Whales can learn to do all kinds of amazing things. Humpback whales learn how to blow bubbles and work together to hunt for fish. Dolphins, a kind of toothed whale, teach their babies different sounds. It’s a kind of language the young dolphin will know for life.
Pirotta
But to find out just how smart whales really are, I asked my friend Enrico Pirotta, a Washington State University statistical ecologist who studies how blue whales make long journeys across the ocean.
Before he revealed the answer to your question, he shared a bit more about intelligence. Usually people talk about intelligence as the ability to learn something and apply what they learn, he said. It can be tricky to compare our intelligence with other animals, but it’s something some scientists think about.
How a meeting in Philadelphia changed American religion forever.
By Matthew Avery Sutton, professor of history
Sutton
For many Americans, it was thrilling to be alive in 1919. The end of World War I had brought hundreds of thousands of soldiers home. Cars were rolling off the assembly lines. New forms of music, like jazz, were driving people to dance. And science was in the ascendant, after helping the war effort. Women, having done so much on the home front, were ready to claim the vote, and African-Americans were eager to enjoy full citizenship, at long last. In a word, life was dazzlingly modern.
But for many other Americans, modernity was exactly the problem. As many parts of the country were experimenting with new ideas and beliefs, a powerful counterrevolution was forming in some of the nation’s largest churches and Bible institutes. A group of Christian leaders, anxious about the chaos that seemed to be enveloping the globe, recalibrated the faith and gave it a new urgency. They knew that the time was right for a revolution in American Christianity. In its own way, this new movement — fundamentalism — was every bit as important as the modernity it seemingly resisted, with remarkable determination.
Unlike more mainstream Protestants, fundamentalists did not expect to see a righteous and holy kingdom of God established on earth. Instead, they taught that the Holy Spirit would soon turn this world over to the Antichrist, a diabolical world leader who would preside over an awful holocaust in which those true believers who had not already been raptured to heaven would suffer interminable tribulations.
Why we say bad things about people who do good things
Why is there this persistent myth that those who do good things are boring, annoying or even morally questionable?
This paradox has a long history, and has been given a new lease-of-life via the internet, with the derogatory term “Social Justice Warrior.” Do-gooders have long been met with resentment, suspicion and hostility. Feelings which manifest as people inferring ulterior motives for altruistic actions, implying real or imagined hypocrisy or attacking do-gooders on unrelated dimensions.
Parks
“Do-gooders are seen as deviant rule breakers. It’s as if they’re giving away Monopoly money so someone can stay in the game, irking other players no end,” explains social psychologist Craig Parks, of Washington State University, who is the author of one such study.
Washington State University linguistics major and Spokane native Ava Beck will study at Aberystwyth University in Wales for three weeks this summer, thanks to a Fulbright Summer Institute to the U.K. award.
Beck is one of around 60 U.S. students selected to undertake short academic and cultural programs at any of nine hosting institutions throughout the United Kingdom. At Aberystwyth, on that country’s western coast, Beck will join fellow Americans exploring contemporary issues in identity and nationhood “through the lens of Wales.” She will attend classes in the university’s Dept. of International Politics, explore the city, visit the National Library of Wales, and learn a bit of the Welsh language.
“I am eager to learn and study during the experience and apply that knowledge to my future studies,” Beck said. “But I am also eager to just experience a new place and culture. I hope to grow in obvious and subtle ways and to bring this experience back with me to share with my peers as well as those I am closest to. It really is an exciting opportunity.”
The aspiring speech language therapist chose to apply to the Aberystwyth program for two reasons. She is interested that Wales is striving toward bilingualism in English and Welsh. Plus, she believes her academic area of interest—linguistics, or the study of the nature and structure of human language—is “irrefutably connected” to the summer themes of identity and culture.
Linda Russo, clinical associate professor of English, has won the 2019 College of Arts and Sciences Mid-Career Clinical and Instructional Achievement Award. Russo teaches Introduction to Creative Writing as well as Intermediate and Advanced Poetry.
Megan Kaminski, a poet at the University of Kansas who nominated Russo, writes that “Linda’s three recent books, Participant, Meaning to Go to the Origin in Some Way, and To Think of Her Writing Awash in Light have had a significant impact on the poetry world.”
Kaminski also recognized Russo for her co-edited volume Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene, stating that the book “re-visions current understandings of the ecological in literary studies… and does important work in decolonizing the often very white male world of nature writing.”
Russo’s collaborative digital mapping, ecology, and arts project has brought together students and community members, as well as forging valuable connections between the arts, humanities, and sciences, allowing her to connect with a wide range of students.
