Topic of the Week: Am I Like You? Are You Like Me?

Puffins and Penguins

Thursday, June 26, 2003. Ethics:Sometimes we look alike, but it's deceptive. We're not really alike at all. That's true of puffins and penguins. Although they both live in the same endangered habitats, their DNA is unrelated. Today these birds live with the common murre, not because they chose to, but because they ran out of nesting territories. All are water birds that spend most of their time in the water and need sheltered space on land for nesting.

Coincidences like this confuse us. We hear so often "I don't believe in coincidence." But coincidences do happen, and we need to recognize that possibility in trying to think critically. You'll find more on this aspect of puffins and penguins in T.J. Lawson's Amazing Coincidences.

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Announcements:

• Wednesday, July 2, 2003. Arab American Writing : Cecile Sarruf, of Antioch College, is planning to convene a small group of Arab American writers for a creative writing project. She will provide teaching and support, perhaps a reading, and hopefully publication of some of the work, in conjunction with her own work at Antioch College. Anyone interested should contact Jeanne.

• Friday, June 27, 2003. Practicum in Teaching: For those of you who have taken statistics and would like to have the experience of working with statistical interpretation in lived experience, I will offer Soc. 595 practicum credit. We will cover the interpretations as the class does, and I'll ask your help in working with students in the class on the Web. In statistics, and interpretation of statistics, a one on one approach is very helpful. In providing that kind of help, you can cement your own learning. jeanne

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Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search:

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Essays, Links, and Comments

Theoretical Musings for Us by Us

• Modern Social Theory: Basic

  • Aging:

    • Sunday, June 29, 2003. Aging Populations: Aging Europe Finds Its Pension Is Running Out We are accustomed to cosiderable discussion of the aging of the US population. This New York Times article reports that the same problem in Germany may reach crisis proportions by 2050. Backup See also lecture on demographics.

      

  • Culture:

    • Wednesday, July 2, 2003. Prnography: Why Pornography is Haram An Islamic perspective on why pornography is wrong. Particular concern for young people.

      A 12-step guide To Fight Pornography Addiction An Islamic recognition that pornography is addictive with a 12-step guide to wean youth from it. Consider how influential this shows AA to have been. Consider the modernist recognition that situational factors affect decsion-making. Consider that the Islamic site does not suggest curtailing youthful access to the Internet. Consider that the 12-step program sees the problem in the offender or perpetrator and seeks the solution through changing the offender or perpetrator. This is one of the problems with restorative justice. More on all this later.

  • Environmental Issues:

    • Tuesday, July 1, 2003. Water as a Scarce Resource: Surf Your Watershed Suppose you were asked to write a paper on emerging social issues on water in the LA basin. Where would you find the data? How would you use the data in a paper or presentation?

  • Law and Social Policy:

    • Tuesday, July 1, 2003. The Supreme Court: In a Momentous Term, Justices Remake the Law, and the Court By Linda Greenhouse. New York Times, July 1, 2003. At p. A 1. Backup Heavy reading, but well worth the trouble of any who are interested in law and social justice. jeanne

    • Friday, June 27, 2003. Ex post facto crimes: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church Pay attention here to the Court's reasoning for finding unconstitutional California's law on going back to prosecute crimes that occurred so long a go that the statute of limitations is past.

  • Learning Theory:

    • Tuesday, July 1, 2003. Cognitive Learning Theory: Review of Cognitive Learning Theory. The references are mine. I kind of mixed up a backup copy with my own stuff. Sorry. The article is theirs; the references are mine.Will finish it up and separate it out later. jeanne

  • Protest and Public Discourse:

    
    Scanned from the Los Angeles Times of Tuesday, June 24, 2003.

    • Friday, June 27, 2003. The Chilling Effect in Free Speech: Please note particularly the chilling effect of the large and clear California Highway Patrol sign on one policeman's back, with the relatively calm and distressed face of the young woman. This image would probably scare me more than any written warning against attending demonstrations. Cross reference this with visual sociology.

