Making Agents
Have you seen the video making the rounds with the Boston Dynamics robots — notably the parts where they demonstrate their ability to adapt by pushing them around? No? Well then this is your lucky day. […]
Author: Russell McCutcheon
Posts by Russell McCutcheon
Making (And Then Trying to Solve) Our Own Puzzles
Have you seen the media trying to explain why so-called evangelical Christians are supporting Donald Trump so much in the Republican primaries? For he’s hardly a model for the sort of family values they’re thought to find important — so why back him? It’s a puzzle. […]
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“I Can’t Believe It”
Sometimes ordinary language tells us far more about social life than we at first realize. For example, take two common phrases: “I can’t believe it” and “Let it sink in…” What’s going on when we say that? Or, better put, when do we say that? And what does it tell us about the word “belief” — a word we usually use as if it names some pristine interior realm that’s only secondarily projected out and expressed in public. […]
What It Gives With One Hand….
I found this over at the Huffington Post this morning — an announcement for a new HarvardX (part of edX) course on religious literacy. The course is described as follows: […]
Out of Control
I’m sure you’ve seen that statement at the tail end of the movie credits — as you waited to see if a blooper reel would end off the film; ever wonder why it’s there? […]
New Hire in REL
We’re extremely pleased to announce that, as of August 2016, we will have another new colleague in REL. Suma Ikeuchi is currently a doctoral candidate at Emory University, where she will receive her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology in May 2016. She also has an M.A. in Anthropology from Brandeis University and a B.A. in both History and Anthropology from Hokkaido University, Japan. […]
The Romans in Films, Again
Have you seen Hail Cesar? It’s both an homage to and a parody of the days when studios controlled Hollywood. George Clooney plays an actor playing a Roman in a movie about Christ. […]
What Remain Constant
Whatever job you take, the specific subjects you studied in college will probably prove somewhat irrelevant to the day-to-day work you will do soon after you graduate. And even if they are relevant, that will change. People who learned to write code for computers just ten years ago now confront a new world of apps and mobile devices. What remain constant are the skills you acquire and the methods you learn to approach problems. – Fareed Zakaria In Defense of […]
In Support of a Speaker’s Practical Interests
Did you catch the story, the other day, about Republican Presidential candidate, Ben Carson, and a campaign speech he gave in Iowa City? He distinguished between calling Islam a religion and classing it as a “life organizing system.” […]
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Any Questions?
Several REL classes this semester off by asking their students to pose one question about religion or its study that they’d like answered. As you might guess, our faculty got quite an array of questions — from some that were focused on the possible links between violence and religion to queries about the origins and function of religion, and even some specific questions about why some women cover their faces in Islam, the place of cows in Hinduism, whether atheism […]