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COURSE SCHEDULES FOR 2010-2011
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SEPTEMBER 9th - OCTOBER 14th, 2010
THE CHANGING WORLD ORDER
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Dr. Larry Black
10AM to 12 NOON Thursdays at
Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound
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Since the collapse of the USSR in December of 1991,
the new Russia and its immediate neighbours, mostly
former Soviet Republics, have been struggling to find
niches for themselves in the concert of nations. Similarly,
the European Union has undergone dramatic
change, in part by expanding to include parts of the
old USSR. NATO has expanded rapidly. The UN appears
to be declining as a force for conflict resolution.
These changes have created a world far different
than the one in which the USA and the USSR
reigned as Superpowers. The recent global financial
crisis has muddied the waters further. Competition
over control of oil and gas pipelines represents the
new Great Game. We examine such change, focusing
on Eurasia, and the role Russia, the EU, the UN,
and China play in shaping the new world order.
September 9th
Dr. Michael Johns |
It's A Small World After All
Pressing Issues in Current International Relations and
Human Existence.
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September 16th
Dr. Larry Black
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Baring the Bear I
Russia before and after the collapse of the USSR - 1985
and 2010. Twenty-five years of revolutionary change in
East Europe and Eurasia (relatively) quietly re-shapes
the world. NATO and EU expand, Russia shrinks.
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September 23th
Dr Michael Johns |
The Most Powerful Group
Nobody Knows About
The European Union.
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September 30th
Dr. Larry Black
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Baring the Bear II
Old walls down, new hot spots emerge. Chechnya and
the North Caucasus jihad; Georgia and the Western
media; and crises you haven't heard of - yet.
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October 7th
Dr. Larry Black
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The New Great Game
Russia, China, Central Asia and Gas Pipeline Wars.
Russia gains strength and the geo-strategic chessboard
tips towards the East.
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October 14th
Jennifer Armstrong-Lehman
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The United Nations
Grapples with Change
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6 lectures, $40.00
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OCTOBER 21st - DECEMBER 2nd, 2010
GREAT IDEAS IN SCIENCE
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Doug Cunningham
10AM to 12 NOON Thursdays at
Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound
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Science is much more than a cumulative body of
knowledge; it is a great adventure story! It is a process
and method of inquiry that illuminates the mysteries
of the Universe. It is a vibrant human cultural activity
that helps us understand our origins and reveals
our true nature. Our technology harnesses this scientific
knowledge and in the process enriches our lives
and releases our human potential. This Lecture Series
showcases 6 of these Great Ideas-the key Paradigms
of Modern Science.
| October 21st |
Edwin Hubble
and the Expanding Universe
"This world has persisted many a long year having
once been set going in the appropriate motions.
From these everything else follows."
Lucretius, "On the Nature of the Universe"
Between 1920 and 1929 Edwin Hubble, using data
from the largest telescopes in existence, established
that the "spiral nebulae" are actually galaxies similar to
our own Milky Way and which are, in fact, participating
in a mysterious universal expansion. This lecture
recounts the fascinating details of Edwin Hubble's life,
describes his amazing discovery, and concludes with
the recent observations which show that the Universe
is actually accelerating and is infused with a mysterious
and repulsive "Dark Energy".
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| October 28th |
Charles darwin and the Galapagos Revelation
"Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought
somewhat near to that great fact-that mystery of
mysteries- the first appearance of new beings on this earth."
Charles Darwin "Journal of Researches"
"Voyage of the Beagle"
Charles Darwin's idea of "Evolution by Natural Selection"
is the most powerful, unifying concept in all of
modern biology. Darwin's revolutionary theory focused
on the idea that variations or differences within a
species could be converted, over time, into differences
between species by a process he called Natural Selection.
We examine Darwin’s life, his fascinating journey
on the Beagle to the Galapagos Islands, his Theory of
Evolution and conclude with personal thoughts on human
evolution in light of the recent discovery of the
fossils of Ardi in the Awash River area of Ethiopia.
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| November 4th |
From the Pea Garden
to the Human Genome
"My scientific studies have afforded me great gratification;
and I am convinced that it will not be long before the
whole world acknowledges the results of my work"
Gregor Mendel
Between 1856 and 1863, the Austrian Monk and biologist,
Gregor Mendel, rigorously self and cross-pollinated
28,000 pea plants. His analysis and interpretation
of the experiment led to an understanding of heredity.
