the UCTV BLOG

Category: Humanities

  • Is it Time to Rethink the Idea of the Amoral Economic Man?

    There is a widely held belief that when designing public policy or legal systems, it makes the most sense to assume that all citizens are entirely self-interested and amoral. It’s a theory known as “homo economicus” or “economic man.” But, economist Samuel Bowles argues against that belief in his book The Moral Economy: Why Good…

  • 2019 Writer’s Symposium by the Sea

    One of the top journalists in Washington, a Christian poet, and a new voice in the Marvel Black Panther Universe – three writers with very different backgrounds and styles, all sharing their insight into the art of putting pen to paper. Join founder Dean Nelson as he welcomes E.J. Dionne, Christian Wiman and Nnedi Okorafor…

  • The Social Media Bubble

    Social media has become such a ubiquitous part of our lives that it’s difficult to remember a time before Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, etc. So ingrained are these platforms in our daily routines that we seldom stop to ponder their effect on ourselves, other users, and/or the larger society. As an early financial advisor to…

  • Buddhism and Sexuality

    José Cabezón is Professor of Religious Studies and the XIVth Dalai Lama Professor of Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Cabezón edited a collection of essays entitled Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender (1992), one of the first scholarly works in the field. His participation in a 1999 conference hosted by the Institute for…

  • Immersive Languages

    It’s a misuse of terms to say that we have a natural language; languages are arbitrary and conventions of peoples by institution. – François Rabelais Constructed languages, or conlangs, are popular features of many science fiction and fantasy tales. Examples include Barsoomian (Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter series), Elvish and Khuzdul (Tolkien’s Lord of the…

  • Neuroscience, Mini Brains, and Your Health

    “All the best models are the ones that you can improve in complexity to get closer and closer to the reality.” The idea of a brain in a dish may sound like science fiction to some but scientists are becoming more and more adept at creating cortical organoids in the lab. The organoids are models…

  • Dreams That You Dare to Dream

    The annual Lytle Scholarship Concerts were inaugurated in 1996 to benefit the Preuss School at UC San Diego, a public college prep charter school for grades 6 through 12. The concerts are specific to a composer (e.g., Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven, Liszt) or to a musical concept or genre (e.g., gospel tunes, tangos, ragtime, Latin jazz).…

  • Recommended for You

    We use recommender system all the time. A website will recommend something to you based on what you’ve watched, listened to, bought or who you’ve friended on Facebook. These systems attempt to predict your preferences based on past interactions. The systems range from simple statistical approaches like Amazon’s people who bought X also bought Y…

  • The Fallen Angel

    “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel…” — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Since its first (initially anonymous) publication in 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein has intrigued successive generations of readers and critics while inspiring dozens of cinematic adaptations and re-imaginings. In honor of the novel’s 200th anniversary the Carsey-Wolf Center…

  • Shaping Our Dynamic Microbiomes for Lifelong Health

    Our life-spans are ever-increasing, but our health-spans are not, leading to long periods of unpleasant and expensive suffering with chronic conditions. Many of these conditions have recently been linked to the microbiome. We are constantly shaping our microbiomes through the foods we eat, the environments we experience, even the people we live and work with.…