Sunday, April 26, 2009

Sunday, study list

Sometimes I am busy with taking things in. Lately I have been reading non-fiction. The book 1491 by Charles C. Mann is highly interesting to me, a serious review of the latest research and scholarship on what the world lost and gained when European man found his way into the Americas. It is now quite clear that the sophistications of civilized Indians were in certain ways and at certain times far in advance of other civilizations elsewhere on the planet. Things kept happening, as they do everywhere. They Maya were their own worst enemy, for example, with help from their neighbors before the Europeans came. But the worst things that happened to Indians were the inadvertent plagues brought by Europeans post Columbus. The diseases swept the Indian cultures prior to the actual arrival of European man anywhere except the Eastern coastlines in North America. Disease was the primary ruination of the Inca. There is no longer any question of this, though as late as the Eighties it was still in some question. The Indian populations prior to Columbus throughout the Americas was quite high, more than in Europe by far, so successful were the Indian ways of managing their land. Agriculture was everywhere and many forests were actually managed to enhance edible plants. But by the time Europeans found these locations, the Indians had already been wiped out by plagues and their works lay fallow.

Now I am reading Steven Pinker's The Stuff Of Thought, subtitled Language As A Window Into Human Nature. Pinker is a psychologist attached to Harvard, but he mainly works as a Linguist, using language to study mind.

On the telly, as an alternative to ordinary programming, I have currently the course Dark Matter, Dark Energy: The Dark Side Of The Universe, offered through the Teaching Company, taught by Professor Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology. Backed up waiting is another course Quantum Mechanics: The Physics Of The Microscopic World, taught by Professor Benjamin Schumacher, Kenyon College. These are not nuts and bolts, heavy math courses. They are in depth survey courses.

I have used the Teaching Company many times, taking several music courses, science and philosophy courses, religious studies and linguistics. This is an excellent option for continuing education as long as you don't care about degrees and transcripts, a way to gain college level learning in a really wide range of subjects, all on cd or dvd and offered with a guide and as an extra, full course transcripts if you want. The company emphasizes the humanities, literature, history, music and art, but also economics, science and math. More.

The costs are reasonable when you use the sales they run, basically cheaper then per unit than college is.

7 comments:

  1. you are in a tamasic mood... you have lots of things in your mind to tell your friends... but you have not written even a word on any blog... you have just tried to pass through a wall... with your words... but the mood is so sticky... the words do not dance...
    you decide to give up... to turn off the computer when a new mail pops up...
    wow... a poet... who dances beautifully with his words... you follow him and see he's viewing the world from a WALL...

    and what should we call this?
    quantum entanglement?

    the mood changes... once again you can repeat your mantra... poetry saves... poetry heals...
    always there are some wounds... and always words heal through poetry...

    thanks dear healer/poet for dropping by my corner...

    will come later to read you...

    namaste!

    me too dance with words...

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  2. Entanglement indeed. Near the end of the Shah, my mother father sister all were in Tehran for two years. 1965-1967. Then I was with my mother and father in East Pakistan, 1967-1969, now Bangladesh, in Dhaka. Now I am a follower as I can be of Hafiz, who was told to write a poem a day.

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  3. the fall of the Shah was in 1979..

    1965 is another important date... i was born in that year!!!
    :D

    i feel Hafez in your poetry... the way you look at life and love...

    happy to meet you, friend...
    really enjoyed this post... seems my mind can feast here each time i drop in...

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  4. I always like to hear what people are reading. The Teaching Comapny sounds good.

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  5. HB, I know the fall of the Shah was later. I have an old friend who had the mainframe computer business locked up, the agent for the US computer industry in Iran. He married a Persian, Ferie is her name. They had to escape.

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  6. Lucy, The Teaching Company is just another kind of school for those interested. It costs like auditing a course does in the school setting.

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  7. yes... many escaped... and are... and will...

    what will remain?
    :(

    ReplyDelete

The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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