GER ONLY

1. Read Pollan's The Intelligent Plant (PDF posted above in content folder in case of access issues). Break the texts into "units of meaning" (you've done this before in class with a text) and write a summary sentence for each unit: Think of this task as if you would insert subtitles into the text where you think they fit, i.e. break the texts into sections/chunks according to what belongs together in your mind (Where does one train of thought/topic end and the next one begin?). The length and number of those units or sections is up to you. The goal is that your summary sentences ultimately summarize the whole text, whether you broke that down into 5 or 25 sections/units of meaning. It's a great exercise for breaking down longer texts, keeping an overview, and retaining a sense of what they say.

2. Read Frans de Waal's text What I Learned From Tickling Apes (PDF posted above in content folder in case of access issues) and watch his TED talk Moral Behavior in Animals. His latest book is called Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? In your D2L post, list the various animal behaviors that are discussed, how they are proven, and what was new/surprising to learn for you.

3. Watch this summary of the philosophical quandary regarding animal rights in this CrashCourse on Non-Human Animals. This video might feel provocative to some of you (for a variety of reasons), but I am asking you to consider the philosophical/ethical questions it raises and please do not feel like it's aimed at convincing you to do or not do something. As with everything in this course, it's about making up your own mind and this is a complicated issue.

Then read Livni's The new science of animal cognition is forcing countries to overhaul their laws (PDF posted above in content folder in case of access issues).

Sum up the problems and possible solutions described in both sources in your discussion post.

4. Click through these images (feel free to ignore the ones about US politics at the end). What's is equated and compared here? Have you ever noticed this elsewhere? If you have an example of your own, please add it to your discussion contribution.

The scholar Carol Adams, who collected these images, published a book about "The Sexual Politics of Meat." While clicking through, try to come up with some key words about what meat (eating) and sex could have in common (it could be ways of talking about it or processes surrounding it, etc.) and how that could be policed or be a "politics," in the sense of "biopolitics."

Carol Adams also coined the term of the "absent referent," the idea that we no longer think of a cow when we see a steak -- the category of classification has been changed and the referential connection has been made invisible (think Bowker/Star). Try to come up with another example(s) where this is happening.

Post your response to these questions and the examples you found in your discussion post.

5. Read Nathaniel Rich's Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret to Immortality? (PDF posted above in content folder in case of access issues.) Pick five keywords from the text that you think are important and define them in your D2L post.

6. Read Khan Academy's Are Viruses Dead or Alive? and watch the Zombie Creatures slideshow (there is a description for each picture; make sure to read it; if you have problems, try a different browser). How are these forms of survival different from immortality? Draw on at least three examples from the homework materials to answer this question in your D2L post.