TOPICS OFFERED FOR FALL
2018
Classes
start September 4th and end December
28th.
Holiday periods are adapted to
by individual class
voting.
1.
(ASG)
ANCIENT SKYGAZERS
When the sun goes down, we turn our
lights on, and
TVs go on. Our ancient ancestors looked up and gazed at the
skies filled with
wonderful specks of light that moved across above them. They
would find
meanings for these objects and take guidance from them. They
would create myths
about them, temples to worship them, and establish structures
to observe them
and maintain detailed records. This would lead to how they
created calendars,
planned cities, and evolved their cultures. These ancient skygazers
laid the basis for modern astronomy. Our goal is to look at
the world of
archeoastronomy and learn of ancient skygazers
and
their beliefs and customs. And to look up at night.
Possible presentation topics:
constellations, ancient
observatories, myths/religions, calendars, temples, planets,
comets/meteors.
Common
Reading: Echo of the Ancient Skies,
the Astronomy of
Lost Civilizations, by Edwin C. Krupp (2004)
2.
(BBC) BITCOIN, BLOCKCHAIN
AND CRYPTOCURRENCY
What is
Bitcoin, and why
should anyone care
about it anyway? It is often associated in the public mind
with instability,
wild market fluctuations and illicit dealings, but its
underlying technology is
poised to launch a revolution. Cryptocurrency
(and the blockchain
technology it is
based on) are here to stay, so rather than ignoring it, this
S/DG will help
demystify it and prepare us to participate in discussions
about an inevitable
crypto-economy.
Possible
presentation topics:
Meanings of the
terms bitcoin,
cryptocurrency, mining
and blockchain
Who is Satoshi
Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin?
How do you
explain “blockchain,” the technology behind cryptocurrency?
The case against
cryptocurrencies: only good for thieves and speculators
The case for
cryptocurrencies: bring the “unbanked” into the world economy
and eliminate
government-controlled banks
What is bitcoin
mining and how is it wrecking the environment?
Who are the
devotees of blockchain and why are they so passionate about
the technology?
If not just for
currency, what is the true significance of blockchain for the
future?
Common Reading: The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain are Challenging the Global Economic World Order, by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey (2016)
3.
(BKT)
BASKETBALL:
GREAT WRITING
ABOUT AMERICA’S
GAME
What is your relationship with
basketball? Do
you get caught up in the national passion
and fever pitch during the NCAA’s March Madness and NBA
finals, or are you
clueless?
This S/DG will focus on the human
side of the game
with all its grit, grace and glory. It is based on Basketball, Great Writing About America’s Game, the
biggest and
best collection of basketball writing ever assembled. It
covers the game in all
its aspects: teams like the Celtic and the Knicks; iconic
superstars like
Kareem, Jordan and Curry; chronology of the game; and
basketball’s place in
American culture.
Basketball should appeal to anyone who likes a
good story, and
there are more than forty stories written by an all-star
roster of journalists,
sportswriters, essayists and the players themselves. (A few years ago, we
had an S/DG that focused
on baseball, and it was fun for all.)
Suggested presentation topics
include: history of the
game; storied teams, iconic players and coaches; notable
victories and
heartbreaks; and the brave new world of analytics.
Common
Reading: Basketball, Great Writing About
America’s Game, edited
by Alexander
Wolff (February
2018)
4.
(CHR) THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY: HOW A FORBIDDEN
RELIGION
SWEPT THE WORLD
Christianity didn’t have to become the dominant religion in the
West. It easily could
have remained a small sect of Judaism. In The Triumph of Christianity, Bart Ehrman, a
master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions,
shows how a
religion whose first believers were twenty or so illiterate
day laborers in a
remote part of the empire became the official religion of
Rome, converting some
thirty million people in just four centuries. The Triumph of Christianity combines deep
knowledge and meticulous
research in an eye-opening, immensely readable narrative that
upends the way we
think about the single most important cultural transformation
our world has
ever seen—one that revolutionized art, music, literature,
philosophy, ethics,
economics, and law.
Presentation topics:
Other religions of the Roman Empire; Early Popes; Early
saints; How
Vatican City came to be; Emperor Constantine.
Common
Reading: The
Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the
World, by Bart Ehrman
(February 2018)
5. (CIV) CIVICS
FOR SENIORS, CITIZENS
THAT IS…
Today’s news is filled with
arguments challenging or
defending various aspects of the government, the
responsibilities of the
various branches, the appropriateness of the various
amendments in society
today, the effectiveness or non-effectiveness of our checks
and balances. Many
of us remember eyes glazing over in a
high school civics class and may feel the need to refresh
ourselves on how the
US government works and why it is set up the way it is. This S/DG will
afford such an opportunity.
Members will take an in-depth look at
everything from the backstory
of the
Constitution to the institution of the Electoral College. Whether you want
to learn about how policies
and laws are created, or just want to become a
better-informed voter, this
S/DG has all the answers--even the ones you
didn't know you were
looking for. Using
the book by Ragone as a
starting point, individual presentations can
provide research on such topics as Due Process and Causes of
Gridlock.
Common Reading: The Everything American Government Book: From the Constitution to Present-Day Elections, All You Need to Understand Our Democratic System, by Nick Ragone (June 2004)
6. (DEM) THE PEOPLE
VS. DEMOCRACY
The
world is in turmoil. From Russia, Turkey, and Egypt to the
United States,
authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result,
democracy itself may
now be at risk.
Two
core components of liberal democracy―individual rights and the
popular
will―are increasingly at war with each other. As the role of
money in
politics soared and important issues were taken out of public
contestation, a
system of “rights without democracy” took hold. Populists who
rail against this
say they want to return power to the people. But in practice
they create
something just as bad: a system of “democracy without rights.”
The consequence,
as Yascha Mounk
shows in a
brilliant and timely book, is that trust in politics is
dwindling. Citizens are
falling out of love with their political system. Democracy is
wilting away.
Drawing on vivid stories and original research, Mounk
identifies three key drivers of voters’ discontent: stagnating
living
standards, fear of multiethnic democracy, and the rise of
social media. To
reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms
that benefit the
many, not the few.
Our common reading, The People
vs. Democracy, is
the first book to describe both how we got here
and what we need to do now. For those unwilling to give up
either individual
rights or the concept of the popular will, Mounk
argues that urgent action is needed, as this may be our last
chance to save
democracy. Note: This book has been recommended across the
political spectrum.
The S/DG members will study the
characteristics of
populism and its rise, and the status of liberal democracy in
the world
(particularly in the United States). Presentations can look at
the history of
populism and how it has fared (e.g., Venezuela, etc.), how
particular countries
lost their democracy, what steps it takes for an authoritarian
government to
replace a democracy, and whether the author’s claim that
younger voters in the
United States prefer an authoritarian leader to a democratic
leader.
Discussions should be lively and
give us an
incentive to look at our democracy’s health and country’s
status.
Common Reading: The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, by Yascha Mounk (March 2018)
7.
(DNA) GHOST DNA
AND THE
NEW SCIENCE OF THE HUMAN PAST
David
Reich describes how the revolution in the ability to sequence
ancient DNA has
changed our understanding of the deep human past. This book
tells the emerging
story of our often-surprising ancestry – the
extraordinary ancient migrations and mixtures of populations
that have made us
who we are. Ever cheaper ways of analyzing DNA has enabled
scientists to look
deeper and thus revise and make changes to existing theories
of our human
ancestry.
Some
4,500 years ago, the Bell Beakers invaded Britain. Roughly 90%
of the genes of
later Britons came from this group, named for the distinctive
shape of their
pottery. Archaeologists long thought that Britain’s early
farmers, who built
Stonehenge five millennia ago, adopted the pots from
continental neighbors.
