Posted in Human Sciences, Politics on Mar 31st, 2009 2 Comments »
As we were reading “Female Rulers and Their Consorts” I mentioned to you that one example of women leaders becoming social males was that of Margaret Thatcher and her lowered voice. You can find more information about her and about the importance of voice pitch in politics here:
Margaret Thatcher’s Vocal Changes
Male and Female Voices in [...]
Posted in Language, Politics on Jan 31st, 2009 No Comments »
We briefly discussed the phrase “Our nation is at war” from Obama’s inaugural speech, which seemed to proceed to “against terror”, but actually ended in “against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred”.
The article below discusses the catchphrase “war against terror”/”war on terror” – when it arose, what it came to mean and how the [...]
Posted in Language, Politics on Jan 26th, 2009 No Comments »
Some of you are struggling to come up with presentation topics, yet issues worthy of ToK happen every day. One recent example is Barack Obama’s swearing-in last week, which probably raised multiple issues we could talk about. However, since we are currently studying language, I thought we should focus on linguistic KI’s.
We could commence with [...]
Posted in Language, Politics on Jan 26th, 2009 No Comments »
Single Words, Different Perspectives: The “War of Language”. Check out the audio & photos on the side as well – the war’s “many angles”.
Posted in Politics, history on Dec 31st, 2008 No Comments »
The final line of this article is a tell-all: history is written by the winners (yes, quoting Mrs. Ayub).
Posted in Ethics, Language, Politics on Dec 14th, 2008 No Comments »
I found it, finally…
The question is “Is it a crime or just politics?”. Of course, the issue is more than just a matter of language (in fact, that might be the more indirect question here). The “Where is the line drawn” is a of course a perfectly ToKish concern…
Posted in Human Sciences, Politics, Religion on Nov 26th, 2008 6 Comments »
Two academics, Richard N. Rosecrance and Ehud Eiran, make the interesting proposal that Israelis and Palestinians should become Europeans – that is, should join the European Union. The article does not say where the authors are from, though the first name seems to be Jewish, and the second either Jewish or Arabic (I tend towards [...]
Posted in Politics, Religion on Nov 12th, 2008 No Comments »
I know you are starting to get sick of me tonight, but you have my permission to ignore any of my posts that are not of your interest. I actually have several more intriguing articles, but I will resist – except that I couldn’t with this one asking “So When Will a Muslim Be President?”. [...]
Posted in Politics, Religion on Nov 7th, 2008 No Comments »
(Photo by Annie Tritt for the New York Times
Two articles, related to religion (but on rather distinct topics):
Among Young Muslims, Mixed Emotions about Obama
Does Religion Make You Nice? Does Atheism Make You Mean?
