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What These Ideas Are All About
First off, happy holidays to everyone. What Are These Ideas? has gone through a semester’s worth of posting (with a ton of ideas and problems left to post up and explore on my end). So I figure, it is time to evaluate the progress of this ‘open-source’ education project: A Brief History: Starting out, ...
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Biography of the Ajka, Hungary Toxic Spill, Oct. 4, 2010
Biography of a Disaster: Understanding the Hungarian “RedSludge” Toxic Spill, October 4th, 2010 Section 1 – Introduction to the Disaster as a Deviation from the Norm On Monday, October 4th, 2010, in Ajka, Hungary, a wall in the MAL aluminum waste processing plant’s reservoir collapsed, sending a torrent of liquid toxic waste through the neighboring ...
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Understanding Political Judgement: Václav Havel and Timothy Garton Ash
The Responsibility of Intellectuals and Politicians: Participation is the Cost of Freedom I. Introduction The debate between Václav Havel and Timothy Garton Ash had been labeled by the former as of continual-importance, and by the latter as a problem of a very specific time. However, as a preface to understanding the debate concerning the ...
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Understanding Political Judgements: Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin: Hedgehogs, Foxes, What Is, and What Should Be I. Isaiah Berlin, philosopher, begins one of his most famous essays with a quote from Archilocus: “the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” (436). Though he admits that all overly-simple classifications fall apart if pushed too hard, he uses ...
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Q2L “facebook”
One of my recent obsessions is this school Quest to Learn that I mentioned in an earlier post. This school, that calls itself a “school for digital kids” has a very interesting aspect to it that has caused quite a bit of debate between some friends and i. This is a social network similar to ...
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Specialized Knowledge Production
Something that i have been thinking about quite a bit recently is this idea of not needing a standard education. The thought comes to mind is that if we have the internet, then we have no lack of access to information. The actual information is available to everyone, so there is almost no need anymore ...
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Understanding a Disaster
The following is a basic framework for understanding and analyzing a disaster: Understanding a Disaster: 1. A disaster defined in two parts: a disaster is an extreme deviation/departure from normalcy, and “a disaster is what a disaster does”, as Prof. Lopamudra Banerjee says. This means, to understand and define a disaster, you understand and define what it ...
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Rethinking the Artificial
Here is the final rendition of my paper on mans relationship to the artificial and the necessity of abolishing the notion of the home in order to proceed into the future. Enjoy.