Lunch Link Learn: Brown-Bag Lecture Series

Professor Sievering will discuss the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent 4th Assessment Report, which was jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Sievering, an IPCC member scientist, will review key points in the Summary for Policymakers. Highlights include:

• Main greenhouse gases (it's not just carbon dioxide)
• Global temperature changes during the 20th and 21st centuries (it’s mostly us!)
• Sea level rise (it’s only just begun)
• Some of Colorado climate change projections (where has all the skiing gone?)

Human society involves numerous hierarchical interactions. For example, armies operate under a military chain of command and in most organizations, including corporations, there is a hierarchy of bosses and workers. Ants are often portrayed in cartoons and other popular media as members of an army or a corporation with a strict chain of command. However, such anthropomorphism is entirely inaccurate. Unlike how they are portrayed in cartoons, colony activity is not regulated by hierarchical or central control mechanisms. In other words, the activity of the thousands to millions of workers that compose a colony is not directed by a boss ant such as the queen. Instead, individual ants must make decisions about what jobs to perform and when to perform them based upon locally attainable pieces of information. I should also note that, unlike in cartoons, ants do not speak, the workers of a colony are all female, and they do not wear little uniforms. In this presentation, Dr. Greene will discuss the organization of ant colonies along with the regulation of work in such a non-hierarchical system.

Ms. Cooper-Morning, cultural diversity coordinator, will lead a discussion on creating a Diversity Awareness Guide for the workplace. The talk will review awareness of our own self attitudes and self programming in relationship to others whose attitudes, backgrounds and beliefs may be different than our own. Through various exercises, we will endeavor to appreciate our differences and guide them into a positive and productive outcome, not only in the workplace, but within our daily lives as well.

Description to come

We often hear that we live in a postfeminist era, suggesting that we have attained gender equality and that feminism no longer matters. Supporters of the idea of postfeminism not only claim that feminism is irrelevant, but that it is dangerous and has failed in its promises of happiness for women. Professor Levine-Clark, Co-Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at UCD, will explore the resistance to feminism in recent US culture, and discuss the continuing significance of feminist perspectives to our understandings of politics, economics, and social relationships.

Einstein appears to have lived more than one life if you compare early biographies with more recent ones. Professor Damrauer will lead a discussion to explore the reasons for this, as well as examine how various factors can influence the public’s perception of a famous figure. How do we judge the truth concerning historical figures? Does it matter?

Having just returned from Beijing, Dr. Kuan-Yi Rose Chang from the Department of Modern Languages will share the latest excitements surrounding the 2008 Summer Olympics. Learn about the auspicious Olympics starting time of 8:08 pm, August 8, 2008. Experience a virtual tour of The Nest, The Bubble and The Egg. Explore the city of Beijing via the subway, city buses or on-foot. Learn practical Mandarin phrases to effectively greet others, ask directions and bargain (with the correct tones!).

The 2008 battle for the Democratic Presidential nomination has exposed the institution of the "superdelegate" to unprecedented scholarly, media and popular attention.  Who are these super-delegates and how did they get such extraordinary super-powers, so that each of their votes for presidential candidates is equal to about 10,000 votes of normal citizens?  Associate Professor Tony Robinson’s presentation will explore a bit of the history and intention of the Democratic Superdelegates, and will examine whether superdelegates performed as intended in 2008.  The talk will also introduce the question of whether it is time to abolish the superdelegate in favor of an unfiltered popular vote for future presidential nominees.

The Western encounter with Buddhism took off as recently as the mid nineteenth century. As a product of European colonial occupation of India and Southeast Asia, comparative religious studies emerged at mid century, and Buddhism was its primary object. In the 1860s to 1890s, hundreds of authors asked questions like “Who was the Buddha?” and “What are the strengths and weaknesses of Buddhism relative to Christianity?”  Buddhist concepts of karma, reincarnation, and nirvana began to appear in literary works. Multiple book-length poems narrating the life of the Buddha were published, one of which became an international bestseller. In many ways, the debates about Buddhism that started in the 1860s set the stage for the New Age movement of the 1960s and determined how we still think about Buddhism. This talk with summarize some of the finds of Jeff Franklin’s book The Lotus and the Lion: Buddhism and the British Empire (Cornell 2008).