we learn best?

This question pertains to learning and how we process the world around us.

Descartes felt that we needed to doubt everything (Radical Doubt) and start from scratch; the only thing that we can truly be certain of is that we have a mind. "I think, therefore, I am." He relies predominantly on reason as is mode of learning: does what I'm learning stand up to reason and logic? If not, toss it.

John Locke felt that as humans we were born with blank slates (tabula rasa) and that we learn through a combination of our senses and observation and experience and memory. Nothing is innate and that almost everything we learn is gained from the outside world. When you consistently observe sensory data, you begin to form memories and complex ideas from these experiences.

A philosopher who we'll study later next week is George Berkley who believed that the senses and observation were the primary learning tool. In some ways, for Berkley, the only things that exist are things that we perceive, and once we stop perceiving them, they stop existing. But since we see people and objects continually reappear in our world in a very similar and consistant state - carrying on as if they had their own life/existence without us perceiving them, there needs to be a way to explain that. As you could probably guess, the only being capable of doing all of that in his mind.

So, two questions now that I think about it:
1. How do you best learn? Why? Combination or one way best for you?

2. In which way do you think schools are lacking as they prepare kids for the world? With this question, I am looking for an analysis on where you think the emphasis is misplaced, not specifics on any teacher's methods or a slam session on Groves H.S.

Due Friday, 250 words minimum. Thanks.

Blog #13 - Galileo's Paradigm Shift - What would be our next one?

There have been three paradigm shifts within the past four hundred years or so that have altered man's image of itself forever. Galileo's refinement of the telescope and discovery of Jupiter's four moons (this discovery and others like it helped reinforce the new heliocentered universe but wait! I thought the Earth was unalterable from creation - no one said anything about moons around Jupiter), Darwin's concept of evolution (refuting the idea that man is NOT made in God's image), and Freud's psychological theories about our unconscious desires controlling us (who's really in control?).

What is a paradigm shift? - This is a term initially defined by Thomas Kuhn (Wikipedia) in 1962 to describe a realignment in the basic thinking or assumptions about a topic. For instance, when movies went from silent to talkies in 1927 with The Jazz Singer, that made a whole new kind of movie possible for future directors. Kuhn initially applied the term to science, but since then, it has been adapted to many different things since 1962.

By way of illustrating this, the way people conduct research nowadays is completely different than it was when I did my undergrad degree at MSU less than 20 years ago. Computers existed back then but mainly as word processors (like the fabulous Apple IIe pictured to the right); the internet also existed but not in its current incarnation. When I needed to do research on a topic, I went to the library and looked up stuff the old fashioned way: I found the info in a card catalog in a long wooden shelving unit that smelled of mildew. I wrote down a whole list of books / articles / etc. and then I went and found them on the shelves in the library; if they were there, I looked to see that the books / articles / etc. had something relevant in it about my topic. If not, it went back on the shelf. If so, it went in my backpack. When my backpack got too full, I stopped at the nearest study table and started either taking notes on the relevant info or made copies of said info (if I had enough $$). Sound like fun? Just writing that and remembering that whole process made me thankful for computers.

By the time my Master's thesis came along in 1996-97, I still did some of the searching in the Wayne State library. But, most of the grunt work (card catalog searches, humping up and down stairs, checking out book shelves) was done by ERIC, an educational search engine. I had also upgraded to a Windows 95 computer and could surf the net in its infancy. A paradigm shift had occurred in research - how it was conducted, how quickly and efficiently it could be done. But the evaluation still had to be done by a human.

My question is: what kind of FUTURE paradigm shift do you envision shaking up life as we know it? (cue R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It"). What kind of technological innovation could revolutionize our lives in the near future? What kind of scientific breakthrough or discovery could alter the course of our lives? Could an accident or a terrorist attack or unforeseen event forever change the world?

Take some time to think about what you think might change our lives like Darwin, Galileo and Freud had done.

Due Wednesday, January 21st. 250 words minimum (should take some deep thinking).

Blog #12 - Seven Deadly Sins

The concept of sin has been around for about 2,000 years, but even before the advent of Christianity, these concepts of greed, envy, lust, anger, sloth, pride/arrogance, and gluttony have been seen as vices or major flaws in society. The way that the Christian church divided up sin was that there were small sins that weren't so bad - ones that could be forgiven by confession to a priest (venial), and ones that would ruin your chances to get into Heaven (those were cardinal sins). As we'll discover after the presentation of the sins, each of them have their own destructive qualities.

Anger tends to be the most destructive vice that can lead to war, genocide, and racism. Yet, anger can also be channeled into fighting against evil.

