Article from NPR I heard a while back and have been meaning to share.

Here are the links to the articles for each group:

• Hamm, Doakes, Brown, Wilburn: Doc 1
• Prieto, Beatty, Brewer, Little: Doc 2
• Sparks, Owen, Burrows, Von Moses: Doc 3
• Dickens, Bryant, Kay: Doc 4

If your name is not listed, please choose an article.

Answer these questions over “LfBJ” by tomorrow:

1. What are King’s reasons for being in Birmingham?

2. How does King answer to the charge of being an outsider?

3. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” What does this mean for individuals who have ignored the issues of Birmingham? What does this mean today for each of us living in the United States?

4. What are the four basic steps of nonviolent direct action? For each of the steps state the example in Birmingham. Can you think of another example of nonviolent protest which followed these steps?

5. Look over paragraphs 7-9. Why did King and others decide to delay their actions?

6. In paragraph 10, what does King mean by “constructive, nonviolent tension” and how does he define its goal?

7. Paragraph 13 is one of King’s most well-known statements. Choose an historical example which illustrates the point that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

8. Choose three injustices from paragraph 14 to compare to the Bill of Rights and/or the UDHR.

9. In paragraphs 15-17, King describes two types of law. How does he define each? Can you give other examples of unjust laws today?

We will be continuing our discussion of Civil Disobedience and nonviolent protest tomorrow, using the current situation in Burma (Union of Myanmar). Check the article listing on this site for a few I’ve looked over, or check out the Burma Newsladder for more stories.

Choose an article from one of these sources to discuss tomorrow. If your article is persuasive in intent, analyze the rhetoric:

• What is the intended argument?
• How is it presented?
• Give examples.
• Write a reaction of its effectiveness.

If your article is informative, focus on the events.

• Why are there protests?
• What are the protesters trying to change/accomplish?
• How are the protests undertaken?
• Give examples.
• Are the measures being taken by the protesters effective?
• How could/should they be protesting?

Also, answer the two questions from the board. Correct me if I’m wrong:

• When/where was “Letter from Birmingham Jail” first published? What was the impact?
• Who objected to the question of whether the leaders of Project C should ask people to give up their lives for the cause?

If you were unable to annotate your copy of “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” please do so tonight. On a similar topic, here is an opinion piece on the “Jena Six” by Steve Coll, published in The New Yorker.

Missed an article recently? Here’s your chance to make it up:
For extra credit (10 pts), contrast the style (T-DIDLS) of the above article and this one by Richard G. Jones from The New York Times. Keep in mind the objective of each (to persuade and to inform) and their context.

You have one week. You may use these articles for discussion or extra credit, not both.

We will be reading Klosterman’s “The Awe-Inspiring Beauty of Tom Cruise’s Shattered, Troll-like Face” over the weekend, but for those reading Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go who would like to delve deeper into the philosophy of identity, here is a link to Thomas Nagel’s classic essay “What is It Like to Be a Bat?,” published in 1974.

This reading is just for those interested. This is in no way required for a grade, and is not even required for in-class discussion purposes. Some of you showed some interest in this, and I am obliging.

This essay is on par with Hume’s ideas on identity, as both writers are materialists (they believe that mental processes can be reduced to physical phenomena), but in this essay Hegel moves away from typical materialist thinking in that he recognizes the subjective quality of experience. Since we don’t know what it is “like to be a bat,” since we don’t know how our friend interprets the taste of ice cream, there must be a degree of subjectivity involved.

Here is a link to a translation of Descartes’ Meditations. The translation is okay, though I prefer the Cambridge University Press edition, published in 1984. This is the seminal text on Cartesian dualism. If you are interested, read the first, second, and sixth meditations, which cover the basis of his mind/body interaction theory. (Try to ignore the fact that he claims that the “pineal gland” is the connection between mind and body. He has important ideas, whether or not they are absolutely accurate.