      Related article: Protesters Quietly Decry 'Frankenfood' Backup. . . Essay and discussion questions.

  • Social Class and Ethics:
    • Thursday, June 26, 2003. Ethics: Jason Blair and President Bush and Us Look at social class in terms of privilege that membership in the class gives you. Then compare Jason Blair's and Presdient Bush's class status and their respective actions. Are thics and social class correlated in any way based on your experience of this incident? Could we conclude from that that a large part of the variance in ethics is caused by social class differences?

  • Statistics:
    • Thursday, July 3, 2003. Inductive and Deductive Reasoning: Parts to whole, whole to parts reasoning in comcept mapping.
      

    • Sunday, June 29, 2003. Demographics: Demographics: An Important Control Variable Lecture.
      • Aging Europe Finds Its Pension Is Running Out

  • Visual Sociology:
    • Monday, June 30, 2003. What Is Art? In My House: A Short Essay About Art in Scotland. Judith Findlay. Backup. Wonderful essay on the meaning of art in lived experience. What about public art? What about art in the home? Is art personal? Or is art to be judged objectively? What role does the museum culture play?

    • Sunday, June 29, 2003. Video Analysis of Human Interaction:

      Loehr, Dan, and Lisa Harper. "Commonplace Tools for Studying CommonplaceInteractions: Practitioners' Notes on Entry-Level Video Analysis." Visual Communication Vol. 2, no. 2 (2003): 225-233. "Loehr and Harper review options for using inexpensive video recorders and video annotation software to collect, annotate, and analyze video of human interaction." Received on Sunday from Yannis Scarpelo on International Visual Sociology Association listserv.

  • War and AfterWar:

    
    Agence France-Presse Photo.
    "A child soldier wearing a teddy bear backpack pointed his gun at a photographer on Friday in Monrovia, Liberia."

    • Saturday, June 28, 2003: Children at War: Liberian President Defies Call by Bush to Give Up Post By Somini Sengupta. New York Times. Backup.

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Lived Experience: Emancipatory Narratives

• Thursday, June 26, 2003. Sexual Abuse: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church In this case, I would like you to pay particular attention to the story on restorative justice. It's not up yet. I'll try to put it up this afternoon. For now, just check out the painting. jeanne
  

  Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

KIDS' Stuff
New for Kids

Thursday, June 26, 2003. Conservation:

What Is This?

For a larger image and the answer visit National Wildlife Federation Site June / July 2003.



Thursday, June 26, 2003. Birds: A Red-Necked Phalarope on the eNature.com Site.

Art Shenanigans

• Monday, June 30, 2003. Egon Schiele:

  Intriguing Works Rise in London Sales By Carol Vogel. "[T]he painting is considered especially important by experts who think it is one of Schiele's most powerful late works." New York Times, June 30, 2003. Backup.

• Monday, June 30, 2003. Carlo Zanni: Epic Tales By Carlo Zanni. This link takes you to Zanni's own site.

  Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow Zanni's is the second exhibit listed. The >> marks an active link. Link to CCA Virtual Space for Zanni's Epic Tales. You need sound to appreciate this piece. Come to my office if you can't get sound in the lab.

  Essay and discussion started on Interactive Art: War and AfterWar The work of Carlo Zanni.

• Monday, June 30, 2003. Waht Is Art?: In My House: A Short Essay About Art in Scotland. By Judith Findlay. Sunday, June 29, 2003. Belly Wisdom: I discovered this wonderful sculpture through Lisa Sarasohn's Honoring Your Belly Site. There's a catalog online, and on the Bell Pine Art Farm Site. In China, we bought a Happy Buddha because Arnold looked so much like the Happy Buddha that one woman in Cambodia even went up to Arnold and rubbed his tummy, laughing. We were caught in a rain storm, and none of the others could speak English. But they all understood, and everyone laughed. I never encountered a wonderful woman companion for the Happpy Buddha that I could identify with until I saw Belly Wisdom. I must order one immediately. And the Happy Buddha and Belly Wisdom will have their own special shrine in our house. jeanne

  Belly Wisdom by Debbie Berrow
  at Bell Pine Art Farm in Oregon.