His conclusions, when published in the Journal of the
Brno Natural Historical Society, were received with
no fanfare! His ideas were so advanced that his contemporaries
had no conceptual basis to integrate them
into the prevailing paradigm. We examine Mendel,
"Father of Modern Genetics", his life, experiments, and
his revolutionary interpretations, and conclude with
thoughts on modern genetics, genetic counseling and
the revolutionary work of Craig Venter on decoding
the Human Genome.
NO LECTURE Remembrance Day, November 11, 2010
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| November 18th |
Large Hadron Collider and the
Search for the GOd Particle
"The universe was brought into being in a less than fully
formed state, but was gifted with the capacity to
transform itself from unformed matter into a truly
marvelous array of structure and life forms."
St. Augustine
Plato believed that the most elemental things were unbreakable
geometric shapes. Aristotle suggested that
all matter could be infinitely divisible. Today, experimental
physicists are converging on an answer. The
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is designed to produce
subatomic particle collisions so energetic that the hypothesized
GOD particle, the Higgs Boson, should be
found among the collision debris. Finding the Higgs
Boson will be a major achievement. It is called the
GOD particle because it is responsible for the important
property of "mass"! This lecture traces mankind's
fascinating intellectual and technological journey into
the ultimate nature of matter!
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| November 25th |
Tuzo Wilson
and Moving Continents
"The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go."
Alfred Tennyson "In Memoriam"
The idea of moving continents had a number of fathers.
Foremost among them is Canadian Tuzo Wilson. Wilson
developed some of the fundamental evidence supporting
continental drift and wrote a key paper that
prompted the formulation of Plate Tectonics theory.
With this theory to guide them, geoscientists understand
the origin of Super Continents, the causes of
volcanoes and earthquakes, the distribution of gems,
minerals and petroleum, and even the geographical
distribution of biofauna. This lecture introduces Tuzo
Wilson, describes the dynamic (Plate Tectonics) structure
of the Earth, presents the evidence for Continental
Drift, and concludes with a vision of past and future
Super Continents.
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| December 2nd |
Einstein's Universe
"I want to know how God created this world...I want to know his thoughts.
What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world"
Albert Einstein
Special relativity and slowing clocks, mass-energy equivalence and nuclear energy, general relativity and the bending of light by gravity, black holes and event horizons, quantum physics and unified theorieS, all hatched from the mind of the 20th century’s most influential scientist. No other scientist has evoked such public interest and fascination and no other physicist has caused such intellectual upheaval. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics In 1922. Time magazine honoured him as Person of the Century in 1999. We explore Einstein the person, describe his creative and insightful physics, and illuminate his dedicated humanitarianism.
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6 lectures, $40.00
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JANUARY 13th - FEBRUARY 17th, 2011
POLAR TRIUMPHS AND TRADEGIES
Explorations within the Earth's
Polar Environments
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Reverend Jerry Salloum
10AM to 12 NOON Thursdays at
Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound
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The Arctic and Antarctic are remote, inhospitable, cold
deserts that evoke our wonder and imagination. Today,
widespread interest in these regions goes beyond human
fascination with wilderness and way beyond sentimentality
regarding unspoiled landscapes, penguins
and cuddly polar bears. Today, these regions have
become sites for tourism, scientific research and mineral
resource exploration. And now, they are suspected
principal players in global climatic patterns. But what
motives spurred on the earliest explorers who dared
to venture into these harsh environments? We focus
on the so-called Heroic Age of Polar Exploration, and
examine some of the individuals whose expeditions
penetrated the Earth’s highest latitudes to bring light to
places that had resided in darkness. As pioneers, their
stories involve triumph and tragedy, bravery, determination
and extreme human endurance.
January 13th
Reverend Jerry Salloum |
The Physical Realm of the Earth’s Polar Regions: Past and Present
Interest in the Polar Regions: Past and Present
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January 20th
Reverend Jerry Salloum |
Seekers of the Northwest Passage
Sir John Franklin's Tragedy. Roald Amundsen's Triumph
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January 27th
Dr. Laird Christie
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First Impressions:
Explorers and Inuit in
the Eastern Arctic
Between 1576 and the early 20th Century European
explorers experienced a variety of contacts with the
Inuit of the Arctic. These ranged from friendly trade
relations to open warfare. Records of the expeditions
of Frobisher, Davis, Ross, Rae and others relate the response
of the Inuit to their first encounters with the
white strangers. We also have many Inuit oral histories
of the first meetings and early impressions of the newcomers.
This lecture will discuss Inuit first impressions
of the Europeans 'the Qallunaat' (White People).
