Course: Constitutional Interpretation
Length: 7 weeks, 2-5 hrs/wk
School/platform: Princeton/edX
Instructor: Robert P. George
Quote:Though the Constitution is widely credited for the success of the United States’ republican democracy, people often disagree about how it should be interpreted. What does the Constitution mean? What does it require, and what does it forbid? In this course, we will examine competing theories of, and approaches to, constitutional interpretation.
More specifically, we ask:
• Should the provisions of the U.S. Constitution be read to give effect to the intent of their framers and ratifiers? If so, what counts as their “intent,” and how is it to be discerned?
• If “original intent” is not the touchstone of interpretation, how is the constitutional interpreter to avoid simply reading his or her own moral beliefs or political ideology into the Constitution?
• Who, by the Constitution’s own terms, has the power of judicial review, that is, to authoritatively interpret the Constitution and give effect to its principles and norms?
• If we accept the principle of judicial review, does that mean that judges always have the final say in disputed questions of what the Constitution means and requires?
One of the main points of this course was that some what we would consider fundamentals of the American constitution aren’t in the Constitution at all, but were established by court rulings. Like the idea of judicial supremacy, for instance: nine judges (at the current time), none of whom were elected, get to decide if laws passed by elected officials are legal or not. How’d that happen? It was hotly contested back in the earliest days of the 19th century, in fact, but somehow it’s managed to survive, even though Lincoln himself took a few whacks at it.
Interesting course, huh. And, in the present moment, kind of depressing, scary. So much rides on these decisions, and everything depends on the red wheelbarrow of precedent and the power of law which doesn’t feel very secure right now. In fact this course finished a couple of months ago, but I didn’t write it up because it felt so frustrating. Time to get up off the mat.
Each week looks at a different aspect, and shows what cases and decisions were crucial in forming what we more or less take for granted now. It’s all very accessible; even the cases are available in full legalistic glory, or in for-the-rest-of-us form. Though it’s large-class lecture, there’s some interaction, which always makes a course more interesting.
After six weeks of general material, five special-topic sessions are offered, of which two are required. It’s hard to pick since they’re all interesting: religious freedom, political speech, equal protection, property/contract (which is a lot more interesting than it sounds), and bodily integrity/family/reproductive law.
Each lecture started with a welcome that included online students and “community auditors”. I was curious about that, so I went looking: it seems that, for $200, pretty much anyone can sit in on most Princeton lectures in person, as long as they sit in the back and don’t say anything unless expressly invited (keep out of the way of the “real” students, so to speak). And then there are moocers, who get much the same deal for free. While edX has upped the pressure to pay – audit courses are no longer available indefinitely, and graded materials aren’t available – Princeton says, screw that, and somehow carved out its own deal. Grades were calculated, the course is available in archive, and they even email a Certificate to everyone who passes. Now that’s open.
Course: 
where France and England came from, though I confess, I still don’t understand the whole “fall” of Rome; I think I’m taking the word too seriously, maybe I should go with “decline”. In any case, Gibbon’s six-volume history seems to have lost its lustre; I’m glad I never got around to reading it. 
Let me begin with a disclaimer: This was not the right class for me to take. I was curious to learn more about the technical details of vaults, having seen some wonderful examples of structures from medieval and renaissance architecture, and this was, as advertised, a very basic introduction to the engineering of vaults. However, after a brief look at the Roman Pantheon, the course focused on concrete shells of the 20th century and more modern innovations. I lost interest quickly. Then I got sick between weeks 4 and 5, which further diminished my participation. I did end up “passing” the course, so it might be worth your while even if your particular interest is only partly covered. And I did come away with a better understanding of how vaults work, though keep in mind, I started at absolute zero.
Each week consisted of three distinct sections: a lecture series covering the historical and technical development of vault engineering, generally by focusing on one engineer who introduced a specific innovation, be it reinforced concrete or hyperparabolic shapes; a mathematical section, in PDF form, covering several equations in detail, though at a fairly simple mathematical level requiring only basic algebra; and a creative section, which invites students to post pictorial examples of some facet of the week’s material. Grading is divided fairly equally among these three sections. But don’t worry: although the material, particularly the mathematical sections (none of which go beyond basic algebra), may seem intimidating, the questions are manageable. Even though I skipped everything but the lecture sequences of weeks 5 and 6, I “passed” by a comfortable margin. 
The lectures were very good, with lots of illustrative exampes, interviews with a variety of engineers and scholars, and a very step-by-step explanation of the development and construction of the technique under study.
Libertarianism. Instead, it focuses on philosophical libertarianism, which is related to non-determinism and the potential of different outcomes for different choices. The second level of this is to become a different kind of chooser, a bit more sophisticated kind of free will, in which we can decide to learn a language or a musical instrument and thus open up those choices, or follow a particular way of life and make our choices there. Sound complicated? It isn’t, really, but it helps to take the first couple of weeks of the course to see the ways this works.
The first week presented an overview of determinism vs non-determinism, and the general outline of free will within that schema. Week two continued with a philosophical approach to the classifications of free will. The remaining four weeks focused more on neuroscience, and how our brains have evolved to allow consideration of choices, as well as random fluctuations that prevent determinism. 
