Putting Profit in its Place

Jane Burston: Putting Profit in its Place

Wed, 13 Nov 13 http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fourthought

 

Jane Burston argues that by placing too much emphasis on profit, companies behave in an unethical way, and it is time for social purpose to take centre stage. Listen to the extract up to minute 6:16 and try to answer the following questions.

     1. Some of the language Ms. Burston uses has been extracted in the following lines. Since some of it refers to banking scandals and circumventing labour regulations, you may need to check some of the meaning through the links provided:

My hopes had been pinned on a lecture called Business and social purpose

Zero-hours contracts

Sub-prime mortgage crises

Libor rate rigging

Large scale oil spillages

A stationery company that had developed a terrible reputation for running the small companies in its sector aground

Reality bites

Cut corners and cut costs

2. According to the speaker in what ways do Friedman and Smith believe capitalism to benefit society?
 

     3. In Ms. Burston’s experience at Harvard, what was the solution put forward to make up for and dispel the company’s reputation?

      4. How does the speaker justify and exemplify the following statement: ‘So long as businesses have profit as the end goal, they will inevitably be unethical’?

     5. What threefold solution does Ms. Burston suggest in order for this business model to be changed?

Drugs in sport

Paul Dimeo: Drugs in Sport

Mon, 14 Oct 13 http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fourthought

 

Paul Dimeo (Scottish accent) argues that drugs made modern sport what it is today. Listen to the programme up to minute 8:14 and notice both the language used and the ideas conveyed through the following questions:

1. Some of the expressions you will hear in this talk are:

A major sporting event

The glories of human achievement and endurance

Performance enhancing drugs

Part and parcel

A household name

Twenty-five years after Johnson’s ignominy

This is one of the most famous, or infamous, events in sports history

The level playing field

Excellence and rivalries fuelled by steroids

  

      2. Why are Johnson and Armstrong said to have doped?

     3. What reason does Mr. Dimeo provide for the prevailing spread in the use of drugs in sport over the last few decades in the 20^th century?

     4. In what way does Mr. Dimeo say the use of drugs in sports has supported the Olympics and made them appealing to current audiences?

If you want, you can continue listening to the argumentation to the end and we can discuss the arguments provided in this talk, the conclusions reached and their relevance to the current situation in sporting competitions in class. You can find a loose transcript of this talk at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24329252

What Mandela stood for

No doubt we've all been reading about Mandela's significance and legacy since his death last week. The media will, however, obliterate any mention of the ANC being considered a terrorist organization by Margaret Thatcher, or her support of the apartheid government, except for some independent comentators such as Victor Grossman who, while discussing the situation of the SDP in Germany, does not fail to remember the 20th century towering figure Mandela was and how he had to face the fact that most 'western democracies' backed apartheid: 

 'In the midst of such debates and discussions came the news of Nelson Mandela’s death. All the media joined in the mourning, of course, outdoing one another in praising the old leader, mostly painting a rosy picture of a great conciliator and western-style democrat, somehow smoothing over or ignoring his clear endorsement of armed struggle, his support for Cuba and the Palestinians, his lasting alliance with the Communists. And what they also forgot: while the East German Democratic Republic supported the African National Congress in countless ways, printing its vital exile newspaper Sechaba and providing training to many of its members and future leaders, government and business interests in the Federal Republic, joining those in Britain, the USA and most western countries, backed the apartheid governments almost till the end. Despite all UN resolutions, Daimler, Krupp, the Deutsche Bank and others made over 4 billion euro in profits from dealing with South Africa. This included weaponry of many kinds used to intimidate and kill people and destroy the freedom movement. In those days they castigated the ANC, including Mandela, as Communist terrorists.

But memories are short. Forget that sometimes nasty or dangerous past, bury the truth, turn poor Mandela into a sweet - and harmless - angel of peace, just fitting for the Christmas spirit. Ho ho ho!'

There are also those who flag up Mandela's endorsement of anti-apartheid in Palestine and his criticism of the US as laid out in these quotes to be found in commondreams.org. You can continue reading about this at voltairenet.org.

The Spirit of 45

This documentary by Ken Loach chronicles how the welfare state came about. It covers the period running up to and after the 1945 election where Clement Atlee introduced dramatic reforms to improve people's lives. The reforms included the regulation of the workforce and its rights, the creation of the NHS, public education, nationalisation of public infrastructure, public housing and all the social improvements we have benefited from up to the beginning of the 21st century. Although all the areas covered by the documentary are interesting, I would recommend watching the short clips on life conditions in the 1920s and 30s through the Sam Watts 'Impossible Conditions' and 'We are the greatest empire in the world' videos and more current reflections on the Labour Manifesto where citizens and members of UK Uncut express their views on it in the two clips entitled 'Reflecting on the Labour Manifesto'. You can find them in the Welfare section.

Music

To start off, we'll go over some vocabulary pertaining to realm of music. If you're a musician yourself, you might be familiar with most of these terms. Although it's hard to pick out a single musician or style to deal with, I've chosen this interview with Stanley Crouch, who, in this interview with Tom Ashbrook, talks about his book on Charlie Parker. It is indeed hard to cater for all tastes, so for those of you who might be more into earlier twentieth century music, here's a link to a text on the Twelve-tone Technique (AKA twelve-tone serialism or dodecaphony) by Gary Bachlund.

