As long as I keep wearing the noose…
Every now and then I restate my intention to more fully articulate my views on the War for Civilization. It includes, of course, the war against Islamic jihadism; the carefully considered rape of Western Civilization by ill-intentioned pseudo-intellectuals, mass media podpeople and loony left moonbats; the collapse of education and the disappearance of a literate society, etc.
But not yet.
In the meantime, here’s some material for the nearly literate (as I hope one day to be) to grab hold of and fly with: MIT’s listing of “Opencourseware”–free course material from MIT. Yep. Free. Here.
(Thanks to George Laiacona III for sending the link to Jerry Pournelle and to Dr. Pournelle for posting it. I can see my blogging tapering off a little just from time spent browsing the courses… Wow. Neat stuff!)
Now, admittedly, the offerings are really “just” highly detailed course outlines, detailing, for example, subjects covered in each class session and assignments, etc. But surely that’s enough to allow a reasonably intelligent person to glean one heck of a lot of knowledge in a subject. I just scanned ” Developing Musical Structures” and it looks like something I could get my teeth into. Foundations of Western Culture I: Homer to Dante; Foundations of Western Culture II; and Foundations of Western Culture II: Renaissance to Modernity, look like well-structured reviews of western civ, with perhaps a little more depth tha n expected, given that they are intro lit courses. (As an aside, it was a trip for me to visit—via phone—with my 13/14(?)-year-old nephew a couple of weeks ago about his venture into reading Greek tragedy. Between his daily readings and the family round-table readings in the evening, it looked like Oedipus would get a pretty in-depth examination… Something many college grads will not have done either in high school or college.)
But the stuff that’s available! Wow! Great site.
More, please.
Oh, and don’t miss the CD/DVD images of 600 (CD) or 9,400!(DVD) books available at http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject/