Up@dawn 2.0

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Quizzes June 20

Let's resolve, those of us who want to, to try harder to (1) be peripatetic next time, for at least a few minutes, and (2) finish in time to adjourn to the Green Dragon or elsewhere by 8 pm.

Post your quiz questions from every 8th or 9th page (or so-but if you have a good question nobody else has asked, don't worry about what page it's on) in the comments section below, on both Summer for the Gods AND Trials of the Monkey... and post your Discussion Questions, comments, et al. Keep track of all your posts in a dated log, so you can claim your bases and runs next time on the scorecard.

SG 3-4

1. How did the Scopes Trial alter the ACLU's approach to cases involving religious expression? (60)

2. When and why was the National Civil Liberties Bureau established? (61)

3. What did the postal service ban right after the formation of the National Civil Liberties Bureau? (62)

4. The Lusk committee was formed by the legislature for what purpose? (64)

5. What was the mission of the newly formed American Civil Liberties Union? What cause did they now serve? (65)

6. In the Schenck case Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated the extent of constitutional protection for political speech. "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create" a what? (66).

7. What "other means," besides the courts, did the ACLU use to support free speech? (67)

8. [Sarah]

9. What kept the ACLU in close contact with Clarence Darrow? (69)

10. What famous case of alleged religious censorship took place in 1878? (76)

11. How did Dayton's promotional book respond to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's question "Why Dayton?" (87)

12. What was Scopes's principal argument? (95)

13. What did Darrow say we'd still be doing, if WJB's ideas concerning freedom of thought and expression existed throughout history? (103)
...



TM 7-11

1. What is the consequence of Chapman's "battle with education"? (66)

2. Who was Nathan Leopold, and what did he believe himself to be? (74)

3. What does Chapman not remember, from his childhood? (90) [Found nothing to ask on 82]

4. Descendants of great men tend to have what, acc'ing to Chapman? (98)

5.

6.

7.

8. [Sarah]

...

DQs

  • I have a bumper sticker, issued not long after 9/11, that says "Oh well-I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway"... Is that attitude still prevalent today, or even moreso?
  • Do you have "faith in the inevitablity of social progress" or a "majoritarian view of democracy"? (62) How would you define social progress? Under what conditions is it possible? What's your current attitude towards democratic majorities?
  • "Most states outlawed the possession or display of either the red flag of communism or the black flag of anarchism." (64) What is it about flags that makes some people so incensed and reactionary?
  •  How has the ACLU's mission changed since its inception? Do you approve?
  • Do you think the form of "speech" we saw in those violent Klan demonstrations in Charlottesville and elsewhere met the "clear and present danger" standard? How do we determine, in advance, when some forms of expression are unacceptable?
  • Was John Stuart Mill right to say that the best remedy for false or injurious speech is more speech? When does speech constitute a harm that infringes others' rights?
  • Are the rights of those who hold unpopular views adequately respected and protected in our country today?
  • Is Nietzsche's philosophy of self-overcoming and the "Ubermensch" relevant to a proper understanding and application of evolutionary theory in any way?
  • Larson says Dayton hasn't changed a bit. In what ways is that good, and in what ways is the stasis of small-town life debilitating for its citizens and for the nation (given the present electoral tilt that adds extra weight to sparsely-populated Red spaces)? Does evolution's "change or die" moral bode ill for such places?
  • Chapman seems to have inherited his mother's propensity for unhappiness. What would Darwin say?
  • Chapman has a deep fear of authority, which he attributes to bad early school experiences. Can you relate?
  • It's "not possible to teach biology without teaching evolution" (69), and yet it happens all the time in America. What's to be done about that?
  • Both Scopes and Darrow had freethinking fathers. Do you think freethinkers are more likely to spawn other freethinkers? Or is it just as likely that such independence of mind is an opposite reaction to narrowminded parentage?
  • What do you think of Darrow's psychological determinism? Can it be theoretically possible but criminologically impracticable?
  • Is America "infested" with serial killers, rapists, pedophiles etc.? (78) (And is the incidence of that demographic NOT coincident with immigration numbers?)
  • Do we tend to emphasize our negative inheritance (like Chapman's depressive and self-abnegating tendencies) more than our positive (like, perhaps, his facility with verbal expression)? Can we change such a tendency? Or is it cooked in, predetermined?
  • "I am only really comfortable when 'I' am lost." 85) The Buddhists would agree, but see it as an aspirational ideal and not an existential problem. What's your view of self-consciousness?
  • Another fathers day question: How much of Chapman's personal distress might be due to a lack of early paternal attention and too-few occasions of the  "intense joy of being alone with my father"? (89)
  • Is it possible to be "allergic to life"? 90
  • Is sadness and depression an evolutionary mistake? Or has it some kind of adaptive benefit?
  • What's your view of "Heyall"? Are you, like me, figuratively "from England" on this? 111,114**
  • Any comment on Chapman's "rather sweet dirty old man" observations, which are decidedly out of step with current popular thinking on the subject. Is he wrong? Are we?
  • Do you agree that "we have walked far" in 3.6 billion years? Isn't that something we should take some modest pride in, "from so simple a beginning" etc.?

**  "There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He
believed in Hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all remember the sorts of things that Socrates was saying when he was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to people who did not agree with him."

Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

[Continue posting your quiz questions from every 8th or 9th page, or so, in the comments section below... and also post your Discussion Questions, comments, links, et al. Keep track of all your posts in a dated log, so you can claim your bases and runs next time on the scorecard. If you wish we can split the job this way: those doing even-numbered intervals (every 2d, 4th, 6th, or 8th page) take the first half of the material, those doing odd intervals (1st, 3d, 5th, 7th, 9th) take the second half. In this week's TM assignment, the halfway point is p.100.]
==


Did humans evolve from monkeys or from fish? In this enlightening talk, ichthyologist and TED Fellow Prosanta Chakrabarty dispels some hardwired myths about evolution, encouraging us to remember that we're a small part of a complex, four-billion-year process -- and not the end of the line. "We're not the goal of evolution," Chakrabarty says. "Think of us all as young leaves on this ancient and gigantic tree of life -- connected by invisible branches not just to each other, but to our extinct relatives and our evolutionary ancestors." 
I always have to start my classes by dispelling some hardwired myths, because without really knowing it, many of us were taught evolution wrong.
For instance, we're taught to say "the theory of evolution." There are actually many theories, and just like the process itself, the ones that best fit the data are the ones that survive to this day. The one we know best is Darwinian natural selection. That's the process by which organisms that best fit an environment survive and get to reproduce, while those that are less fit slowly die off. And that's it.Evolution is as simple as that, and it's a fact.
Evolution is a fact as much as the "theory of gravity." You can prove it just as easily. You just need to look at your bellybutton that you share with other placental mammals, or your backbone that you share with other vertebrates, or your DNA that you share with all other life on earth. Those traits didn't pop up in humans. They were passed down from different ancestors to all their descendants, not just us...
(Transcript continues)
==
Carl Sagan's version of everybody's story-







Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives... PBD... pbd25...Sagan on humility(b'p)...humility text

Cosmos, on evolution. “Some 3.6 million years ago, in what is now northern Tanzania, a volcano erupted, the resulting cloud of ash covering the surrounding savannahs. In 1979, the paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey found in that ash footprints - the footprints, she believes, of an early hominid, perhaps an ancestor of all the people on the Earth today. And 380,000 kilometers away, in a flat dry plain that humans have in a moment of optimism called the Sea of Tranquility, there is another footprint, left by the first human to walk another world. We have come far in 3.6 million years, and in 4.6 billion and in 15 billion.

For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”

Cosmic calendar (NDT, CS)

Newly discovered early human footprints at Site S in Laetoli, Tanzania (Image Credit: Raffaello Pellizzon)

3.6 million years ago, a group of Australopithecus afarensis went out for a stroll. 40 years ago, a team lead by famed paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey found the footprints of these hominins at a site in Tanzania called Laetoli. And now today, for the first time since Leakey’s original discovery, scientists describe new footprints from the same site that reveal more about the lives of individuals from the same Australopithecus community... (continues)

  • “My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.”** 
  • “More poignant for us, at Laetoli in Tanzania are the companionable footprints of three real hominids, probably Australopithecus afarensis, walking together 3.6 million years ago in what was then fresh volcanic ash. Who does not wonder what these individuals were to each other, whether they held hands or even talked, and what forgotten errand they shared in a Pliocene dawn?” ― Richard DawkinsThe Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
**


  1.  
    @OSOPHER Jun 16
    Opening night for Fred Rogers was packed ⁦⁩ - maybe there’s still hope for humanity!


"The most radical thing about him was his unwavering commitment to the value of kindness in the face of the world that could seem intent on devising new ways to be mean. “Let’s make the most of this beautiful day,” he would sing at the start of each episode. He made it sound so simple, but also as if he knew just how hard it could be." Review, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"

He was a personalist (whether he knew it or not) and a highly-evolved human... and he had a spontaneous natural affinity with one of our cousins.


Senators are harder to fathom, but he got to them too.



==
A mathematician looks at the evolution of cooperation... Why has cooperation, not competition, always been the key to the evolution of complexity?
==
eSkeptic: on Dr. Kenneth Miller's 

The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will
==
  • “...But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice... I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.” 
  • “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.” 
  • "...disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” 
  • “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” 
  • "...the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."
  • “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed [by the Creator (1st ed. only)] into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” ― Charles Darwin
  1. Don’t “curb,” channel! DO something with your appropriately-righteous indignation at cruelty, barbarity, & Drumpfity. At the very least, SAY something.

  2. Young William James flirted with this variety of stoicism, but eventually fomented a more pragmatic view-what John Lachs calls Stoic Pragmatism.

  3. First three selections are incontestable. "American Philosophy: A Love Story" by makes my Top 5. And John Lachs's "Stoic Pragmatism" deserves a look.

  4. What politics is for: rising above our differences, living well together. Even in the Drumpf era?



  5. Inspired by articles such as “Surviving Thanksgiving When You Hate How Your Family Voted” and "How to talk politics at your family holiday meal," Democratic Theorist, Philosopher, and Vanderbilt Professor Dr. Robert Talisse offers unconventional advice to individuals who want to help stop or reverse political polarization, especially within their own families and communities. With the political divide seemingly growing larger and political perspectives getting more extreme every day in the United States, this talk puts the spotlight on a simple, but undervalued and often overlooked solution that can work for anyone and everyone — no matter their political views. Dr. Robert B. Talisse is a political philosopher based in Nashville, TN. He earned his PhD in Philosophy at the City University of New York, and currently is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Political Science, and Chairperson of the Philosophy Department at Vanderbilt University. Author of over 100 scholarly articles and dozens of books, Talisse specializes in philosophical questions concerning democracy. Specifically, he writes about the problem of sustaining a civil democratic order among citizens who are divided over fundamental moral commitments. This is the topic of his 2009 book, "Democracy and Moral Conflict," and his co-authored work, "Why We Argue (And How We Should)." He has lectured at universities around the world, including Oxford University, The Collège de France, The University of Copenhagen, and Princeton University, among many others. In addition, Talisse hosts two popular podcasts. He is currently writing the book "Putting Politics in its Place." This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. SG 3-4
    1. How did Darrow regard Christianity? (71)
    2. What was the purpose of the AAUP? (77)
    3. In 1924, the ACLU issued its first public statement on academic freedom. What did it say? (81)
    4. In two different cases, Darrow saved defendants who confessed for committing murder from the death penalty. What defense did he use? (100)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alt Quiz Questions
    SG 3-4
    1.Attempts to propagandize public education did not begin in the twenties. In fact, what group founded America’s first public schools during the colonial era? (75).
    2.In 1924 the ACLU issued a statement that offered to defend what? (81).

    TM 7-11
    1.What book did Clarence Darrow read that greatly impressed him? It was written by Judge John P. Altgeld. (71).
    2.What happened to Gloria in the Target store in Los Angeles that injured her back resulting in her being transferred to Atlanta and ultimately moving to Dayton. (81)
    3.What was the event that Matthew remembered vividly between he and his dad when he was four? (89).
    4.According to Matthew, what was Peter’s charm? (98).

    DQ
    1.Why did the suppression of civil liberties increase after WWI rather than abate in the peace time? Are we experiencing something similar with the ending of the Iraq War more or less? Do citizens generally become more conservative after wars end?
    2.Books and movies with sexual content and graphic descriptions are more appealing than books or movies on history or philosophy. Do you agree or disagree? Relate your answer to what you have read so far in Summer of the Gods and Trials of the Monkey.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Quiz questions for SG:

    1. Arthur G. Hays become the most influential lawyer on the ACLU executive committee. What was his mission? (p. 68)
    2. What did Cornell University president have to say about the Vanderbilt University v/ Winchell case? (p.77)
    3. What did George W. Rappleyea write to the Chattanooga Times in reference to Tennessee’s antievolution law? (p. 88)
    4. Name a couple ways Dayton prepared to house the influx of visitors to the city for the trial. (p.96)
    5. What was the projected estimated number of visitors to Dayton for the trial? (p. 105)

    discussion question: What are you thoughts to Bryan’s stance that the taxpayers, being the majority rule, should in control of what is taught in schools? “The absurdity of this suggestion becomes apparent when the liberty is employed to teach anything that the taxpayers really object to.” (P. 104)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Quiz questions for TM:

    1. How does Chapman describe his mother on page 101?
    2. According to the preacher Leland Frazier, what was the ‘jail preacher’ doing at his church? (p.111)
    3. In what way was Chapman describing the ‘violent criminals’ he came into contact with at St. Ann’s? (p. 118)
    4. Who where Chapman’s only friends in school? (p. 122)
    5. What did Chapman hit another student with that ultimately led to his leave from St. Ann’s? (P. 132)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Quiz questions for TM

    1. What effect did John Scopes have on the trial? (80)
    2. What was the TVA's purpose in Dayton, TN? (72)
    3. What radio shows did Matthew remember listening to as a child along with his father? (80)
    4. Who was the Magnolia House built for? (94)

    Discussion Questions

    How has the ACLU evolved since the Scopes trial?

    Did the location of the trial in Dayton have an effect on the outcome of the trial?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your pagination differs from mine, Pete: your 80 is my 89, your 94 is my 104... TVA is discussed on my p.79...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe we different editions. I have the first edition.

      Delete

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