JISHOU, HUNAN — This test is what I inflicted on my Western Culture students this morning. How well can you do on it? No looking at your textbooks, cell phones, or the Internet.
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Western Culture and Civilization
NAME_______________________________
Student ID ____________________________
2008 G1 and G2
First test, Ancient Greece, 22 October 2010
IDENTIFY THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE AND PLACES:
1. Athens
2. Sparta
3. Troy
4. Achilles
5. Odysseus
6. Aristotle
7. Plato
8. Eratosthenes
9. Sophocles
10. Aristophanes
TEST CONTINUES ON THE NEXT PAGE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS (Use your own paper for these, please):
11. Ancient Greece fostered the first known republic and the first known democracy in the world. Where were these political experiments, exactly? Give a brief description of how each system of government was organized.
12. Socrates was one of the earliest and most influential of the ancient philosophers. What were his core beliefs?
13. Give two examples of the Greeks’ contributions to mathematics and science. Discuss each one briefly.
14. What was the basic story or theme of Homer’s Iliad? Of Homer’s Odyssey?
15. Why is the civilization and culture of the ancient Greeks so important to the West?
BONUS POINTS: Match the Greek god or goddess to his or her attributes.(10 points maximum)
[UPDATES 10/11/10: Liu's wife visited him in prison yesterday, and was placed under house arrest upon leaving. Her ties to the outside world have been severed and she can only leave her home in a police car. Meanwhile, authorities have arrested people celebrating Liu's award. China-based bloggers, like Han Han, have also had their sites censored. (Han Han's post about Liu for 10/8/10 is now blank.]
JISHOU, HUNAN — By now, you have probably heard that Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. But if you were in China, you would hardly know it.
Government censors blacked out CNN cable TV reports, like the one below. The China Daily, the nation’s English-language, government-backed newspaper and website, had nothing about the award this evening.
Searching for his name in Chinese characters (刘晓波) using Google or Yahoo just gave me a generic “server not found” message. However, if I used the pinyin version of his name, I had no problem finding and reading news reports about him. I assume that breech will be closed soon, since searching for his name on Wikipedia gave me a similar “server not found” message.
Liu is serving an 11-year prison sentence in Liaoning province, after he was convicted in 2009 of subversion of state power. He was an advisor to student protesters in the 1989 Tian’anmen Square demonstrations, and a co-author of Charter 08, which calls for more democracy in China. (See the link under Pages at left on this blog, if you want to read the Charter.)
[UPDATE: More late breaking unintentional humor from the O'Donnell hour: her dad was once a part-time Bozo the Clown in Philly. I am thinking of apples falling from trees here. ]
JISHOU, HUNAN — My favorite bloggers have been having a field day with the Republican Senatorial candidate from Delaware, Christine O’Donnell. The woman is a veritable treasure trove of nonsense.
There are two of her gems I can’t help but ridicule.
China has a secret plan to take over the USA. And she knows all about it, because an unnamed non-profit organization gave O’Donnell the complete low down. Apparently, missionaries working with this mysterious group uncovered this top-secret plot.
In the linked AP article, O’Donnell says this:
“A country that forces women to have abortions and mandates that you can only have one child and will not allow you the freedom to read the Bible, you think they can be our friend?” she asked. “We have to look at our history and realize that if they pretend to be our friend it’s because they’ve got something up their sleeve.”
Wrong, wrong and wrong. China does not force women to have abortions. But abortions are easier to get here than in the USA, so some women may choose to get one. China does saddle couples with financial penalties, threatens them with losing jobs and promotions, and stigmatize them if they have more than one kid, but I know a lot of families who have more than one child even under the one-child policy.
[Cross-posted at the Daily Kos, where it was just rescued from diary oblivion.]
JISHOU, HUNAN — Classes have been in session for two weeks now. It’s taken me a while to build a head of steam for blogging. Been a little busy, as you will see.
As was the case last year, I am teaching 16 classes a week (that’s eight groups of students for 100 minutes at a go), but with some changes in subjects and students. This term, I am teaching oral English to the freshman and sophomore undergraduates majoring in Business English, and Western Culture and Civilization to the juniors in Business English.
None of the juniors have oral English classes anymore, which befuddles me, but apparently It’s the Way Things Are Done Here™, according to fellow foreign teachers at other schools. The Business English students have a course in public speaking, but the English education majors — who will presumably be teaching English — have no more English language classes. More about that later.
Previously, my writing classes were the biggest consumer of my prep time, what with reading essays and diaries and plotting more ways to get my students to write English. This term, it’s the Civ class that takes the prize.
JISHOU, HUNAN — I am one happy camper tonight, because I discovered how to circumvent China’s blocking of Picasaweb. The solution was right there in front of me, if I had bothered to look.
In their ineffable wisdom, the wonks at Google allow you to upload photos to Picasaweb via email. All you need to do is go to Picasaweb’s settings and set up a secret email addy. Then you can emails to that address with photos as attachments. The subject line is the name of an existing album.
Sweet!
Because China is blocking Picasaweb and Blogger, both Google services, I have had a hell of time uploading to my Picasaweb albums. For a while, I could upload using Picasa 3, the desktop application, then mysteriously uploads would constantly fail. Either the uploads would stall, or I would get the message, “This account is not enabled for web albums.” First, I suspected a bug in Picasaweb (like THAT would ever happen!), but it appears some service or port is being blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
I can use the latest version of Ultrasurf (v.9.98) to climb the Great Firewall, and access Picasaweb to edit photos and such, but uploads still fail, either from Picasa 3 or on the website itself. Timeout problems, or connection problems because of the proxy service.
So, as they say, RTFM. I went to the help pages, and lo! You can email your pix to Picasaweb. Duh. I should guessed that.
BEIJING — Now that Team JiDa was complete, we had to decide what to do for the next few days. We had at our disposal four full days and for three of those days, clear and dry weather, so shopping and tourist attractions beckoned.
Though we had all gone to bed in the wee hours Thursday, we were all surprisingly alert by 9 am. First up, a walking trip to the Bank of China east of the hotel to exchange American greenbacks for Chinese yuan. Then, we took a not-so-successful trip to price cell phones in Zhongguancun 中关村, got lunch at Pizza Hut, and visited Yuanmingyuan 圆明园, which is a short subway ride away.
Yuanmingyuan, also known as the Old Summer Palace, was the site of the Imperial Gardens, which the British and French ransacked and burned to the ground in 1860 during the Second Opium War. Now, the Gardens of Perfect Brightness are one of Beijing’s many tourist attractions, and Westerners — even British and French ones — are welcome to visit.
Friday was our day to visit the Forbidden City. Though Sally, Vanilla and I had been to Tian’anmen Square twice so far, we saved the Forbidden City for the new teachers’ arrival. The Imperial Palace, as it is also known, is a huge place; a thorough visit would take two full days at least. We lasted only a few hours. Between the hot sun, the huge crowds, and wacked-out sleep schedules, all six of us were pretty tired after seeing only a fraction of the grounds. Besides, we also wanted to shop in Xidan 西单 and see the Water Cube and Birds Nest before calling it a day … um, night.
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