Instead DNA evidence shows that the farmers were nearly
annihilated by the Bell
Beakers.
This
result, published earlier this year, is one of many recent
insights described
in “Who We Are and How We Got Here,” by Harvard geneticist
David Reich. In its
pages, Mr. Reich documents an extraordinary moment in the
history of science, a
10-year span in which geneticists have gone from the first
practical sequencing
of entire genomes to collating hundreds of genome samples
taken from ancient
bones. Mr. Reich and others are using these data to build a
map of genetic
variation in the ancient world. In the process, they have
solved some old
archaeological problems but also uncovered new mysteries.
Who We Are and How We Got Here chronicles Dr. Reich’s work in five
regions of the
world. The stories are varied: People who brought
Indo-European languages into
Europe seem to have originated in the Yamnaya,
or Pit
Grave, culture of the Ukrainian steppe. Some indigenous
peoples of Brazil carry
a faint trace of DNA not found in other Native Americans—DNA
traces that
resemble the populations of Australia, New Guinea and the
Andaman Islands in
the Bay of Bengal. Up to half of the ancestry of West African
people may
represent an ancient “ghost” population long diverged from
other modern humans.
The above are only a few of the topics that will support
presentations.
Common Reading: Who We Are and How We Got Here, by David Reich (March 2018)
8.
(EAP) EDGAR ALLAN
POE
Come
explore the dark side!
The works of poet and short story
writer Edgar Allan
Poe (1809-1849) influenced many other great writers, including
Hawthorne,
Fitzgerald, Nabokov and Baudelaire. Hailed in France as the
inventor of the
modern detective and psychological novel and of symbolist
poetry, Poe is
remembered in his own country chiefly for his macabre tales
("The Pit and
the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher") and his poem
"The Raven”.
Edgar Allan Poe was a mess of
complications and
perversity – a brilliant
crank, a genteel
necrophile, a plagiarist and hack who stole from his inferiors
yet starved
while his editors grew fat. Considered both insane and a
genius, Poe's own
correspondence supplies a vivid portrait of his brutal
domestic life--the
constant uprootings, the
continual pleas for aid, the
excruciation of his wife's slow death--and the endless (and
frequently absurd)
controversies that Poe carried on in print.
Two texts are suggested for this
course. The first focuses
on Poe's life and character, and examines his writings in
historical, rather
than literary, terms. The second is a compilation of Poe’s
most well-known
works. The class may
choose how they
wish to approach the material: the “Life & Legacy”
book may serve
either as the primary text or the class may prefer to read as
many of Poe’s
works as possible, using the “Life & Legacy” book only as
background
information.
Presentation
topics:
Background &
critiques of individual works by Poe
Aspects of the
literary world of the day
Contemporaneous
authors or poets
The Edgar Allan
Poe Museum
Exploration of
Poe’s continuing popularity: e.g., an NFL team is named after
his poem; his
image appears on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
album cover, and on
lunchboxes, bobbleheads and socks.
Common Reading: Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy, by Jeffrey (September 2000)
Supplemental Reading: The
Best of Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, The Cask of
Amontillado, and 30 Others
by Edgar Allen Poe (March 2006) Published
by Prestwick House, Inc
9.
(EHH) THE EXTRAORDINARY HERBERT
HOOVER
The subtitle of the common reading
summarizes this S/DG:
An Extraordinary Life in
Extraordinary
Times. The book is an exemplary biography, exhaustively
researched,
fair-minded, and easy to read.
It
details how Hoover was one of the most peculiar men ever to
win the White House
– a prodigy of ability and insecurity, scruple and fervent
ambition, ruthlessness
and philanthropy. Overly self-reliant Hoover rebuffed the
clamor for vigorous
federal intervention after the crash of 1929.
However brilliant the man, he managed time and again to
put himself on
the wrong side of history.
