9islands

Found this resource page for some great lectures from the Townsend Center at UCBerkeley. I went to the Terry Eagleton: Death of Criticism? lecture last month and the panel discussion with Bill Viola who also gave a lecture titled The Movement in the Moving Image. And just finished listening to Rebecca Solnit on gardens. Nice stuff.

Barry Schwartz, psychologist, Swarthmore College: “Money isn’t a natural part of anything we do. It’s not a part of practicing medicine. You know, the natural thing to practicing medicine is healing people. Getting paid for it is unnatural, similarly with law and with any profession, teaching. So, maybe what happens is that what money does is, it disconnects people from the real point and purpose of their activity.”-What Drives Motivation in the Modern Workplace, PBS Newshour, April 15, 2010 (video)

An Open Mind, April 8, 2010 Education re-imagined with online courseware (nytimes)

Gift economy (wikipedia)

The Gift Economy by David Cheal (1988)

“Shame on you.” Friday morning in the rain. KTVU coverage (with a familiar face).

This video includes a great discussion on the growing privatization of public education with Bob Samuels, president of the UC American Federation of Teachers.
Video from November 17 – a discussion with Laura Nader, professor of social cultural anthropology, Ananya Roy, Professor in the Department of City & Regional Planning, Blanca Misse, UC Berkeley graduate student and organizer, and Michael Cohen, lecturer in American studies and co-chair of the Solidarity Alliance.

Just came across a new project by the Van Gogh Museum which includes a series of books and a website with all 902 letters from and to Van Gogh – annotated, illustrated and searchable.
Here is the Guardian article.

Had to post this on the eve of my first furlough day at SJSU. Nicely done. Hope the students get out there tomorrow.

This is part 2 of 12 from a lecture at the Bled Forum, March 2009. Zizek makes a good case for uselessness, “…we should remember that all great discoveries were bi-products.”