• Friday, June 27, 2003. Videos from the Physics of Fluids Site: Below are links to several of the Quicktime Videos made by physicists who work with fluids. Note that the wonderful patterns artists create sometimes come from nature herself:

  • Visualizing the Flow around Insect Wings Richard J. Bomphrey, Robert B. Srygley, Graham K. Taylor, and Adrian L. R. Thomas. Pictures of a dragonfly in a wind tunnel, and the flow of smoke around its wings. Physics of Fluids, Volume 14, Number 9, September 2002. Backup This one is a pdf file instead of a Quicktime Video, but I thought the dragonfly was particularly interesting. jeanne

  • Breakdown Modes of Swirling Jets with CoFlow M. R. Ruith, University of Southern California, E. Meiburg, University of California, Santa Barbara.

  • Dances in Flatland David Kremers, Caltech, and Alma Gharib, Polytechnic School. "Three dimensional pulses of air, generated by playing musical selections across the flat surface of a soap film stretched on a wire frame."

  • Visualizations of Vortex FilmentsF. Bottausci and P. Petitjeans, Laboratoire de Physique et Mécanique des Milieux Hétérogènes, ESPCI, Paris, France. This is a slightly longer video. You'll see what looks like a green dove flying off the screen to the left at the end.

  • Granular Eruptions: Void Collapse and Jet Formation René Mikkelsen, Michel Versluis, Elmer Koene, Gert-Wim Bruggert, Devaraj van der Meer, Ko van der Weele, and Detlef Lohse, University of Twente. This one is more impressive if you view it on the full size screen. There's a link at the top of the image for doing that, but it takes a longer time to load. jeanne

  • Mixture’s Route to Uniformity by Coalescence Submitted byE. Villermaux and J. Duplat, IRPHE and IUSTI, Marseille, France.

    "The paradigm of the spoon stirring a drop of milk in a cup of coffee is often referred to when discussing mixing. We present the viscous version of it: the straw in a milkshake. Stirring a blob of dye with a rod in a thin layer of a viscous fluid is instructive to understand how a mixture evolves towards uniformity."

Academic Accounting

1. Concept Review for the Week

   Concepts:

   • the law of large numbers
   • coincidence and personal experience
   • qualitative analysis and personal experience

   People:

   • Jason Blair: The young journalist who falsified some of his reports by copying others' work and by failing to check his facts at the New York Times. He was fired for this "crime" against journalism.

   Vocabulary:

   Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search:

   1. From our classes and site:
      • disingenuous: not being candid or truthful; from article on Supreme Court decisions
      • ex post facto: after the fact; retroactively; from article on Supreme Court decisions
      • heuristics: a trial and error approach to problem solving; from Lawson, Everyday Statistical Reasoning

   2. From A.Word.A.Day:
      • Today's Word

2. Reading Preparations for Class and Internet Discussions
   • Theory Preparations, CSUDH
   • Agency Preparations, CSUDH
   • Knowingness Preparations, CSUDH
   • Statistical Preparations, CSUDH
   • Corrections Preparations, UWP
   • Law and Social Justice Preparations, UWP
   • Criminology Preparations, UWP

3. Theses
   • Tuesday, July 1, 2003. Cooperative Writing of Theses: The active theses under Dr. Jack Hassard, Emeritus, at Georgia State University. I wanted you to see that I wasn't the only one doing theses by Internet. jeanne
   • Sunday, June 29, 2003. Millie's Thesis: I discovered a wonderful sculpture called Belly Wisdom on Lisa Sarasohn's Honoring Your Belly Site. Lisa wrote on Sunday to share her thoughts on some of the same issues from your thesis, Millie. Please check out her site, and we'll write to her.

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