Stanford talk - Prime Minister Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš of the Republic of Latvia
Dear Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš,
Here are the questions I asked in your Latvia-Stanford video conference:
Thank you for your excellent talk, Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš. What role could furthering a single worldwide cryptocurrency (in most of ~200 countries: think the Euro in 19 out of 28 EU countries) - and think ‘Stanford Mine Pi Coin’ with BLOCKCHAIN ledger - play in giving Latvia a new leadership role in the EU, & with regards especially to Russia and China, and further for new approaches to 1 climate change 2 technological development and regulation 3 rules based international trade (but also in many ways regarding 4 international security 5 values)?
All the best, Scott MacLeod
Latvia World University and School will emerge from here -
https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Nation_States - in the Latvian language, and as a major online CC04 MIT OCW-centric online university offering free-to-students' MIT OCW-centric Bachelor, PhD, Law, MD and IB high school (or sim) degrees, and newly as WUaS partners with edX (founded by MIT and Harvard). And if you know anyone in the wider Latvian community, who speaks English, and is interested in an online free PhD or 4-year Bachelor degree beginning 9/1/21 at MIT OCW-centric World University and School, please let me know.
Thank you,
Scott
PS
If you might be interested, please see the 'Bay Area Stammtisch" Google Meet link here for this Saturday, May 1, 2020 at 10:30 am Pacific Time, in German and English -
- Scott GK MacLeod - Founder, President, CEO & Professor
- World University and School
1 climate change2 technological development and regulation 3 rules based international trade (4 international security, 5 values)
energy independence
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- Scott GK MacLeod
Founder, President, CEO & Professor
World Univ & Sch (WUaS) - PO Box 442, Canyon, CA 94516
- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization.
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Question for Cara from your FAHE Quaker Academics' presentation
Dear Cara, (and David),
Greetings from the SF Bay Area, and thank you. (Do you happen to know perhaps Caleb Alexander MD in Baltimore Yearly Meeting? - Our families met for a Xmas meal over about 2+ decades in Pittsburgh, PA, and it's through the Alexanders partly that I became involved with Quakers). Thanks, David, also for moderating this timely and topical Friendly FAHE Quaker Academics' conversation.
And do you happen to know, too, MIT Professor of Anthropology, Heather Paxson, who is a Friend, I think, and a Haverford alumna too?
From the text chat:
Thanks for your wonderful Light-filled Friendly thinking, Cara (and thanks too Sa'ed).
Cara, am curious how or if - in your ethnographic research methodologies regarding flourishing motherhood in the Emory, GA, prison or affluent church, for your PhD - the questions you're asking are developing online or digitally in new ways? What kinds of new opportunities for Quaker scholarship, if any, have online ethnographic research modalities made possible for you? And how are you also exploring 'walking in the Light' in emerging ONLINE campuses (if such opportunities have emerged over the past coronavirus pandemic year) and even regarding if online virtual places are emerging in your studies? What is authentic online flourishing motherhood in your research or thinking?
Friendly regards, Scott
PS
PPS
My Actual-Virtual Harbin Hot Springs' ethnography also had a slight focus on Quakers, since I identified as a Friendly ethnographer in part, while doing field work, for example, and kept in communication with Quakers in Lake County, northern California, too, while 'in the field.;
Thank you, Cara, and David!
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- Scott GK MacLeod
Founder, President, CEO & Professor
World Univ & Sch (WUaS) - PO Box 442, Canyon, CA 94516
- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization.
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Hi Scott,
Thanks so much for coming last night, and for your question. In terms of the people you mentioned: I don't think I know the Alexanders, at least not by name...always possible I would recognize a face. :) And I don't know Heather Paxson personally, but my spouse, who is an anthropology PhD student, knows her--she works on topics similar to him, and they have connected through that. Various small worlds interconnecting!
In terms of your question about how things have pivoted online: it's a very good one, and I'm afraid I don't have the best answers! As far as my research goes, I was fortunate to have finished most of my research in-person before the pandemic started (though some on the non-prison side did get cut off--I didn't feel it made sense to keep connecting with new folks online at the start of the pandemic as everything was in chaos...though I did do a couple of follow-up interviews over Zoom). And as for the prison, they have virtually no internet access at all, so we have been largely cut off from them, which has been hard. I also work for the theological studies program in a teaching/directing capacity, and we have been able to send in photocopied packets of readings/letters, but that's about it. In a year when many of us relied heavily on online formats for connection, incarcerated folks (at least in states like Georgia) have been largely left behind. In addition to their dramatically increased risk for the virus--it's very frustrating.
