Category Archives: Education

Schools, universities, online learning, and WordPress in education.

Next Semester

Economics, Education, Ideas, Jazz, Music

I just finished registering for all my classes and I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out. I don’t have an amazing Monday–Thursday schedule like I did this semester, but the classes should be quite good. Here’s what I ended up with:

  • 3332: Philosophy of Language
  • 1336: U.S. and Texas Constitutions and Politics — Introduction to the constitutions and politics of the United States and Texas, emphasizing constitutional structure, federalism, separation of powers, limited government, public opinion, elections, and civil liberties. Taught by A. Little, who I had this semester for Politics of the Greek Theatre and was great.
  • 3310: Introduction to Political Theory — Recurring themes and problems in the study of politics; draws upon classical and modern works. Taught by the inimitable R. Lence, who is a very colorful character and a fantastic teacher.
  • 3319: Politics of Social Policy — Public policy initiatives in areas of civil rights, welfare, education, human resources, and housing, including criteria for evaluating proper impact. Taught by R. Lineberry, who I haven’t had yet but is one of the “theorists” of the Political Science department.
  • Jazz Band and Lab — Haven’t finalized all this yet because I haven’t heard back from the director about the times.

You’ll notice there are no economics classes there. This is more a result of the classes I’ve taken than a result of changing interests. I still love economics, in fact I’m going to be interning at the Dallas Fed this summer, but the classes and department seem mediocre. Moreover I’ve been wooed by the Political Science department, as my educational experience with their professors and classes have been outstanding.

In further changes for next semester I’ve decided I’m going to start a notes blog. What I really need is some sort of rich-text document management system, but I can make the blogging paradigm fit my needs. Classes can become categories; everything will be searchable, dated, archived, accessible from anywhere, and support various meta-data. What I’ve been doing so far is a combination of text files and folders, and frankly it’s weak. I haven’t decided yet rather I’m going to make it public or not, but even if I do it probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone but me.

Psychological Egoism

Education, Essays, Ideas, Web Standards

Okay you know the drill. This is a paper I turned in today for my Ethics class. It deals with psychological egoism, and if you have any leanings toward this moral theory I’d be interested in hearing your feedback on this. My language is strong in the paper, but that doesn’t mean my mind isn’t open. I didn’t have as much time to put into the print (PDF) version of the paper this time, but it’s still a nicer way to read it than the HTML below.

Every human action is at its root a selfish act; even acts that are altruistic on the surface are primarily motivated by a deeper selfishness — or so a psychological egoist would say. Psychological Egoism is a descriptive theory that rather than suggesting, as ethical or rational egoism does, how people ought to live, suggests how people actually go about their lives. The assumptive nature of the theory introduces a number of possible avenues for refutation, some of which are very compelling. Continue reading Psychological Egoism →

It’s A Beautiful Day

Education, Ideas, Web Standards

Today has been groovy because I finally got my ethics paper back and it got an 8, which was a little disappointing till I checked and remembered that this teacher’s grading scale has 7 and above as an A, so in fact I got a solid A. What paper you ask? Well it’s on Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Argument, and the entirety is available online in PDF and XHTML format through the link above. Which reminds me I still need to make a system to highlight some past notable post.

School Begins Again

Education, Meta

Yesterday was a very good day, today looks like it isn’t going to be that great. My classes are really good (and small!) so far and my schedule couldn’t be better. Now instead of racing across the huge campus between classes I have leisurely strolls. My classes are at times when I never have to drive through traffic, nor must I wake up unnatuarally early.

I start each day with Human Situation, the liturature class that this semester is focusing on modernity. Then alternately I have either Intermediate Macroeconomics, which should be a breeze, or Ethics. My latest class on Mondays and Wednesdays is Politics of the Greek Theatre, which looks like it is going to be quite good, though challenging.

Still, I am amazed at how disorganized the campus is at the beginning of every semester. Parking could not be worse; the lines trail on longer than at the opening of The Two Towers; most of the important parts of the campus website are down due to the high load (you’d think they could predict when it is coming). All that, and I left my OneCard at home, which means I can’t do a lot of the things I need to do today.

There are still issues with the laptop(s), but that’s too frustrating to talk about right now. My weekend was great—more on that later.

An Examination of Group Forms

Education, Personal

Well as per my previous commitment, I’m putting my third paper for my Human Situation class online here. It is not my last paper for the class though, as I found out much to my chagrin today. Don’t you love it when they spring these things on you? You can read the text of the paper below as part of the extended entry, how I would highly recommend you read the PDF version of it instead because it captures not only some additional text that I haven’t put below, but also the presentation and layout, which I put a lot of effort and thought into. Also the raw text below doesn’t have citations and other things which are cumbersome to put into HTML right now. I’ve embedded the fonts and such so you can get the full experience as well. If you have any thoughts or criticisms let me know, because although this paper has already been graded and done (I got an A) I’m going to file it as a topic to examine again perhaps later in college. Again you can get the PDF here. Without further ado . . .

Continue reading An Examination of Group Forms →

Plato’s Forms

Education, Meta

Well today I turned in my third and final paper for my Human Situation class, and it’s the one I put the most thought and effort into. My first paper for the class dealt with an economic analysis of the first books of the Bible, and I was happy with the way it turned out. The second paper was a last-minute affair that was forgettable, and after it I decided that I would put all future papers on the site in order to force me to work harder on everything. Now that the “next paper” is done, I’m happy with it how it turned out in the end, but I’m not sure if I want to post it here. Would anyone even read it? It’s not terribly long, but still much longer than the average Joe-intenet’s online attention span. Anyway the subject of this paper was an expansion to Plato’s Theory of Forms to account for naturally occuring groups. Exciting stuff ;). We’ll see what the teacher thinks by the end of the week . . .