Possible topics can be the cause of
the depression,
the gold standard, differences between FDR and Hoover
philosophy/programs,
success/failure of New Deal programs, life during the
depression, evolution of
government social programs, Presidential personalities, effect
of European
turmoil in the 1930s, Federal vs State control of programs,
and the evolution
of monetary policy.
Common Reading: Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte (Knopf, October 2017)
10. (ELE)
SIMPLY ELECTRIFYING: THE TECHNOLOGY
THAT CHANGED
THE WORLD
Imagine your life without the
Internet. Without
phones. Without television. Without sprawling cities. Without
the freedom to
continue working and playing after the sun goes down. Electricity plays a
fundamental role not only
in our everyday lives but also in history’s most pivotal
events, from global
climate change and the push for wind- and solar-generated
electricity to
Japan’s nuclear accident at Fukushima and Iran’s pursuit of
nuclear weapons.
Our common reading brings to life
the 250-year
history of electricity through the stories of the men and
women who used it to
transform our world: Benjamin Franklin, James Watt, Michael
Faraday, Samuel
F.B. Morse, Thomas Edison, Samuel Insull,
Albert
Einstein, Rachel Carson, Elon Musk, and more. In the process,
it reveals for
the first time the complete, thrilling, and often-dangerous
story of
electricity’s historic discovery, development, and worldwide
application,
including the full range of factors that shaped the
electricity business over
time—science, technology, law, politics, government
regulation, economics,
business strategy, and culture—before looking forward toward
the exhilarating
prospects for electricity generation and use that will shape
our future.
There are many possible areas for
presentation, including past
inventions and inventors as well as a look to the future,
including battery
technology, electric cars, renewable sources of energy, and
more.
Common
Reading: Simply
Electrifying: The
Technology That
Changed the World, from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk, by Craig R. Roach
(July 25, 2017)
11. (FEN)
FEEL
ENLIGHTENED NOW
If you are discouraged
by the state of
the world, this S/DG will help you feel enlightened now. There
are many aspects
of life which have been improving and will likely continue to
do so. In
2012, Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature used extensive
data to show how the
level of violence in the world has significantly diminished
over time, despite
the impression gained from the news media. His latest book, Enlightenment Now
uses a similar
approach to show that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace,
knowledge, and
happiness are improving worldwide. He
offers 75 graphs with data to illustrate how change has led
to significant
improvements. Pinker
attributes
this to a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that
knowledge
can enhance human flourishing.
On his
blog, Bill Gates cites some of his favorite facts from the
book that show how
the world is improving. They
include:
1.
You’re 37 times less likely to be
killed by a bolt of
lightning than you were at the turn of the century—It’s because we have better weather
prediction
capabilities, improved safety education, and more people
living in cities.
2.
Time spent doing laundry fell from
11.5 hours a week
in 1920 to an hour and a half in 2014. The rise of the washing machine has improved quality of
life by freeing
up time for people—mostly women—to enjoy other pursuits. That
time represents
nearly half a day every week.
3.
You’re way less likely to die on the
job. Every year,
5,000 people die from occupational
accidents in the U.S. But in 1929—when our population was less
than two-fifths
the size it is today—20,000 people died on the job.
This S/DG will examine Pinker’s
messages, methods and conclusions and consider how all this
affects our lives.
Possible research/presentation topics include: Are the studies
he relies on
replicable? Are there significant areas where the conditions
of the world are
getting worse? How does this affect me? Who might be spreading
false
information to increase fear and tensions? Do other
authorities agree or
dispute Pinker’s message? Historical examples of how the
change has evolved as
a result of science and reason practices; individuals at the
forefront for
advancements; examples of ‘magical thinking’ are
helping/hurting the future;
how global issues could be impacted through this process; and
what parts of the
Enlightenment thinking should be preserved in our modern
world.
Common Reading:
Enlightenment
Now: The Case for Reason,
Science, Humanism and Progress, by Steven Pinker
(Viking, February 2018)
12.
