sort by: Relevancy | Title try advanced search for more options
Professor Kleiner features the architecture of Augustus' successors, the Julio-Claudian emperors, whose dynasty lasted half a century (A.D. 14-68). She first presents Tiberius' magnificent Villa Jovis on the Island of Capri and an underground basilica in Rome used by members of a secret Neo-Pythagorean cult. She then turns to the eccentric architecture of Claudius, a return to masonry building techniques and a unique combination of finishe...more
Banks, which were first created in primitive form by goldsmiths hundreds of years ago, have evolved into central economic institutions that manage the allocation of resources, channel information about productive activities, and offer the public convenient investment vehicles. Although there are several types of banking institutions, including credit unions and Saving and Loan Associations, commercial banks are the largest and most importa...more
Professor Brownell discusses how economic factors are a profound driver of food choices in both the U.S. and internationally. He reviews the history of food subsidies and how they have made the U.S. an agricultural force but simultaneously changed the current food environment and diet. Furthermore, Professor Brownell explores how economic incentives to purchase highly processed packaged, calorie dense, nutrient poor foods are increasing wh...more
Going back to 1998, Symantec was best known for Norton utilities and Norton anti-virus, says Thompson. When he arrived in 1999, right after windows 1998 was launched. Symantec had had a bad series of quarter. In his first 100 days, he looked at the company product portfolio and found products that were not of strategic value. The brightest star was Norton anti-virus. Symantec had viewed itself as a consumer oriented desktop software compan...more
A perennial favorite is the idea of time travel. What would happen if we could go back in time and alter the future a la “Back to the Future”? The great narrative of the history of life has a complexity rife with subplots and twists, many of which we will never uncover. Yet somehow the story of life on Earth began with a prebiotic ooze and ended with the awe-inspiring diversity of life we see today – including us. But like any story, the ...more
The lecture introduces the poetry of Ezra Pound. Tensions in Pound's personality and career are considered, particularly in terms of his relationships with other poets and his fascism and anti-capitalism. The poem "The Seafarer" is examined as a quintessentially Poundian project in its treatment and translation of poetic forms. The first Canto of his epic project, The Cantos, is analyzed as a meditation on the process of expressing and eng...more
Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform (PLSC 270) Professor Rae introduces the concept of capital as accumulated wealth used to produce more wealth. Questions about what constitutes capital are posed and discussed. The biggest story in recent economic history is the substitution of labor intensive production to capital intensive production. This transition, and the various speeds and scales with which it has occurred in different places a...more
Professor Snowden describes the historical detective work that went into the research and writing of Naples in the Time of Cholera, his study of the 1884 and 1911 epidemics of Asiatic cholera that struck Italy. The latter epidemic is of particular interest, because the official historiography of the disease has long confined its outbreaks in Western Europe to the nineteenth century. Through his investigation, Snowden discovered that there ...more
Class begins with clarification of equations from the previous lecture. Four post-Newtonian gravitational effects are introduced and discussed in detail. The first of these is the so-called Perihelion Precession, which occurs when the major axis of a planet's elliptical orbit precesses within its orbital plane, in response to changing gravitational forces exerted by other planets. Secondly, deflection of light is described as the curving o...more
Dr. Marlene Schwartz discusses the topic of food policy in schools. She presents the history of federal regulation of the National School Lunch Program, the debate about competitive foods in schools, and describes research on influence of school food on student nutrition. She describes Rudd Center research conducted in collaboration with the Connecticut State Department of Education on the effectiveness of policy changes at the district an...more
Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform (PLSC 270) Professor Rae discusses the subprime mortgage crisis. Major actors are presented and analyzed, including homebuyers, brokers, appraisers, lenders, i-banks, and rating and government agencies. Major actors' incentives and risks are assessed. Professor Rae also presents a brief history of government involvement in mortgage markets. Deregulation of the industry and its consequences are explor...more
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, carried out in Macon, Alabama, from 1932 to 1972, is a notorious episode in the checkered history of medical experimentation. In one of the most economically disadvantaged parts of the U.S., researchers deceived a group of 399 black male syphilitics into participating in a study with no therapeutic value. These "volunteers" were not treated as patients, but rather as experimental subjects, or walking cadavers. ...more
