KUBoK Training

Training for the optional KUBoK assignment will take place on Wednesday 9 February at 7 pm in AF 102. This training is required for anyone volunteering for KUBoK.

The Line Between Humans and Animals Just Got More Blurred

This story from NPR is about a study of prairie dog communication. The scientists discovered that they made different warning calls for different threats and were even capable of distinguishing different colors and shapes.

Cities and the Immune System

Denser populations have higher risks for epidemic diseases, but this new study featured on National Geographic argues that the payoff was the evolution of more resilient human populations.

Brahman, the Greeks, and the Scale of the Universe

One of the unifying ideas behind the Indian concept of Brahman and Greek rationalism is the inability of the human senses to perceive reality as it truly exists. For Indians this idea was a gateway into pondering the infinite nature of the universe and compare it to the miniscule role of the individual life in it to put suffering in perspective. For the Greeks it opened the door to metaphysics and their explorations of the world using the mind rather than the senses.

This link is to an interactive website that shows the relative sizes of things from the infinitesimally small to the infinitesimally large. On this scale humans are little past the midpoint towards the large, which is surprising considering the size of the observable universe beyond our solar system. Apparently there is an entire universe below what we are capable of seeing.

This brief piece from NPR is about an extinct civilization in present-day Phoenix AZ. It was a farming civilization that died out because of overpopulation combined with climate change. The remnants have been largely covered up by the modern city, much like past civilizations are so often built on top of one another. It raises some interesting questions about preservation, why humans prefer certain locations for settlement, and the more existential question of how many societies have come and gone without our having ever known about them.

Orientalism in Modern Cinema

Orientalism is a term scholars use to describe the romanticization of the Near and Far East, usually by projecting the desires generated by our disillusionment with the modern Western world onto an exotic, foreign tableau. In this sense, the Orient is viewed as the antithesis of the West, either as a purer, more spiritual, timeless place waiting for Westerners to come and discover themselves, or as a confusing, untamed, and irrational place where Western norms break down. Much like the dichotomy of the Noble Savage/Cannibal in the Western imagination of the New World, both rely on stereotypes and placing the foreign into Western mental categories.

Orientalism arguably goes back to the ancient Greeks, who emphasized the foreignness of their Persian adversaries. Modern orientalism is a product of the Age of Exploration, the Enlightenment, and went hand-in-hand with imperialism. It continues to inform many of our views of the East. It is important to understand it as a cultural process because it so often limits our ability to understand Asia on its own terms. While these misunderstandings aren't always harmful, it is important to realize that they are there, and that just as we approach the foreign with our own mental toolbox, the foreign also approaches us with theirs'.

This article from NPR describes orientalism using examples from modern cinema, including the new film Eat, Pray, Love.

Symbolic Thinking and Human Evolution

Just like the line between human and animal can be very blurry, so too can the line between pre-human and human. This article from NPR argues that an important element in defining humans is the capacity for symbolic thought, which forms the basis for language and culture.