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February 3th
Reverend Jerry Salloum |
Quest for the Big Nail
(the North Pole)
- Fridtjof Nansen sailing
- Salomon Andree ballooning
- Robert Peary walking
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February 10th
Reverend Jerry Salloum |
Race to the South Pole:
Triumph and Tragedy
Roald Amundsen’s Fram Expedition
Sir Robert Scott's Terra Nova Expedition
February 17th
Reverend Jerry Salloum |
Sir Ernest Shackleton's
Trans-Antarctic Expedition
A successful failure.
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6 lectures, $40.00
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MARCH 3rd - APRIL 7th, 2011
THEATRE THEN AND AGAIN AND NOW
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Ted McGee
10AM to 12 NOON Thursdays at
Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound
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| March 3rd |
Aristotle on Oedipus
Aristotle remains the most widely influential theorist
of tragedy as a dramatic form. Unlike his teacher Plato,
whose ideas about art were part of his speculations
about the best of all possible worlds, Aristotle derived
his theory of tragedy from his knowledge of plays
that had been performed in the great theatre festivals
of Athens. This lecture examines Aristotle's theory of
tragedy, its indebtedness to Sophocles' Oedipus Rex,
its misrepresentation of that play, and a variety of later
theories of tragedy— all as a basis for asking what constitutes
"tragedy" in our time and place.
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| March 10th |
Medieval Street Theatre:
Community and Ideology
Sir Henry Hudson, "Clerk of Spofford," may have written
some of the pageants of the city of York’s cycle of
mystery plays. If he did, he is the only individual author
of the great mystery and morality plays of medieval
England whom we know. We assume most of
these works were products of collaborative authorship
over decades. All of them were staged thanks to the
annual sponsorship of local trade guilds, city council,
and amateur performers. As a result, the medieval
mystery plays—such as the Chester Fall of Lucifer, the
York Crucifixion, and the Coventry Second Shepherds’
Play—reveal how the cities understood their identities
in the context of a vision of all of human history.
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| March 17th |
Shakespearean Comedy
at the Stratford Festival 2011
The earliest notice of Shakespeare as a playwright came
from Robert Greene, a rival playwright who ridiculed
him in 1592 as this "upstart crow, this Shake-scene."
Shakespeare went on to stir things up in London’s theatre
scene. In 1598 Francis Meres listed seven plays
that proved that Shakespeare was England's "best for
comedy." One reason for his success and notoriety is
that Shakespeare not only used the traditional comic
structures he inherited, but also defied them by adding
to the final big scenes threatened rapes, announcements
of death, awkward silences, lonely individuals
and jaded outsiders. We shall focus on the comedies
being produced at the Stratford Festival in 2011.
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| March 24th |
Rewriting Ideology (and Theatre)
Galileo. Galileo, remaining true to his astronomical observations,
made discoveries that called into question
the very foundations of the dominant worldview that
the medieval mystery plays imagined. Bertoldt Brecht,
a radically innovative modern playwright, used drama
to challenge the ideology of his time and place. Indeed
he did it twice—writing Galileo to challenge the rise of
fascism early in the 20th century, revising it after Hiroshima
to challenge the faith in science and technology
of contemporary times.
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| March 31st |
Rewriting Community (and Theatre)
In 1972, director Paul Thompson took a troupe of actors
from Theatre Passe Muraille to Clinton, Ontario
to live in that rural community for several months, talk
with the people there, work on the farms, and create
out of that "research" a work of art. Hence, "a landmark
Canadian theatrical event: The Farm Show." In
The Drawer Boy, Michael Healey rewrites that event in
Canadian theatre history by telling the story of a Toronto
troupe that goes into the same farming community
to do "research" for a new play. The central character,
the actor Miles, says that their purpose is “to get
your history and give it back to you”—and they do in
unexpectedly profound ways.
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| April 7th |
Rewriting Shakespeare
(for Screen, not Stage)
The 1998 release of Shakespeare in Love, demonstrates
that film directors were also in love with Shakespeare.
For modern filmmakers, the Bard had always been a
"bankable" playwright, but at the turn of the millennium
his works seemed to provide a lens through which
directors saw the complexities of own times with
greater clarity. Not just through well-known favourites
like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, or A Midsummer Night's
Dream, but also through rarely performed works such
as Titus Andronicus and Richard III. We discuss Shakespeare
at the millennium by examining these films and
more radical adaptations for youth such as O, She's the
Man, and 10 Things I Hate About You.
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6 lectures, $40.00
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