On the other hand, describing music is by no means far from challenging. This dictionary includes terms we can use to describe sound and the effect a piece has on listeners, and here's a pianist using them to decribe piano pieces (scroll down), what do you make of her descriptions? Might it be also helpful to make use of images to convey a piece? Do you find these analogies satisfactory? Should we forget about it and just acknowledge that writing about music is like dancing about architecture?

Porgy and Bess

A 1935 opera updated for 21st century audiences: Porgy and Bess

Matt Damon reads from Howard Zinn's speech 'The Problem is Civil Obedience' (November 1970)

Lifelong friend of Howard Zinn reads an excerpt from his speech delivered in 1970:

http://daily.represent.us/matt-damon-blows-your-mind/

http://vimeo.com/48834336

1 Here are some quotes out of the speech. What is meant by them and how can they be understood within the whole speech?

      - What does Matt Damon/Howard Zinn mean when they say ‘I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy’?  

   - 'A drastic reallocation of wealth'

   - In what way do Matt Damon/Howard Zinn justify the statement that our problem is ‘civil obedience’?

   - ‘The rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people'

   - ‘What we are trying to do, I assume, is really to get back to the principles and aims and spirit of the Declaration of Independence. This spirit is resistance to illegitimate authority and the forces that deprive people of their life and liberty and right to pursue of happiness, and therefore, under these conditions, it urges the right to alter or abolish their current form of government and the stress had been on abolish’

‘  - To stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it’s being done, or that put people in jail for petty, technical offences, and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes’

Living Books

Had you ever heard of living books before? It is an actual type of library where the books are people, you can have a look at the project and learn more here.

Fiasco

This extract from This American Life contains the description of an opening night at a college town where things didn't go too well...

Advice roulette

a fun way to get advice at The Brian Lehrer Show.

Discussing art

Have a look at these portraits and paintings and describe them using some of the expressions we went over in class. MoMA offers a glossary of art terms we can use to elaborate on them too.

Some fashionable artists to be found here and here. You could write something along these lines: 'The painter has used soft colours and, although it is hard to make out the texture, it looks as though it has been painted with long brush strokes. The portrait conveys a certain feeling of unease which could partly be due to the presence of the animal as well as the intensity of the woman's gaze'.

Also, how about having a go at guessing which picture is a fake?

Common mistakes

Here are a couple of presentations which include common mistakes in writing and speaking to look out for.

Rodney Brooks: Why we will rely on robots

Scaremongers play on the idea that robots will simply replace people on the job. In fact, they can become our essential collaborators, freeing us up to spend time on less mundane and mechanical challenges. Rodney Brooks points out how valuable this could be as the number of working-age adults drops and the number of retirees swells. He introduces us to Baxter, the robot with eyes that move and arms that react to touch, which could work alongside an aging population -- and learn to help them at home, too.

Rodney Brooks builds robots based on biological principles of movement and reasoning. The goal: a robot who can figure things out.

Watch this TED Talk here.

Which two factors does Brooks quote as critical in the way the world is changing?

Do you think Brooks' prediction for the increasingly widespread use of robotsover the next 40 years is plausible?

We Steal Secrets

Here's an NPR review of 'We Steal Secrets' (interview to be found here). According to the interviewee Alex Gibney

What were the effects of the US military leaks on the invasion of Iraq?

What is revealed about Private Bradley Manning in the course of the interview?

Julian Assange is said to undergo a transformation throughout the film and an interpretation is put forward as to why he took the decisions he did, do you have any views on this?

Diane Ravitch on the 'Reign of Error' of Privatization and Schools

Diane Ravitch ‘Reign of Error’

KQED Forum NPR

Michael Krasny asks his guest why she calls the privatization of schools a hoax between minutes 5:53-11:12. Look through the following extracts from the conversation and explain what each of the expressions and phrasal verbs mean within the context.

DR - I find myself stumbling over the word ‘reform’ when I see it attached to people like Bill, Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, I go through the whole litany. These guys are the status quo.

DR - … and to call himself a reformer when he owns the levers of power, it doesn’t make any sense.

DR - … and the whole nation is now dancing to his tune.

DR - In fact, these whole crowd of people who now call themselves reformers, are in fact privatisers.

DR - The reason that I am so critical about the charter movement is that it has strayed so far from its original purpose.

DR - The original purpose was that they would find the drop-outs, they would bring the drop-outs back.

DR - They would find innovative ways to engage kids who were totally turned off of school. They would not be judged by test scores because they were taking the most challenging students, the most difficult students.

MK - Too often they turn them away though, don’t they?

DR - Well what’s happened and this is why it’s a great hoax is that charter school now seek out the highest performing students in the poorest communities and they have been critized even by federal agencies for having disproportionately low numbers of students with disabilities. They usually accept very low proportions of students who are English language learners and then they kick out the children with the low test scores.

DR - In the state of Michigan more than 80% of the charter schools are run for profit and there are districts there which went into deficit or which had very little test scores where the governor, who is a far right reactionary governor, gave the entire school district to a for profit charter chain.

MK - Education shouldn’t be a consumer product, it should be a social and political responsibility.

DR - Where there is low performance, where there are schools that are really in trouble is where there is a concentration of high poverty and high racial segregation. It’s as though we’ve decided not to talk about the root causes.

Host and guest go on to talk about different issues related to education, if you are interested you can listen to the rest of the programme and see what they have to say about the Finnish education system (minutes 14:00-17:30), choice as a code word to for education as a consumer good rather than a civic obligation (as from 17:45) and the use of technology and the emergence of the education industry (as from 19:19), among many others.