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Analects of the Core #171: Life Ascending

December 5, 2012 at 1:00 pm

Expanding further on the works studied in CC106, here is the next analect from Nick Lane’s Life Ascending: The Great Inventions of Evolution: We may not enjoy the fact much, but we’ve recognized since the early 1920′s that going moderately hungry prolongs life. It’s called calorie restriction. Rats fed a balanced diet, but with about [...]

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Analects of the Core #170: Collapse

December 5, 2012 at 12:43 pm

From a book that sometimes plays a part in CC106, Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, here is today’s analect: The Greenland Norse did succeed in creating a unique form of European society, and in surviving for 450 years as Europe’s most remote outpost. We modern Americans should not be too quick [...]

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Goya’s Black Paintings

December 3, 2012 at 12:02 pm

Relating to the class of CC202 where we study Francisco Goya’s art, here is a link to his Black Paintings: http://bit.ly/YHuZBM How the darkness works in these paintings is, of course, open to interpretation.

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Gilgamesh and David Ferry

December 3, 2012 at 11:41 am

In his recent work Gilgamesh: An Epic Obsession (http://bit.ly/TDl2BN), Theodore Ziolkowski takes a look at the ways in which the epic has manifested into our literature, art, music, and popular culture. The students of CC101 experienced this through David Ferry, whose translation of Gilgamesh they read this semester. David Ferry has also written: Bewilderment  (http://bit.ly/RwrwnD), which [...]

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Core goes to The Nutcracker

November 29, 2012 at 7:44 pm
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Analects of the Core #169: Discourse on Method and Meditations

November 29, 2012 at 5:28 pm

Relating to the reading that the students of CC201 have done on Descartes’ work, here is today’s analect: Although in approaching the flame I feel heat, and even though in approaching it a little too closely I feel pain, there is still no reason that can convince me that there is some quality in the [...]

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Lecture: Plato’s Republic

November 29, 2012 at 5:10 pm

On November 20th, Professor Greg Fried (Suffolk University, Department of Philosophy), a long-time friend and colleague of the Core, lectured to the students of CC101 about Plato’s Republic. Here we offer an excerpt from his lecture: MORPHEUS: Do you want to know what it is, Neo? The Matrix is everywhere; it’s all around us, even now in [...]

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Analects of the Core #168: The Odyssey

November 28, 2012 at 3:00 pm

Yesterday’s analect from Paradise Lost can be contrasted with today’s choice: By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—
than rule down here over all the breathless dead. (The Odyssey, 11.556-8)  

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Science Fiction meets John Keats

November 28, 2012 at 12:28 pm

In the spring, CC202 students will get a taste of John Keats’s work. The Core offers an entrée: Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, published in 1989, is named after Keats’s unfinished epic and incorporates many of its themes. Students are encouraged to read this thrilling twist.  

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Daily Photo: Paradise Lost illustration

November 28, 2012 at 11:46 am
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