CCK09: On the difficulty of the Connectivist revolution.
This post is for assignment #1 for Stephen Downes and George Siemens Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course, 2009. Connectivism represents a new way of knowing. But if it is correct, it is the way we have been knowing all along, and may not require a leap across an enormous gap to adapt to the new [...]
What is the effect of government competition on the health care market?
I was recently asked to describe how the proposed government competition in the health care market (represented by the “public option” would affect health care costs. I wrote the following to illustrate that the issue is not a simple question of free market vs. government control. Theoretically competition would encourage private insurers to reduce their [...]
The new way to listen to music is “on demand.”
I think there has been a change in how people experience music in the last couple years, brought on by the buildup of services that offer streaming songs. This follows up in the vein of the previous trend in music discovery, illegal downloading, which the music industry labeled “piracy.” The new streaming paradigm avoids the [...]
Knee-Jerking neutrality
I’m on a ton of political email lists from different sides. I saw Dick Armey’s big push to have his anti-big-government rally on 9/12 from both angles, I get ACLU’s updates, environmental letters, NYT news summaries, the whole gamut. I agree and disagree with each source some of the time, but am usually interested to [...]
Transparency, Objectivity and News Curation
What is the value of a journalism outlet that abandons objectivity? Eric Odom, founder of American Liberty Alliance (ALA), the group that launched and organized the tea party movement across the country, announced Friday what he calls a movement-minded news portal and his answer to the the Huffington Post. Read more at Dawn Teo’s blog [...]
Re-Vision of Earth paper (Metaphors of Scientific Advancement)
The class I wrote this for was a unique colloquium in the honors college. It was called “Re-Vision of Earth” and was about the process of scientific revolutions. I continued my exploration of metaphors, trying to pin down what metaphors we use to describe humanity’s process of scientific advancement. Is it a matter of increasing [...]
Causes of War paper
The class I wrote this paper for was called “Causes of War,” and it was highly theoretical. In this paper, I analyzed and rejected realist explanations for the outbreak of World War I in favor of an understanding that individuals who desired war acted to bring it about. Causes of War Final Paper-Elite-led violence and [...]
Applying Theories of Nationalism to Ethnic Violence
In my International Relations class, Spring 2006, I wrote a paper on “Applying Theories of Nationalism to Ethnic Violence: Can we explain, predict and stop Ethnic violence before it starts?” Theories of Ethnic Violence [.DOC]
Constitutional Law paper on Gitmo detainee
My Winter 2006 ConLaw class was fascinating, particularly because of the focus on contemporary Supreme Court cases. Our final assignment was to propose a ruling on a “War on Terror” detainee case pending before the court, Mahdi v. Rumsfeld. Ahmad Mahdi (For some reason our teacher called him that instead of “Ahmad Hamdan”) is currently [...]
Policy Analysis: Offshoring the Economy
In the beginning of my third year, I took a political economy course and wrote an analysis of the problem of American companies outsourcing labor to lower-cost foreign workers. I felt that the domestic economy had to meet to this pressure by developing skilled workers who could move the state-of-the-art ahead, because of the weaknesses [...]
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