| The Shocking History of My People and My State |
[01 Sep 2015|12:04pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/classes/2015/09/take_an_ethnic_studies_class_to_understand_history_and_racism_asian_american.html Though the country’s first ethnic studies department was born at University of California–Berkeley in 1969 and the first ethnic studies Ph.D. program was established there in the 1980s, the discipline is still widely derided on that campus. People tend to think ethnic studies classes are full of disgruntled brown people ranting about “the system,” “oppression,” and “white/male/class privilege.” A common response to saying you are an ethnic studies major goes something like “Oh, so you don’t care about having a job.”
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| The Limits of Language |
[01 Sep 2015|01:56pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/classes/2015/09/take_a_wittgenstein_class_he_explains_the_problems_of_translating_language.html The best class I took in college was on the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Until that point, I had avoided philosophy of language as simply being too esoteric and hermetic to be of use. David Pears, a prodigious yet modest and approachable figure visiting from Oxford, changed my mind. In large part because of Pears’ instruction, Wittgenstein’s philosophy has been directly relevant to my thinking about computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. When other scholars were thinking that language and thought could be reduced to a universal, logical language, Wittgenstein turned the matter to practical questions and raised incredibly inconvenient questions that gained traction in artificial intelligence in the 1970s, 40 years after he was working on them.
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| Make This Death Not in Vain |
[01 Sep 2015|10:07pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/09/jamycheal_mitchell_died_in_jail_mentally_ill_man_stole_snacks_and_was_denied.html Jamycheal Mitchell died last week in a Virginia jail, waiting for a hospital bed to open up in a mental health facility. He was arrested in April for stealing less than $5 worth of junk food (a Snickers bar, a Mountain Dew, and a Zebra Cake) from a 7-Eleven. He was charged with petty larceny and trespassing, and bond was denied. In May, a judge ordered him moved to a state mental health hospital, but no beds opened up. And so Mitchell sat in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail for four months, possibly starving himself to death, until he was found dead in his cell on the morning of Aug. 19.
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