(IND) INDIA -
THE NEXT GLOBAL
POWERHOUSE
India won independence in 1947 and
has been an
economic laggard almost ever since. It is the second most
populous country, has
significant natural resources, a large body of educated
people, many highly
successful entrepreneurs, and yet it hasn’t been able to get
its act together.
Many of its best and brightest have emigrated, including to
the USA. It was
held back by the socialism of its early leaders and their
policy of attempting
national self-sufficiency. More recent governments seem to
have turned this
around. India, now the third largest economy in PPP, is
predicted to grow more
rapidly and to become much more prosperous, to have the third
largest military
and the world’s largest middle class.
This S/DG will examine India’s
economy, culture and
politics with a view of what this portends for America and the
world.
Research/presentation topics might include India’s history,
economy, military,
religious strife, vulnerability to climate change, relations
with China, etc.
Common Reading: Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World by Alyssa Ayres (Oxford, January 2018)
13.
(JPN)
THE MAKING OF MODERN
JAPAN
The class will explore the history,
forces and
significant players in the evolution of modern Japan. Possible
presentation
topics include: The Japanese Monarchy; Chinese and Japanese
Relationships; The
Prologue to Pearl Harbor; War in the Pacific; Japan's Defeat,
Reconstruction;
General MacArthur's legacy; Modern Japanese Government,
Culture, Industry,
Military . . . Our goal would be to survey the evolution of modern
Japan from 1900 into
the 21st century.
Common Reading: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, by Herbert Bix (September 2016; Winner of Pulitzer and National Book Critics Circle Awards; A Harper Perennial Publication)
14.
(LAN) THE SEARCH FOR ORIGINS
OF LANGUAGE
This book grows out of Kenneally's
conviction that
investigating the evolution of language is a good and
worthwhile pursuit—a
stance that most in the field of linguistics disparaged until
about 20 years
ago. The result is a book that is as much about evolutionary
biology as it is
about linguistics. We read about work with chimpanzees,
bonobos, parrots and
even robots that are being programmed to develop language
evolutionarily.
Kenneally, who has written about language, science and culture
for the New
Yorker and Discover among others, has a breezily
journalistic style
that is occasionally witty but more often pragmatic, as she
tries to distill
academic and scientific discourses into terms the casual
reader will
understand. She introduces the major players in the field of
linguistics and
behavioral studies—Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, Sue
Savage-Rumbaugh and Philip
Lieberman—as well as countless other anthropologists,
biologists and linguists.
Kenneally's insistence upon seeing human capacity for speech
on an evolutionary
continuum of communication that includes all other animal
species provides a
respite from ideological declamations about human supremacy.
Topics from the book are countless.
The work with
animals has grown dramatically and language use in animals,
how languages
continue to evolve in countries, how Old English differed from
Shakespeare’s
English, etc.
Common Reading: The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language by Christine Kenneally (May 2008; 300 pages)
15. (MOV) BURIED CINEMATIC TREASURES
Do you drive up to Laemmle’s
theaters, buy tickets
online to the Southbay Film
Society, have Netflix on
your bookmark bar? Then you are probably a candidate for this
class on Buried
Cinematic Treasures based on a list by L.A.
Times critics Kenneth Turan
and Justin Chang.
Here is an excerpt from the August 27, 2017 Times
article:
“There’s never been a better time to
be a movie
lover. The sheer volume of titles available, and the speed and
ease with which
consumers can access those titles no matter where they live,
is unprecedented.
But all of those options can
paradoxically make
finding the very best films even more of a challenge. For
every gem waiting to
be discovered (or rediscovered) on a streaming service there
are numerous less
worthy titles crowding them out, and exceptional cinematic
works are still in
danger of slipping through the cracks.
That’s one reason why Times critics Kenneth Turan
and Justin
Chang resolved to collaborate on a list of 25 “buried
treasures” from the last
20 years in cinema. (And took the additional step of adding
five more personal
favorites each on individual lists.)”
