An even greater panoply of evidence is discussed in Gazzaniga’s most recent book.  But I want to draw your attention to an Op-Ed that came out (serendipitously enough) the day we discussed these topics.  David Brooks covers some even more recent studies of this kind and concludes that ‘Nice Guys Finish First’ (this will be news to the pickup artists depicted by Neil Strauss in an earlier reading, but that’s a topic for another day).  Pace Pinker, human nature may not be as Hobbesian as you might think.

Devices have become security blankets. Take the time to wean yourself.

Start by scheduling a few Internet-free hours each day, with your phone turned off. It’s the only way you’ll be able to read anything seriously, whether it’s Plato or Derrida on Plato. (And remember, you’ll get more out of reading Derrida on Plato if you read Plato first.) This will also have the benefit of making you harder to reach, and thus more mysterious and fascinating to new friends and acquaintances.

When you leave your room for class, leave the laptop behind. In a lecture, you’ll only waste your time and your parents’ money, disrespect your professor and annoy whomever is trying to pay attention around you by spending the whole hour on Facebook.

You don’t need a computer to take notes — good note-taking is not transcribing. All that clack, clack, clacking … you’re a student, not a court reporter. And in seminar or discussion sections, get used to being around a table with a dozen other humans, a few books and your ideas. After all, you have the rest of your life to hide behind a screen during meetings.

— CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD, Ph.D. student in English and American literature at Columbia

Below is a photograph taken during budget negotiations in the Connecticut legislature.  I believe you may be inclined to agree with me when I suggest that very few people are capable of resisting computer-based temptation.

“People mistakenly think that tapping is not as distracting as talking,” she said. “In fact, it can be every bit as much if not more distracting. And it’s pretty insulting to the speaker.”

Do you really want to run the risk of insulting a classmate while she’s giving a presentation?  And what about (ahem) the guy who’s responsible for your final grade?

Apropos of tomorrow’s agenda in class, here’s a great website wherein Sir Ian McKellen introduces three very different takes on the famous opening speech of Shakespeare’s Richard III.  This past summer, there was a production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music entitled ‘Richard III:  An Arab Tragedy’.

If there’s time, we might also get a chance to listen to a bit of this multimedia interview with the director, Suleyman al-Bassam.  It’s quite a twist to listen to the video:  al-Bassam translated Shakespeare’s text into (high?) Arabic, then flashed surtitles in re-translated English for the benefit of the American audience.

I no longer inhabit that particular office–or the campus on whose perimeter it was situated, for that matter.  But the blog, once on Movable Type, proved movable.  Who’d have thought that a Web log could exist independent of a physical place?…

Anyhoo, welcome, Political Sociologues.  I had an epiphany at 23:59 while rereading Domhoff’s ‘Who Rules America?’ and decided we should watch this documentary:

Someone else has posted a better-quality version, but the first half has been taken down.  We can switch to it at some point.

Here’s an earlier 2003 documentary by the same director (Jamie Johnson, a Johnson & Johnson heir); I believe it was his first.  I’m not sure how the topic and theme of this one differs from The One Percent…

Karl Mannheim.doc

Tha End

Drew