• TOPICS
• Being Human
• The news out of Stanford this week is that a simple, early blood test can now be done to tell the health of the fetus. This is described as a "game changer" as it will mean that, at a very early stage, parents can choose to have a child, or not, depending on what they know the child's characteristics to be.
• http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_20031801
• This raises the question: What kind of children do we want to have?
• and
• What does it mean to be a human being?
• In this discussion, we will explore these questions and look at other ways human beings are changing and what this means politically and socially.

• LINKS
• bell hooks: Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom
• http://www.edrev.info/reviews/rev1069.pdf
• "Nussbaum (1997, 2004) and Toulmin (2001), for example, beckon us toward a more congenial form of rationality that emphasizes contextuality, ambiguity, creativity, and a tolerance of heterogeneity over logical certitude, validity, universal principles, and polarizations typified by binary 'us–them' thinking. Beyond logic and argument analysis then, we need forms of reasoning that encourage the important processes of negotiation and translation between various social, racial and gendered positions."
• What Does it Mean to be Human?
• http://humanorigins.si.edu/exhibit
• "The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins offers visitors an immersive, interactive journey through 6 million years of scientific evidence for human origins and the stories of survival and extinction in our family tree during times of dramatic climate instability."
• http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/08/24/206624/new-yorker-koch-brothers-smithsonian-tea-party/
• "An interactive game in the exhibit suggests that humans will continue to adapt to climate change in the future. People may build 'underground cities,' developing 'short, compact bodies' or 'curved spines,' so that 'moving around in tight spaces will be no problem'.”
• The Mother By Gwendolyn Brooks
• http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172081
• "Since anyhow you are dead.
• Or rather, or instead,
• You were never made."
• "Easy Way Out"
• http://laughingsquid.com/easy-way-out-an-incredibly-elaborate-stop-motion-animation/
• http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gotye/easywayout.html

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