Syllabus & Assignments Update

Okay, today, we'll kill some electrons instead of trees... :-)

Tonight, Tao of Pooh and Honors discussion. At right, "The Vinegar tasters."

Thursday, Hotel Rwanda.

Before Thursday, read and listen to the full radio segment at NPR : Paul Rusesabagina, No 'Ordinary Man'

and

Genocide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(As usual, there could be a quiz!)

Tues., April 3:
Read "Soccer vs. McWorld" from Global Issues, to be presented by Joanna & Sarah B.

Thurs., April 5:
EASTER BREAK!

Tues., April 10: Read Pooh, "Spelling Tuesday," and "Cottleston Pie."

Re: "Sticky Power," plus other miscellaneous class links

• Re: Global Urbanization - "The Sound of the City"

"This year, for the first time in human history, more people will live in urban areas than rural areas. Some of the quantitative statistics are staggering. Every day in the world, 200,000 people migrate to cities. Half the new buildings in the world in the next 10 years will be built in China. Mexico City has gone from three million to 20 million. In 1950 50 million people a year crossed national borders mainly from cities - last year it was 840 million." (via Linkfilter)

• Re: Global Warming - Cool the Globe!
  
• Re: Bottled Water's Global "Footprint" - "The True Cost of Bottled Water"

"In summary, the manufacture and transport of that one kilogram bottle of Fiji water consumed... 849 Kilograms of fossil fuel (one litre or .26 gal) and emitted 562 grams of Greenhouse Gases (1.2 pounds). [Plus. uses] nearly seven times as much water used to make it than you actually drink! Staggering is an understatement..."

• Re: World Poverty (about recently released global poverty map)

Re: World population - KQED You Decide: Overpopulation & Chinese one-child laws produce scary results

Re: World Diet - "Hungry Planet" - A photographer visited 24 countries and photographed what 30 different families eat during the course of a typical week... (via Yahoo! Link of the Day) At left, the US. At right, Chad.








• Re: Garrett - "Convince Me" Debate online, all the time!

:-)

Tonight's Links, plus Syllabus, Version "Vista"!

Firstly, quote of the day:

"We don't know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?"

-Rep. Dana Rohrabacher R-CA, on the cause of previous warming cycles

Next, here are the links that Mariya cited tonight...

• http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/?p=89251
• http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/file_depot/0-10000000/0-10000/3390/folder/48524/Fall2005Survey.doc
• http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/?p=VisaMantis

Then, here's that news from today about oil prices...

• Oil Jumps Above $59 Per Barrel - Houston Chronicle

And then, here's the schedule for the remainder of this week and next... (If we have a mega-snow-holiday and are also off Thursday, I'll adjust it accordingly!)

Thursday, Feb. 15:

• Allison-with-2-Ls & Devon: "America's Sticky Power"
• Sarah H.: "The Big Crunch"

Tuesday, Feb. 20: NO CLASS!

Thursday, Feb. 22:

• Harrison & Joanna: "Political Graft"
• Kate & Garrett: "Chile"

At that point, the syllabus is back to normal, whatever "normal" may be! :-)

Remember that I'll collect the NYC deposit of $50 on March 1st! (Go ahead and RSVP as soon as you can with a comment on this email, so I can check hostel-availability!!)

And don't forget to order your Pooh!

Lastly but not leastly, Happy V-Day to some of my favorite "funny valentines"!! :-)

UPDATED: New Book? Plus, Tonight's Presentation...

Dear Class,

Well, you're likely not going to believe this, but I was actually pretty pleased tonight with the discussion of Emergence! (You don't have to like the book, but at least you're not even vaguely apathetic about it!!)

However, my offer still stands... You guys present Johnson & me with an alternative on which we can all reach a consensus by next Thursday, and I'll drop making you read Emergence and we'll read your choice instead! (Otherwise, we pick up reading Emergence again the following week!!)

You may post as a comment here your suggested nominations that I hope might be every bit as good fodder for thoughtful, imaginative (and hopefully impassioned) discussion as Emergence seems to be turning out to be. :-)

Leaping out from a quick glance of the lists of "the best books of 2006": Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change; The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream; The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals; The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed; and the Pulizer-Prize-Winning Polio: An American Story. Then, of course, there were my personal picks of Ishmael & The Ghost Map. Johnson may not like 'em, but I don't exactly hear him making any suggestions! :-)

Last but not least, props to Joanna & Sarah B. for their wonderful presentation today... Nice balance of article analysis synthesized with supplemental concepts, not to mention deft moderation of the subsequent discussion! Does anybody have anything further they'd like to add to the discussion here?

In the meantime, keep up the good work, ya'll!

Have a good weekend!!

Dr. Laughran

P.S. I don't think Johnson ever checks in here himself... So we could plan on doing something fun but harmless and he'd never know, like each person in the class bringing a camera on Tuesday and then everybody insisting on getting up and taking his picture, for example!

;-)

P.P.S. What are we fighting for? Check out these statistics (which, if true, are sad!)

• 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. (more at "Some startling book statistics")

Other Links from Today's Topics

Johnson & I both were very pleased with ya'll's great work tonight! In addition, I think particular kudos are in order for the well-moderated discussion, and for those great moments when you took an angle from the article and then fully developed it with your own spin toward your own personal interests and expertise. I look forward to seeing even more of that!!

Here are some additional links that you might also find interesting...

• KQED You Decide: Ethnic Profiling: An interactive debate! (Garrett should love it... It automatically argues the opposite of whatever position you take!!)


• The Ziggurat of Zealotry - New York Times: A new model for Islamic militarism?


• Bird Flu Monitor: Up-to-the-minute news on developments related to Avian Flu.


• Doctors without Borders: This Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning organization may be doing a lot to address the AIDS epidemic in Africa, but they also do many things besides! Like, for example...

Also in the news today... Millions to go hungry, waterless: climate report - Yahoo! News.

Links for Sarah B. & Jo!

• http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=3409
• http://www.myfootprint.org/
• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/11/051107080830.htm
  

Time Limit on Presentations!

So, while a half hour seemed terribly daunting at first, you see that I've never actually had Honors students ever manage to present in less time than that (even when they were only required to do 15 minutes!)

Remember that you can reasonably assume full acquaintance with the article by your audience, so you don't need to eat up your presentation time by reiterating all of it in detail. A quick synopsis will suffice in order to allow you to be able to go on to explain and facilitate discussion on specific meatier issues from your article.

To recap, keep in mind that we're going to have to keep presentation and discussion of each article or set of articles to 30 minutes, particularly this next class during which we'll have 3 presentations scheduled!

TSA links for Jackie & Harrison

air travel http://www.tsa.gov/311/index.shtm
trains http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/rail/editorial_1060.shtm
mass transit http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/mass/editorial_1033.shtm
buses http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/highway/editorial_1031.shtm