Dangerous Stereotypes

Thursday, February 25, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Unfortunately, the presidential race has devolved into bigotry based on dangerous stereotypes about race, religion and gender. For the next meeting, we will view three TED Talks about how we can overcome these false narratives.

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells how the single narrative has distorted our views of Africans.
• Anand Giridharadas tells a story of forgiveness after a religious hate crime.
• Dame Stephanie Shirley tells how gender based bias of women in business was overcome.

Government Services Privitization

Thursday, February 18, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

I will be away next week, so Norm will be the discussion leader. The topic will be on the trend to privatize many government services. There will be no videos during the meeting and 90 minutes is a lot of time to fill. So please use the blog comments give your opinions and examples.

How about this: Here’s How to Fix Flint’s Water System: Privatize It

Please add your examples below.

Our Connection to Animals

Thursday, February 11, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

We will take a break from current events and have a meeting on a "soft" topic. Usually I find interesting TED Talks on a common topic. Here are three talks on our connection to animals;

• Ian Dunbar explains that the key to dog training is to see things from the dogs point of view
• Janine Banyus show how animals have provided solutions to engineering problems
• Maria Spivak reminds us on our dependance on bees and why they are endangered

---------------------------------------- Updated 2/11/16 -----------------------------------------------

Correction: I said during the meeting that cockroach robots were used in the Taiwan earthquake rescue. I think that the actual news was that cockroach robots were only suggested, not actually used.

Here are the links to the other videos shown during the meeting:

• Cockroach robots to the rescue!
• Whitehouse Bees

State of the Union, part 3

Thursday, January 28, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)
Meeting cancelled due to snow cover from the weekend blizzard, rescheduled for 2/4/16.

For the last meeting in January, we will wrap-up the State of the Union, focusing on what Obama considers to be the most important question, "How can we make our politics reflect the best in us, and not the worst?" Remember that Obama was elected largely because he wanted to unite the country. HERE is an excerpt of his famous 2004 keynote speech at the DNC. In his last SOTU, he admits that he failed but will continue to try.

For the remainder of the meeting, we will go over the speech as a whole. HERE is a recap from Obama's speech in Omaha following the SOTU. The Whitehouse has created a website to elaborate in the four questions presented at the SOTU.

----------------------------------- Updated 2/6/16 -------------------------------------

Here is the other video video shown at the meeting:

• Obama in Baton Rouge. 

State of the Union, part 2

Thursday, January 21, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

In our last meeting, we covered the introduction and economy portions of the SOTU. In our next meeting we will continue with the last three parts, technology, security and democracy. There is a lot of ground here; so I though you might enjoy this quick summary of the SOTU by Steven Colbert.

2016 State of the Union

Thursday, January 14, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Obama gives his last State of the Union next Tuesday, Jan. 12. We can use it as an opportunity to look back at previous year and forward to the next. HERE is a video preview.

For those that watch the speech, please bring your favorite moments that you will like to discuss. I will try to find video clips that we can watch during meeting.

Politics of Fear

Thursday, January 7, 2016, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Welcome to 2016, an election year that may be dominated by the politics of fear. For good or evil, fear has a way of overshadowing other issue which may be more important in the long run. Here are the videos that will be shown at the meeting:

• David Rothkopf: How fear drives American politics
• The Daily Show - Donald Trump- The White ISIS
• Ted Koppel, 'Lights Out'
• Karen Thompson Walker: What fear can teach us