Common Reading: There will be no book for this class, only the L.A. Times article with the critics’ reasons for
their choices and
online movie reviews and analysis.
The full
list:
|
“After Life” (1999) |
“Fill the Void” (2013) |
|
“Amreeka”
(2009) |
“The Five Obstructions”
(2004) |
|
“Barbara” (2012) |
“Infernal Affairs” (2004) |
|
“The Beat That My Heart |
“Into Great Silence” (2007) |
|
Skipped” (2005) |
Lady Chatterley” (2007) |
|
“The Best of Youth” (2005) |
“Look at Me” (2005) |
|
“Bloody Sunday”
|
“Love and Death
on Long Island” (1998) |
|
“Bright Star” (2009) |
“Lovely & Amazing”
(2002) |
|
“Child’s Pose” (2014) |
“Lust, Caution” (2007) |
|
“A Christmas Tale” (2008) |
“Middle of Nowhere” (2012) |
|
“City of Life and Death” |
“Midnight Special” (2016) |
|
(2011) |
“Ratcatcher”
(2000) |
|
“The Deep Blue Sea” (2012) |
“Time Out” (2002) |
16.
(ORI) ORIGINALS: HOW NON-CONFORMISTS
MOVE THE WORLD
How many times have you been advised to “think
outside the box?” Have
you ever wondered what that means or how
to do so? In Originals
the author addresses
the challenge of improving the world from the perspective of
becoming original:
choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against
the grain, battle
conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate
new ideas,
policies, and practices without risking it all?
Using surprising studies and stories spanning
business, politics,
sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a
good idea, speak
up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies,
choose the right time
to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers
can nurture
originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures
that welcome
dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups
by highlighting
the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged
Steve Jobs from
three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of
secrecy at the CIA, a
billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing
to criticize him,
and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved
Seinfeld from the
cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking
insights about
rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.
Presentations can focus on any of the millions of
non-conformists who
changed history, from the well-known to those who are less
famous.
Common Reading: Originals: How
Non-Conformists
Move the World by Adam Grant (337 pages;
February 7, 2017)
17. (POL) POLITICAL TRIBES
This class
will look at the
cultural splitting apart that is our present situation and by
understanding it
suggest some hopeful solutions.
Humans are tribal. We need to
belong to
groups. In many parts of the world, the group identities
that matter most
– the ones that people will kill and die for – are ethnic,
religious,
sectarian, or clan-based. But because America tends to
see the world in
terms of nation-states engaged in great ideological battles –
Capitalism vs.
Communism, Democracy vs. Authoritarianism, the “Free World”
vs. the “Axis of
Evil” – we are often spectacularly blind to the power of
tribal politics.
Time and again this blindness has undermined American foreign
policy.
In the Vietnam War, viewing the
conflict through Cold
War blinders, we never saw that most of Vietnam’s
“capitalists” were members of
the hated Chinese minority. Every pro-free-market move we made
helped turn the
Vietnamese people against us. In Iraq, we were stunningly
dismissive of
the hatred between that country’s Sunnis and Shias. If
we want to get our
foreign policy right – so as to not be perpetually caught off
guard and
fighting unwinnable wars – the United States has to come to
grips with
political tribalism abroad.
Just as Washington’s foreign policy
establishment has
been blind to the power of tribal politics outside the
country, so too have
American political elites been oblivious to the group
identities that matter
most to ordinary Americans – and that are tearing the United
States
apart. As the stunning rise of Donald Trump laid bare,
identity politics
have seized both the American left and right in an especially
dangerous,
racially inflected way. In America today, every group
feels threatened:
whites and blacks, Latinos and Asians, men and women, liberals
and
conservatives, and so on. There is a pervasive sense of
collective persecution
and discrimination. On the left, this has given rise to
increasingly
radical and exclusionary rhetoric of privilege and cultural
appropriation. On
the right, it has fueled a disturbing rise in xenophobia and
white nationalism.
