masAng

  Now food stamps are not actually called food stamps anymore. When I was a kid, they were called food stamps. It's basically a program the government has that provides money for individuals to buy food if they're low income. Essentially, we have in the US what's called the poverty line. And I'll talk a lot more about this at the end of the class, but  the poverty line is essentially a measure of what's a minimum level of resources you need to live in America.  The poverty line for an individual is about $14,000. OK, for a family of four, it's about $28,000. How you feel about that number obviously is going depend on where you're from. If you're from Boston, you'll say that's insane. If you're from some rural part of the country,  you think, yeah, that's poor, but manageable. OK, we'll talk later about the poverty line, what's good and bad about it. But, in any case, if you're below the poverty line in America, roughly speakin...

  Have you talked about the debate around the epilogue at all. And whether or not the epilogue is justified. And that question came up the other day. I think, (Nate) just ask talked about..  What are some things on your mind, you'd like to talk to (Michael) -about the epilogue  Sure, But the epilogue is very controversial in this book. There are lots of  people critics of Russian literature, who think that the epilogue is forced (is added on) and doesn't really belong with the novel. And that the Dostoyevsky's  intention is having  Raskolnikov go to Siberia  still believing  that his theory was  correct and not  repenting.  So the repentance is not  really shown fully  in the novel.  And that was the joke  at Cartoon from  the New Yorker. There could be a whole new third of the novel about Raskolnikov's repentance. But he doesn't repent until the very last minute. And some people think that repentance was ar...

  He (Newton) was able to calculate what the shape of the orbit should be if the law were the inverse square. And found indeed that it was an ellipse. So he got three for two, as it were. In addition, a number of  new phenomena had their obvious explanations. One was the tides. The tides were due to the pull of the moon on the earth. This had sometimes been thought of before, with the difficulty that  "If it was the pull of the moon on the earth, the earth being here, the water is being pulled up to the moon, then it would only be one tides a day where that bump of water is under the moon.  But actually, you know, there are tides every 12 hours roughly, and that's two tides a day."  But there was also another school of thought that had a different conclusion. Their theory was that it was the earth that was pulled by the moon away from the water. So actually Newton was the first one to realize what actually was going on, that the force of the moon on the earth an...

  So there's lots of reasons why I think well maybe this market doesn't work quite as well as economists say it does. People might be misinformed. P eople might be forced to do it.  What's interesting is the black market is not necessarily one of those reasons. And here's why.  Because the black market, economists just say, is a market.  Let's say eBay  doesn't allow you to sell your kidneys. So you have to go sell it on the black market. Well, if there's no other market failures, that's okay. for the same reason economists think it'd be okay to sell your body parts. There's no reason why sell your body parts on a form market, informal market. The only reason why it would be bad would if that informal market comes with other unsavory features like forcing people to sell their body parts or not being informed. That's when it would be bad. Okay.  What other reasons might we care?  Might be worried about people selling their kidneys.  Yeah.  W...

  We often assume that whatever happens inside us must be important. We say “Consciousness is important.” But in the history of life, consciousness may not be that important. Out of billions of species, only a few seem to have it. P erhaps it's not too extreme to call consciousness “evolutionary waste”, something that simply emerged along the way. "In fact", suffering exists because of consciousness. You can be injured, but if you're unconscious, you don't suffer. You can be in pain without necessarily suffering. If you are unconscious, your body may be injured and experiencing physical pain, but you are not consciously experiencing that pain as suffering. Someone gets injured in an accident. If they're unconscious, they don't suffer. It's the people watching who suffer. From a medical and biological perspective, suffering arises from consciousness. Of the billions of species on Earth, only five are currently known to be conscious humans,  chimpanzees,...

  Let's divide those letters in several groups. This one is the first group (A,K,M,O,T). It's not a word. Let's divide it with commas. It's just a group of letters that are familiar to the most people who know English, know French, Spanish, all those languages. The sounds are the same, (easy, right?). But it's still not enough to learn them effectively. You don't need to learn the isolated letters. It doesn't make sounds because what's the point in just seeing this letter and recognizing it inside the word. You need to learn them in words from the very beginning. So if you don't know what words to use, here I am to help you.  The most wonderful word for the most, let me do it here, for the most wonderful person. Then you certainly know this word. Can you read it? Out loud? Yourself, right?  Mama Of course means mom. Or should it be a capital letter, Mama. So immediately write this word from the very beginning. Don't write m separately. Don't ...

  Now, we come to the normative question which is more interesting and harder  "Should we be allowed to sell our bodily organs on eBay?"  Okay, you might think that this is a question you're in philosophy class but fundamentally it's an economics question. Okay, many folks die in America because the because we do not have enough organs to help those with organ failure. We we have a limited supply of organs. I hope you all are organ donors on your driver licenses. Doesn't cost you anything. You're gone anyway and it can save a life. Um but um many people don't do that. And even if they did, we're just we have a higher demand for organs than we can fit. Now if someone who wants an organ is wealthy and willing to pay a lot of money for it,  and there's someone else who says, "Look, I got two kidneys. You can function just fine with one. The odds of kidney failure is really low."  Someone says,  "Look, I am in desperate straits. I can...