For the hell of it ...

In an attempt to combine past lessons on citizenship/deliberative polling and the role of religion in democracy I invite you to test your own religious knowledge by taking a short quiz created by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

After completing the quiz, compare your knowledge with the American public -- overall population and specific religions -- by reading the full Pew Forum report on U.S. religious knowledge.

Both the national survey and interactive quiz were inspired by the book "Religious Literacy". 

Role Obligations Lecture

Are facts a casualty of fervent opinion?

In light of our recent discussions on Aristotle and value disagreements, this may be informative. Can we agree that there are facts or as Aristotle referred to them as "universal principles"?

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-04-19/news/ct-talk-huppke-obit-facts-20120419_1_facts-philosopher-opinion

Ironically, I'm asserting this new bit of knowledge on a blog!

cp

Democracy and Religion Lecture

antibiotics in livestock

yay! I finally figured out how not to be anonymous on here, and how to post things. Many of you may have come across this when we were doing research in class yesterday, but I just saw it and thought it was intriguing that it was published Wednesday: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/us/antibiotics-for-livestock-will-require-prescription-fda-says.html?_r=2

Citizenship Lecture

Also: I know I haven't been as active in responding to stuff y'all have posted in the past few weeks, sorry!  I will try to ramp it up and annoy you with nitpicking more, scout's honor.

Democracy Lecture

Reading for the Democracy Presentation

On Thursday, Mark, Jeremy, Mike, and Victor will be talking to us about compulsory voting in Australia:

http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/publications/voting/files/compulsory-voting.pdf

Enjoy!