Common Reading: Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua (February 2018)
18.
(ROM) THE ROMANOVS
The
Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times,
ruling a sixth of
the world’s surface for three centuries. They turned a
war-ruined principality
into the world’s greatest empire and then lost it all. Their story is of
twenty tsars and tsarinas,
some touched by genius, some by madness--but all inspired by
holy autocracy and
imperial ambition. Ruling Russia was a sacred imperial mission
filled with
danger, as six of the last twelve tsars were murdered.
This S/DG will review the Romanovs’
secret world of
unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by
palace
conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild
extravagance, with a
global cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries and
poets, from Ivan
the Terrible to Tolstoy and Pushkin, to Bismarck, Lincoln,
Queen Victoria and
Lenin. Any one of
these participants in
this imperial environment would make for a good presentation
topic. Other
topics could be the evidence of the
life-style left behind as seen today in the palaces of
Catherine and Peter the
Great; life outside of the elite circle; events globally that
impacted Russia;
and how the excesses contributed to the dramatic change
post-Romanovs.
Common
Reading: The Romanovs: 1613-1918, by Simon Sebag
Montefiore (May 2016)
19. (SHK) SHAKESPEARE:
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
…
With
players standing and with a few props and costumes, we will
do reading walk-throughs
and discussions of the three plays to be chosen.
In
this S/DG you will learn how to research all perspectives of
Shakespeare’s
works — sources of each play upon which
the Bard builds rich
characters and enhances the plots, how to play each
character “in character,”
themes, symbols, images, motifs, commentary on issues of the
day, and all
manner of rhyme and
reason. Class members
each serve on one play’s Board of Directors, responsible
for casting
roles for the repertory and leading discussions based on the
research
— optionally adding
videos, music, and
costumes. For a
glimpse of how we live
the Bard in this S/DG, check out http://omnilore.org/members/Curriculum/SDGs/18a-SHK-Shakespeare to view the Winter/Spring 2018
Shakespeare class’s
website of links to references relevant to our plays and
downloadable
organizing artifacts.
There
are no prerequisites, theatrical or otherwise.
You will find that the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon will
teach us, just as
he’s taught others for four hundred years.
With plenty for the novice as well
as the veteran, it
is a foregone
conclusion members will
leave this class with a fuller understanding of the
masterful story
construction, realistic characters with depth and humanity,
and the rich,
evocative language which have earned William Shakespeare the
title of greatest
writer in the English language.
SHK will be
limited to the first 24 enrollees and will not split.
Common
Reading: Selected
Plays
20. (SPE)
TAMED: TEN SPECIES
THAT CHANGED OUR WORLD
We
are used to the idea of technology transforming our way of
life, but until the
industrial revolution our innovations were largely based on
nature: the
domestication of animals and plants and the products derived
from them, such as
wool, cotton and other fibers, timber and leather. The 10
species on Roberts’s
list are: dogs, wheat, cattle, maize, potatoes, chickens,
rice, horses, apples
and us.
There is a revolution going on in
history – big,
broad-sweep history that attempts to tell the story of the
long march of humanity.
As Alice Roberts’s book exemplifies, we now have a multitude
of paths into the
deep past: “geography, archaeology, history and genetics”, of
which for her the
most important is genetics. Genomes contain a record of
everything that
has happened to DNA since life began – yes, it has been
overwritten
countless times, but key events remain preserved in genomic
amber. “Pots are
not people,” the archaeologists’ adage goes, which means that
a single source
of evidence can be misleading, but when there is mutually
reinforcing evidence
from two, three or more modes of inquiry, it’s possible to
achieve a high
degree of consensus.
A
single base mutation in the human lactase gene was all it took
to enable milk
drinking throughout life.
