No meeting this week

Hey everybody,

We just got done discussing and reading Animal Farm. Quite depressing, but necessary for understanding humanity is the general agreement on this classic.

There will be no meeting this Friday due to midterms, and there will be no meeting next week due to spring break. When we get back, I will give out the Wub and Library stories.

Happy time, people!

The Short List

Hey everybody,

At our last meeting (March 5th) we voted on the big list of suggested texts to study and narrowed it down to a short list:


Short Fiction:

Beyond the Wb by Philip K. Dick
Library of Babylon by Borges
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
Slaughter House 5 by Vonnegut


Short Nonfiction:

Civil Disobedience by Thoreau


Movies:
Clockwork Orange
Waltz with Bashir


We will start by reading Thomas Swift's Modest Proposal (available online) and then for the next week or two Orwell's Animal Farm (available online at gutenberg.au).

I will work on getting the rest of the material together for the coming weeks.

The Board from the last meeting

Ideas from the last meeting

Hey everyone,

At the last meeting, we discussed short works of fiction that fits our theme of Institutions & Ethics. Most of the suggestions were dark novels written in the 1900s about the evils of society which everyone seems to love (go figure). There were also short non-fiction and movies suggested.

This seems to be the sum:

Of the non-fiction essays, Thomas Swift's A Modest Proposal and Thoreau's Civil Disobedience were sure picks for good discussion. Plato's Republic was another non-fiction suggestion.

Of short novels:
Many novels by Orwell (most of what he wrote applies), including Animal Farm, Homage to Catalonia, many by Bradbury, including Fahrenheit 451 and the Illustrated Man, many by Vonnegut, including Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, and Slaughterhouse 5 (again, most anything of what he wrote applies), Brave New World by Huxley, The Dispossessed by LeGuin, and I Robot by Asimov.

Of Movies:
Gattaca was proposed, as well as Surrogates. I would like to add Gilliam's Brazil to the list here.

I have gone ahead and printed out copies of Swift's Modest Proposal for next class. It deals with the popular theme of eating babies! Also, as Matthew has noted, the text from Animal Farm is available online, so starting with these would give me a chance to check out other options. I also purchased I Robot by Asimov, and I think that a story or two from that would be great to discuss.

Next time, we will be talking over what to do when.