Archive for Critical Thinking?
Posted in Academic Life, Artificial Intelligence, Critical Thinking?, Digital Culture, Evolution, Extended, Feminism, Philosophy, Science, Technology, ethics, literature
March 30, 2010 at 5:28 pm
I’ll be asking this repeatedly via all of my web-presences, but since this one sits idle these days I probably won’t have to ask more than once here; it’ll just stay on top since I never blog.
I’m teaching a First Year Initiatives course in the Fall. These are basically first-year seminar classes designed to teach college- and learning-based skills to incoming students. The content is meant to be highly interdisciplinary, but the content is also secondary in these courses. The primary goal is to give them training in critical reading and writing, public speaking, etc., as well as get them introduced to the college environment and the surrounding community and its needs.
I’m teaching a class with a cyborg theme, because the knitting theme I wanted to do just seemed too tough to sell (I wanted to attract the right sorts of students and I haven’t figured out how to do that with a knitting-themed course yet). I’ll be working on my syllabus once the semester is over (May) and I hope to have a sizable list of books, stories, and articles, both fiction and non-fiction, to examine and consider for the class by then. I have a few non-fiction items already to look at, but I don’t have many fiction pieces (aside from “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”). I welcome recommendations, and the ideal pieces will examine multiple facets of the cyborg concept (Hayles, Haraway, Stelarc, for example). The fiction pieces should do more than look only at the human-machine blending, although good fiction will always deal with more than one dimension. The social aspects, the economic aspects, and the philosophical aspects are all as important as the biological.
Please leave comments with recommendations, or also feel free to email me if you’d prefer that. And thanks in advance if anyone is still reading here and has something to contribute!
Posted in Atheism, Blurb, Critical Thinking?, Democracy, Feminism, ethics
March 21, 2010 at 3:24 pm
“Well, here goes. I really resent the term, but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted.
I’m gay.” …Link to post where James Randi renews my faith in the notion of progress in American culture, just because he feels safe enough to make this public declaration that shouldn’t even be news.
Posted in Atheism, Blurb, Critical Thinking?, Democracy, Feminism
December 7, 2009 at 8:44 am
A new Rasmussen poll suggests that the Tea Party movement is far and away more popular than the Republican Party it seeks to influence — so much so that if it were a full-fledged political party, it would overtake the GOP on the generic Congressional ballot. Link to terrifying analysis on TPM.
Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Blurb, Critical Thinking?, Digital Culture, Technology
May 28, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Every time I criticize these guys, I have to brace myself for another flood of hate mail. The Kurzweil Kult members are going to read this Newsweek article, see my name on the first page, and send me little disquisitions on how I’ll be sorry when the nanobots dismantle me and upload my brain into the cosmic computer. PZ on Kurzweil again. And again. It only makes me love PZ more.
Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Blurb, Critical Thinking?, Digital Culture, Technology
April 19, 2009 at 8:34 am
“Superlativity, in a word, is not science. It is a discourse, opportunistically taking up a highly selective set of scientific results and ideas and diverting them to the service of a host of wish-fulfillment fantasies that are very old and very familiar, dreams of invulnerability, certainty, immortality, and abundance that rail against the finitude of the human condition.” More at Amor Mundi.
Posted in Academic Life, Critical Thinking?, Democracy, Extended
April 18, 2009 at 11:14 pm
This NY Times story on the current crop of college students and the prevailing sense of entitlement makes me think the phrase “A for Effort” should be forever stricken from the collective consciousness.
A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.
[...]
In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.
Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.
“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”
I’ve encountered a decent amount of this, but I have to admit that I see decidedly less of it at liberal arts colleges than I do at large universities. My anecdotal analysis would be that at a liberal arts college, the students know they’re there to explore ideas first and foremost, and it seems that the process of college itself is recognized as the goal rather than the obstacle to getting the grade. This isn’t to say it doesn’t happen at liberal arts colleges, or that I don’t see the thoughtful, process-centric students at universities, but it’s been my experience more often than not that the university students seem to believe the default grade is an A unless they mess up, rather than the default being a C unless they excel.
Link to article in the NY Times.
Posted in Atheism, Blurb, Critical Thinking?, ethics
April 14, 2009 at 10:47 am
The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: “Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.” [...] “Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.” [...] “Anything old coming back, I’m in favor of it,” she said. “More fervor is a good thing.” Link to article in the NY Times.
Posted in Atheism, Blurb, Critical Thinking?
March 26, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Now, ignoring the stunning hypocrisy of someone preaching the word of God and calling us all idiots, there is an obvious, gaping flaw in this commenter’s logic, well-known to skeptics for years: if you ask where the Big Bang came from, why can’t you ask the same thing of God? I like when Phil stops pandering and explains why so many of his ignorant commenters are idiots. (For non-regular readers: they’re perpetually telling him to stop talking about politics or skepticism and get back to the science. Funny, right?) Link to post.
Posted in Academic Life, Critical Thinking?, Democracy, Extended
March 22, 2009 at 2:52 pm
American colleges and universities are running out of money (as the elementary and high schools did long ago) and those of us who still give a damn are suffering. I have a stress-induced nosebleed today, by way of illustration. I don’t know a single professor who doesn’t work at least 12 hour days, usually closer to 18 hour days, and the overwhelming majority of us would probably get paid more in retail (at least early in our careers, the time when we’re least invested and most likely to jump ship, our idealism the only thing keeping us going most often.)
The discussion over at Pharyngula in response to the University of Florida eliminating Geology is enlightening. The number of people commenting that have no idea what the liberal arts are or why they aren’t first on the chopping block (often the same individuals) is depressing. (You will find “Women’s Studies” are always the first to be called unnecessary and fluffy, which speaks for itself.) Interestingly, something like 75-80% of the students at my liberal arts college end up with advanced degrees, but almost none of them actually plan on that path until they’re finished or nearly finished with their undergraduate careers. I could write a book on this (but several others already have, and I would fall into rants very quickly). I also need to go back to writing an exam, inventing 2 paper topics, and prepping 5 readings for tomorrow. And then I get to do it all over again in 24 hours.
Read PZ’s discussion of the problem, and the hundred+ comments that follow, a few of which are beautiful and lucid, and many of which are indicative of exactly the problem.
Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Blurb, Critical Thinking?, Digital Culture, Technology
February 9, 2009 at 4:58 pm
“I actually am optimistic about technological progress, and I think some of the things he talks about (nanotechnology, AI, etc.) will come to pass. But I do not believe in the Singularity at all.” PZ Myers at Pharyngula rocks my fucking world in every possible way. AND he likes Amanda Palmer. He must be running for Atheist Sainthood.