It is
a teeming subject, about which Roberts is multiply qualified
to write, as an
anatomist, archaeologist, anthropologist, paleo pathologist
and professor of
public engagement in science. She has found a neat approach to
the topic:
ostensibly her theme is the species humans have domesticated
and how this was
accomplished. But it is also an elegant way of recounting the
human story in 10
episodes, from the beginning of agriculture, 11,500 years ago,
to the
birth of written history. Each episode presents multiple
opportunities for a presentation.
Common Reading: Tamed: Ten Species that Changed Our World, by Alice Roberts (October 2017)
21.
(TED) TED TALKS: IDEAS WORTH SPREADING
A click on www.ted.com will take you to an unusual and fascinating
website – TED Talks. TED
is a nonprofit organization devoted to
Ideas Worth Spreading.
It started out
(in 1984) as an annual conference connecting people from
three worlds:
Technology, Entertainment, and Design. TED brings together
some of the world's
most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to
give the talk of
their lives (in 18 minutes).
These are,
for the most part, riveting talks by remarkable people, and
the talks are made
available free to the world online. This
extremely popular class has been offered numerous times by
Omnilore.
*Please
note that all Omnilore participants will do a presentation,
by selecting a
talk and researching the subject and the speaker. The selected TED
talk serves as a nucleus for
the presentation. The Omnilore member provides the group with
the talk chosen
and questions or ideas for consideration leading to
discussion. Group
members watch the talk on their
computers at home and come prepared for informed discussion.
No
Common Reading.
22. (TIE) THE INTANGIBLE ECONOMY IN THE 21st CENTURY
Early in the twenty-first century, a
quiet revolution
occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies
began to invest
more in intangible assets, like design, branding, R&D, and
software, than
in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers.
For all sorts of
businesses, from tech firms and pharma companies to coffee
shops and gyms, the
ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is
increasingly the
main source of long-term success. Our common reading draws on
a range of
rigorous research and calculations to show that American
intangible investment
is on the increase and is now larger than tangible investments
and shows that
the growing importance of intangible assets has also played a
role in some of
the big economic changes of the last decade. Companies can now
easily spread
their ideas across the world, reaping big rewards while
workers may face
restrictions and increased competition.
This S/DG will review how our
economy is changing and
explore possible implications for our lives.
Possible research/presentation topics might include:
forms of capital,
why capitalism works in USA but not so well in some other
countries, the role
of investment in America and the world, the threat to
America’s place in the
world economy, examples of specific companies, statistics used
to justify this
hypothesis or the value of intangibles like branding, etc.
Common Reading: Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake (November 2017)
23. (TSB) THE SPACE BILLIONAIRES
Remember
the
Space Race of the 1960s, culminating with the U.S. moon
landing in
1969? We are now
in the midst of a new
space race, this time not between two Cold War powers but
rather among a group of billionaire entrepreneurs
who are pouring
their fortunes into the epic resurrection of the American
space program. Nearly
a half-century after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, these
Space Barons - most
notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with Richard Branson
and Paul Allen - are
using Silicon Valley-style innovation to dramatically lower
the cost of space
travel and send humans even further than NASA has gone. These
entrepreneurs
have founded some of the biggest brands in the world - Amazon,
Microsoft,
Virgin, Tesla, PayPal - and upended industry after industry.
Now they are
pursuing the biggest disruption of all: space.
The common reading is a dramatic
tale of risk and
high adventure, the birth of a new Space Age, fueled by some
of the world's
richest men as they struggle to end governments' monopoly on
the cosmos. It
is also a story of rivalry - hard-charging
startups warring with established contractors, and the
personal clashes of the
leaders of this new space movement, particularly Musk and
Bezos, as they aim
for the moon and Mars and beyond.
Presentations can address any of the
efforts
currently underway, any of the personalities involved, or
visions for the
future.
Common Reading: The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos, by Christian Davenport (March 2018)