Thought Itself

Good morning, Ethics folks!

Hopefully you are continuing, and happy.

By now, you should have read over some of the first lectures, and are thinking about ideas for your first four page paper.  Email me if you have questions about the material or papers.  Remember, all work, the three papers, are due at the end of the course, so you have plenty of time, but put in steady work.  Take notes, write down your thoughts, and then rewrite them, and add to them, to turn them into focused work for your papers.

I am available for chats, and at whatever time is convenient, if it works for me as well.  Not many are signing up for chats from 9 to 11 am, so if later works better for you, let me know.

We will be having the group chat from 11 am to noon on Zoom today, which is optional.  Email me at ericgerlach@gmail.com before or after 11 to join us.

Happiness,

Eric

There are two cats hiding here, one a bit more sleepy, in what is almost my new set up for making videos.

I was trying to figure out what Trump had going on with Turkey, the country, today.

I accidentally found this Turkish news story about a rock that looks like our dear leader.

Good morning, Ethics class!

I hope you and yours are all happy and healthy.

I have been working on videos for the lectures, which is taking a bit.  Many apologies, and no excuses.

Email me if you want to chat about the material or larger questions of life to set up an appointment from 9am to 11am today, or want to join the optional group chat from 11am to noon.

Take your time working your way through the material, and begin planning out your first essay by reading the first lectures and finding ideas you love or hate that you want to argue about.

Much happiness!

Good morning, Ethics class!

I will be available for one on one chat from 9 am to 11 this morning, and shared group chat from 11 to noon to discuss the class and material for those who want to join.  Please email me at ericgerlach@gmail.com if you want to chat one on one or join the group chat.  Both are optional.

I will be producing videos for the first three lectures over the next few days.  I hope to have those up as soon as possible.  I will be posting the videos here, on the main page of my website, as they are produced.

Much happiness, and Ethics to you!

Hope everyone is OK, given the crazy.  Welcome to BCC Summer 2020 Ethics to the ethics students.  Please visit the class website, where I have posted lectures on Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Greek, Chinese, German, British and American ethics, and will continue to illustrate with videos as we continue.  Much health and happiness, as much as you and yours can get.

I am a quarter Scottish, and all of me is a fan of surreal humor, particularly jokes that help us deal with terrible problems.  I had never heard of the Jeely Piece song, but I found it watching a video called How Scottish Are You? that mentioned the song is a favorite, particularly of the struggling and poor people of Glasgow, Scottish Detroit.  The song was written about the hungry children in Glasgow highrise public housing by Adam McNaughton in 1967, and popularly sung by Matt McGinn, but the song isn’t on McGinn’s greatest hits.

The song lyrics, translated for non-Scots like three-quarters of me, sing that you can’t throw a jelly sandwich out of a twenty story apartment building window, from mother to hungry kid playing in the street, as 700 hungry kids can testify, as whether or not it’s butter, cheese or jelly, the odds are 99 to 1 it will hit the ground.  With each verse, the singer’s mother threw a sandwich down each day, but the first day it flew up into the sky and now the kid can see it each day as it orbits the earth, the second day it hit a pilot in the face, who went into a war flashback, and the third time it disappeared into the Salvation Army’s tuba.  The final verse sings that they’re trying to apply to Oxfam for aid, and going to march to the center of town for civil rights, such as no more housing projects over sandwich-flinging heights.  The song remains a chilren’s favorite in Scotland, and many Scots say they remember singing it from school.