1008 - 1037 Responses to student improvements and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, i.e. DON'T PANIC !

Message no. 1008[Branch from no. 952] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, May 21, 2007 5:37pm Subject: Re: Relational Summary

Indeed Daniella, Architecture is a powerful tool to control the mind as you have said. Read about the work of the architect known as LE CORBUSIER and you will see how he wanted to use architecture to control the public. His style is still used to that effect today, and many people find it hideous (although his original work was rather inspired!).

Le Corbusier's most famous line is "A House is a Machine to Live in" -- he would have never understood your mother's love of the baked clay look of the paint in her room -- he would have prefered a dining room that got people to efficiently consume their nutrients as quickly as possible and then get back to work. His attitude made a lot of cafeteria designers go for ugly functionalism that creates a higher turn over.

Nice summary!

Message no. 1010[Branch from no. 964] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, May 21, 2007 5:40pm Subject: Re: summary

Glad to see how a personal experience with the correctional system has influenced your thoughts about utopia. I also now feel that we must eliminate abuse from all systems -- punishment is not a way to prevent crime, in fact it breeds it!

Message no. 1026[Branch from no. 1013] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 5:25am Subject: Re: chapter 7-janita

That is so true Danilea, and the trick of learning and giving yourself a powerful education as a life long learner is to find a way to relate EVERYTHING to your own life history. It seems hard at first (what is my relationship to statistical mechanics, or stained glass making, for example?) but it turns out that if you dig a little bit, you will find you are related to everything.

Personally I believe this is because we are all the creation of the one and only loving God, and thus we are all connected. Learning is about finding those connections.

As written in THE HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY:

"...since every piece of matter in the Universe is in someway affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every Galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake."

You may also be familiar with the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" which shows that we are all connected to everybody else by an average of six other people (six degrees of separation). This also applies to every TOPIC in the world. Once you find your connection, away you go! You can write, muse, talk for hours....

It is all about relating to yourself, isn't it?

Glad you have made that discovery!

Message no. 1027[Branch from no. 1014] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 5:34am Subject: Re: Summary

Your story about the effect of changing the conditions of the bar you worked in are inspiring! I will use this anecdote in my future discussions about how environment affects behavior. Thanks for that incredible piece of evidence!

That is what makes these relational summaries so valuable -- you add your own data to an ever growing pool of data that can be used to make society a better place! You see, you can make a real difference, just by reporting your experiences in a context.

Now you may get an idea for why I conduct the course the way I do -- I am doing research, and your relational summaries are, in effect, survey responses. The "questions" in my survey are the topics in the chapters, the answers are what you report about your experiences. This way the entire class acts as a giant laboratory for environment and the psychology of behavior! I have learned, from you guys, how changing the atmosphere of a bar affects business, about how chaning the environment in a hospital or old age home affects the people within them etc...

Thanks!

Message no. 1028[Branch from no. 987] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 5:47am Subject: Re: relational summary

Keep turning those lights off Daniela!! I do the same thing! It is an ethic we must all adopt! And I loved your story about the ticket for the Chicken McNuggets litter -- I will tell this to people here in Cairo. The other night, just outside the McDonald's drive through, a man and his friends were about to throw their entire bag of trash out the window at my feet. I glared at the man and he thought better of it. So instead he drove a hundred feet down the road, then stopped and threw the whole bag into a garden and then sped off! Wish I had the ability to write a ticket, or that the police (who were standing right there doing nothing, as usual) cared!

In fact, Egypt could raise a lot of money fining polluters and litterers!

Thanks for the insights in your summary!

Message no. 1037[Branch from no. 1032] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 4:14pm Subject: Re: Chapter 2 redo-

This was great Janita! I really enjoyed how you linked the chapter to the development of your son and to your own dawning awareness of how your behavior impacted others and your environment. Well done!