Greed is purported to be the worst of them all, the root of all sin, b/c if you did not desire more than you needed or wanted, then there would be fewer problems. Yet, that desire to improve ourselves (and this dovetails nicely with envy and gluttony here b/c what are envy and gluttony but forms of greed) comes from the desire to better ourselves.

Pride can also be seen as the root of all sins b/c when you see yourself as more important than others, especially God (as Pope Gregory the Great put it), then you are putting yourself above others. You are supposed to be a humble servant of God, and pride destroys that relationship. However, pride can be an important part of a person's self-esteem; it can also be part of a country's nationalism (as long as it doesn't turn into xenophobia). What about the pride of doing a job well? This builds confidence in the worker.

So then there's lust. As we have seen lately with New York governor Eliot Spitzer and former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, lust has led people down the wrong path. I even hesitate to say that lust has led them, b/c those two guys got themselves in trouble. Love doesn't come from lust; I can tell you that from experience. My wife and I were friends first before we fell in love. Ours isn't universal, but it is an example of how love should come first. Lust, unfortunately, drives people to do insane things and I won't defend this with a flipside like I have the other vices.

10 years ago, lust dominated the headlines and cable news with the Clinton - Lewinsky saga and eventual impeachment in December 1998 and trial in February 1999. Fast forward to today, lust no longer dominates the headlines; it's greed and envy with news of the bailouts, economic scandals and political corruption as well as the looming depression.

Of these seven, which do you think can be the most personally destructive and why? Also, which of the seven is the most destructive for society and why?

Due Thursday, 1/8/09. 200 words minimum.

Blog #11 - Plato's Ideal Society - Impossible or Improbable? Neither?

We've spent a little more time on Plato's ideal society this semester than I have in past semesters; maybe b/c this time around the world seems to be crumbling around us with roiling stock markets and the Big 3 impending collapse. Where better to look than the past when the future looks so bleak, right? Well, maybe we can learn something.

Several criticisms were brought up of this ideal society:

1. Where would the innovation come from if everyone be content? Doesn't innovation come from competition and competition come from peoples' desire to be better?

2. Why do they need soldiers if everyone is content? Is it just for protection from other city-states? Or, did Plato ever intend for this city to exist? If that is the case, why are the soldiers really there?

3. What kind of guarantee is there that the philosophers will rule in everyone's best interests? Is there an impeachment process? Can the peasants overthrow the rulers?

4. In the interests of specialization, what if you get bored with your job? What if you don't want that job? What if that job that you do best is NOT something you love doing? To use an example from 4th hour, I might do math really well, but that doesn't mean I want to be an accountant.

5. Is there no social mobility? What if we don't like the class that we're born into?

This link http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2g.htm gives a good, brief synopsis of the first four books of the Republic in which this society is described. I have countered many of these arguments in a devil's advocate style by appealing to one of Socrates' questions - courage, justice, virtue, wisdom, moderation, beauty.

The question before you is: Can Plato's society be fixed to make it more ideal to fit a 21st century American audience? Why or why not?

Things to ponder while answering this question: Is Plato's society so incompatible with American ideals and tastes and traditions that it cannot be fixed?  Can Plato's society work for people of another country? What would you have to fix in order for it to work in America? Could it work on a national or state level or could it only work on a small scale? If it only works on a small scale, what's the use?

**After reading a few of the responses, it seems to me that Americans are too individualistic to give up some of our freedoms or luxuries for the greater good of society.  This will be a topic - the greater good vs. the desires of the individual - as we go on through the semester.  

Due Friday, December 12. 200 words minimum.

Squashed Philosophers

Here's a pretty neat website called Squashed Philosophers - http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/ - it has abridged versions of the greatest philosophers' best works. It includes many of the people we are going to study.

If you're looking for #10, scroll down farther.

Blog #10 - Questions of Socrates

Due Monday, December 8 - 200 words

We discussed four of Socrates' big questions about life Thursday and Friday:
- What is virtue? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue
- What is courage? http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_courage.html
- What is beauty? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty
- What is justice? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice

What I would like for you to do is to pick one of these big questions and take a moment to consider where you see it lacking in American society.

If you choose virtue, where in American society is there a huge need for virtue? What about beauty? What part of American society could become more beautiful? In what sense? Who in American life could use a little (or a lot more justice)? Which Americans need to show more courage in our tough economic times? Why? (these are sample questions to get some ideas flowing - I figure that you can come up with something yourself).

Editor's Note - I don't want to influence this too much, so I'll refrain from including pictures or quotes or anything else. I've included links to Wikipedia or quotes on courage in case you're stuck on a topic. You DON'T have to pick the same topic that you personally discussed in class, but if you want to, that's fine.