Wednesday, February 23. Enjoy the annual department poetry reading by friends and faculty of the Core, organized this year by Prof. Formichelli as “Poetry’s Closer Contact.” 7 PM at The Castle, 225 Bay State Road. Refreshments will follow.
Affirmative Action performs acts of "corrective justice." Public policy is used to compensate members of a deprived group for prior losses and for gains unfairly achieved by others that resulted from prior governmental action. Corrective justice, the legal philosopher Jules Coleman has noted, is different from a fair allocation of goods. Rather, it identifies interventions which remedy previously unjust decisions that made existing patterns of distribution even more unfair than they otherwise would have been. When is such justice legitimate? How far can its remedies be extended, and on what basis? Can affirmative action as it presently exists, as well as a more inclusive affirmative action, rely on the same principles? How and when can they take race into account?
A panel discussion, hosted by the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.
Featuring
Professor David Eckel, Boston University Religion (and director of the Core Curriculum)
Professor Robert Hefner, Boston University Anthropology
Professor Eugenio Menegon, Boston University History
Moderated by Professor Adil Najam, Director of Pardee Center
Monday, February 14, 2011 at 12:30pm; lunch available from 12 noon. At the Pardee House, 67 Bay State Road, Boston. RSVP to pardee@bu.edu. Seating is limited to 30 participants.
Do you see them? Those monkeys are banging away at their typewriters, trying to type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Every time there’s a problem involving randomness, the monkeys get called into action. But these are not your average monkeys. No, these are gedankenmonkeys. They can madly type 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No banana breaks, no rest stops—just four fingers plus opposable thumb, keystroke after keystroke.
Since most of us don’t have the age of the universe to wait for these monkeys to finish this extraordinary assignment, it’s interesting to see how quickly they can proceed if selection is introduced. The British biologist Richard Dawkins talks about this in his book The Blind Watchmaker; here's a video excerpt of the juicy bits (the gedanken monkeys make their appearance at 4:45; see the original on YouTube source).
It’s impressive to see how quickly the phrase “METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL” (a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet), for example, can be generated with selection. Dawkins goes on to give a picture of how the eye could have evolved thanks to selection. The entire ten minutes is defnitely worth your ten minutes.
Exciting news! Boston's Museum of Science is holding its grand re-opening of their newly-renovated planetarium this Sunday, February 13. This is now the most technologically advanced digital theatre in all of New England! The show chosen for the launch presentation is titled Undiscovered Worlds: The Search Beyond our Sun. The Museum is on the Green Line, at the Museum of Science stop... check it out at least once before the end of the semester! Kalani McDaniel, Core '10/CAS '12 insists: "You will not be disappointed."
This evening at 5 PM in CAs 226, Peter Waelsch from the BU Office of Career Development will be leading a workshop on how to find an internship.
About the presenter: Peter Waelsch has been a career counselor at Boston University since 1992. Previously, he worked in nonprofit and workplace education programs providing career and educational guidance to adults. Before that, he worked in Spain and Germany as an elementary school teacher in international schools. While Peter works with students and alumni from all disciplines, he focuses on College of Arts and Sciences students and graduates.
This free workshop is open to all Core students and alumni, and their guests. If you are unable to attend this session, but would like to suggest a topic for a future career workshop, email Prof. Nelson. Plans are developing for possible additional workshops; keep an eye open in coming weeks for invitations to programs about resume writing, major selection, and using the alumni network to your advantage.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
The Core Blog is a hub for information and media related to the CAS Core Curriculum at Boston University. It will be updated regularly, with photo galleries, interviews, links to related reading online, news of events or activities, and other kinds of content that help connect our Core people—prospective, current, and former students—with each other.
You can stop by here once a week to scroll through the posts, or make this your homepage in order to keep your finger on the pulse of the Core. Either way, we hope you find this to be a pleasant way to strengthen your connection with the great people, the great books, and the great questions we encounter in the Core.
What Is Asia? 