But thinking about your question more broadly, I think I see lots of places where online worlds are helping us live better lives right now--if not quite "flourish," perhaps. I know online mothers groups have been extremely important for many folks. And while I was an online teaching skeptic before the pandemic, I will say that I have come to see how it can work well at least in some instances for building community. I'm teaching right now in Candler's Doctor of Ministry program, which is always online, as folks are working pastors and chaplains located in churches/communities throughout the US. The online format allows them to come together and build community, as well as stay rooted in their own context.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful food for thought, at least! Thanks again for your question and engagement last night. I hope your work is going as well as possible in our continuing strange times!
All best,
Cara
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Hi Cara, (David, Research Professor at Bryn Mawr! - I've been thinking you are an Emeritus Professor, but didn't realize you are still active!),
Thanks so much for your prompt email reply, Cara. My Actual-Virtual Harbin Ethnographic book comes into conversation with 'Coming of Age on Second Life: An Anthropologist Explored the Virtually Human' (Princeton UP 2008) by Tom Boellstorff, also with Stanford PhD like Heather Paxson. Has your spouse engaged these resources or a digital focus anthropologically or in his PhD studies? (I don't have a spouse yet:). While my Actual-Virtual Harbin Ethnographic book is bit out of the box, since it seeks to actually create a realistic virtual Harbin Hot Springs for comparative ethnographic study -
http://www.scottmacleod.com/ActualVirtualHarbinBook.html - here's a beginning in the Harbin Hot Springs' Gate in Google Street View with time slider, where you can walk down the road a spell toward Middletown CA, as a possible emerging ethnographic and STEM field site and classrooms too, or campus even ~
http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg (~
https://twitter.com/HarbinBook ~
http://bit.ly/HarbinBook ~). You and your spouse might find interesting this emerging possible research group -
http://www.scottmacleod.com/research-group.html - in a related vein. (Harbin is also a church - Heart Consciousness Church, since 1975 - albeit unaffiliated with other churches, and whatever church means). It seems like the ongoing creation of a myriad virtual worlds is one remarkable aspect of this flourishing.
(Regarding eudaimonia, see -
Eudaimonia (personal flourishing)
is 'Flow' and Bliss
Dear Friends,
While bliss may be experienced by evoking or exploring good spiritedness, I'm curious about the following.
How to experience eudaimonia, flow, and bliss naturally?
FLOW
What is 'flow' ~ the psychology of optimal experience?
and here again too, in this blog label -
(The image on your Twitter feed is a bit macabre -
Qu'est-ce c'est?)
But your FAHE Quaker Academics' talk about flourishing, motherhood, Quaker social ethics, and ethnographic approaches makes me wonder whether one could use photos as evidence or textual resources for identifying flourishing. :) How do you examine academically the idea of flourishing, Cara? For example, the picture in your Twitter profile I could read ethnographically as exhibiting flourishing. What do you think? Helpful 'evidence' - another approach to reading 'flourishing' even, and ethnographically, if you chose to interpret photos with similar flourishing as such, and contextualize this perhaps in terms of what gave rise to such flourishing? I'd be interested in learning further your thoughts to many of these questions.
You both have what could be quite Scottish last names re it can be a small world indeed regarding connectedness and identity (I became a member of the RSOF in Edinburgh, Scotland, Quaker Meeting:).
Friendly regards,
Scott
PS
Caleb Alexander's father, George L Alexander MD, may have had some Scots' background as well - and was also a brilliant Yale & McGill trained Lacanian psychoanalytic psychiatrist, and a bit of a philosopher & linguist too. (I mention him in my blog, since I learned much from his thinking, as family friend - in the Jacques Lacan MD label, for one). Not a Friend, I think he may have met his wife who lives at Kendall Crosslands in Quaker circles in Cambridge or New Haven, for example. David, do you know any of the Alexanders, by any chance? :)
PPS
And you'll see I mention Heather Paxson's work on open source publishing at the bottom of the 4/17/21 WUaS Monthly Business Meeting Minutes from yesterday:
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https://worlduniversityandschool.blogspot.com/2021/04/41721-minutes-for-wuas-open-monthly.html-
https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/04/hyacinth-macaw.html
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