Posts by: mdimov

A work in progress

A personal thought to those finishing the Core this semester: you are a work in progress. We were recently chatting with Christopher McMullen, a Core alum and Academic Adviser, and the conversation winded down to how the Core Curriculum merely reveals the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg – an introductory […]

Borges! Studied for the first time in CC202

For the first time, CC202 is studying Jorge Luis Borges, and his story The Immortal. Here is a short excerpt from the introduction of our edition, with an epigraph by Francis Bacon: A recent article of interest discusses a stolen first edition of Borges’ first poems. It was supposedly returned to Argentina’s National Library, but there […]

Daodejing & bright vs. dark

This semester, CC102 has delved into the Daodejing and all the wonderful concepts it illuminates. Andrew Klufas, a student in Professor Nelson’s class, sent in an video of interest: What’s The Brightest Thing in the Universe? It’s creator, Vsauce, makes popular and informative videos on Youtube. Here, we see how Core Science meets Core Humanities: There is […]

Dante saving lives

Students of CC102 will remember the Divine Comedy as an exciting read, but also as the story of a man much older than most students. Dante deals, in a way, with his midlife crisis. In The American Conservative, Rob Dreher writes an article about how, at the age of 46, depressed and aimless, he read […]

What would Plato Tweet?

With cerebral momentum from yesterday’s post on why philosophy won’t go away, let’s move on to another question raised by the same author, Rebecca Goldstein: what would Plato Tweet? Goldstein likens the modern social media attention-seeking frenzy to the ancient Greek striving for kleos, which, as students will remember from CC101, is somewhat equivalent to “glory”. […]

Why philosophy won’t go away

Are you living an examined life? No, really, are you? In between texting while walking, daydreaming while note-taking, scrolling while sleeping, and sleeping while strolling, are you living an examined life? It’s ok if you are not. Few are. But it’s an important question to ask oneself, and that’s why philosophy matters. Clancy Martin, in […]

Alumnus Ben Howe & his Core-themed brewery

Ben Howe (CAS ’07), an entrepreneurial Core Curriculum alumnus, has opened a nano brewery and appropriately named it Enlightenment Ales! To our delight, the titles of his individual ales are, in our minds, very much Core-themed: Cosmos, Illumination, Enlightenment. As Ben describes on the company website, the nano brewery makes Bière de Champagne. For the laymen in brewery […]

Gulliver’s Kingdom Theme Park

CC202 started off the academic year with Gulliver’s Travels – an apt text for students who start the semester feeling like giants in one class and like Lilliputians in another. Michael John Grist describes, on his website, what used to be a Gulliver’s Kingdom Theme Park in Japan: Gulliver once rested in the shadow of […]

“It’s over, book… you’re an inferior technology”

An amusing comic strip, on how we choose to read: An interesting read may be our article From Scroll to Screen.

Ancient seals & amulets found in Turkey!

Most Core students start off with Classical antiquity and its myriad cultures. Integral to those cultures is their art, and we keep digging up more of it! Take, for example, the massive discovery of more than six hundred ancient seals and amulets in a sanctuary in Turkey, at the sacred site of the storm and weather […]