In any case it was seriously interesting all the way through. If some of the material should seem overwhelming, don’t worry; the graded questions are looking for broader concepts. A set of non-graded questions follows up each lecture, with a quiz at the end of the week drawn from those same questions. There’s reallly no excuse to miss any of those questions, in other words. They account for 75% of the course grade, with discussion counting for 25%. Since the passing grade is 70%, it’s very possible to pass the course without doing the discussion. I avoided discussion deliberately, as there was a particularly argumentative student who basically disagreed with everything, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. 
I’ve taken, what, four or five introductory logic courses now; each one is a little different. Some are more comprehensive, some focus on different things. This one kept things at the simplest level and featured lots of very clear explanations and examples, plus three different modes of grading. As a first course in logic, I think it might work quite well. And then, it included my favorite: truth trees! Some of the other topics included Venn and Euler diagrams, types of deductive argument structures and fallacies, and inductive arguments. Most of the emphasis is on recognizing these elements in actual, if simple, arguments.
The last week was devoted to production of an argument, with steps for design. The structure was useful, but there’s no way to practice. This is the Achilles’ heel of many humanities moocs: once they gave up on real peer-assessment, there’s really no way to create an assignment for this. The discussion forums would be an option, but, somewhat surprisingly, there was little activity, beyond the initial meet-and-greet, even though the instructor provided feedback for questions.
anywhere else: language, mathematics, and computational logic. The Stanford course on Coursera is tailored to computer science; better minds than mine have hated it as much as I did. But for anyone looking for a place to start, this introductory mooc would fit the bill. And trust me: the more you go over it, the easier it gets.
There wasn’t any reading Sartre, it’s true, and rather than reading chapters of Kierkegaard or Nietzsche, there were nutshell versions of pertinent ideas. But a great deal of work went into putting together a course that showed applications and consequences of those ideas in the form of film, literature, and music. And, yes, discussion questions.
permission is almost always granted for this sort of thing, the process – even if it’s just putting up a credits list of public domain items – still requires significant work. A lot of care went into this course.
carefully designed and executed. I just have a preference for the dry, straight lectures and reading assignments so many people take courses like this to avoid. I knew what it was going in, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to try something a little different. And for those who would rather bypass the dry lectures and voluminous reading, it offers an experiential way to encounter some of the basic ideas of existentialism. 
examination of the broadest system, The Brain, began on Dec. 5. It’s all self-paced; in general, I finished each segment early, since I’ve been doing introductory neuro over and over for a while now. What can I say, I like brain stuff. I still have about a week to go before I finish up Part 3, but I wanted to get my postings done before the end of the year to clear the decks for Pushcart on January 1. 
I get the sense the developers of the course were really most interested in the first segment on electrical properties of the neuron –potentials, resistance, and the effects of electrolytes – since that’s where most of the fancy stuff was found: graphics to adjust levels of electrolytes across membranes with adjustable resistance, etc. I found some of it rather difficult to follow, and the material on length constant and time constant was far too brief. It’s possible I struggled because I was less interested in this particular area. Most neuroresearch, of course, measures electrical activity, so it’s appropriate that it’s emphasized. 
The second course in the series moved up a level to interneuron communication via neurotransmitters and modulators, synapses, and excitation/inhibition patterns. Included were several interesting “Extras”, interviews with researchers looking at such topics as optogenetics – using a light-activated channel from algae to stimulate and record neuronal activity – and connectomics, a technique to understand the informational organization of the nervous system. 
Each week’s material consisted of a number of short video lectures with two or three graded Practice Problems following, plus a final exam at the end of each course. Multiple attempts are given for each question in both cases; most of the questions are information-retrieval, the exception being the first course where a fair amount of applying various equations is required. 
bet it’ll be fascinating.
As I’ve said of these courses before (I’ve taken all seven, though I haven’t blogged each one), they’re only partly about the music. Kelly creates a comfortable gestalt of history, biography, technology, and music, including interviews with directors and recording historians, to present the works in a context of time and space. For instance, I didn’t know that Meyerbeer and the Grand Opera of the French 19th century expanded the technology of stagecraft; that Wagner built the Bayreuth theatre specifically for his Ring cycle, and had some unusual ideas about its presentation (lack of boxes for royalty and the upper crust, save a box for the Prince who helped fund the work, for one; a prohibition on applause between acts, for another); or that Verdi incorporated several of Wagner’s musical techniques into his Otello while still keeping his own signature approach.
I again recommend this course to anyone with even a little interest in the material; it has a way of grabbing your imagination as things go on. I tend to have a preference for more academic moocs, but for these, I make an exception: they’re wonderful little stories, and, for those who are motivated to take it all more seriously, additional resources are available.
come out of this with a decent grade, though I have to say, I strongly suspect the deck was stacked to puff up grades. I’m not fooling myself: I have a long way to go before I “understand” this stuff.
and that’s where the real learning takes place. Weekly graded quizzes follow; these are well-designed with both basic-concept questions (“find the expected value of this PDF”) and more complicated problems. There are also several “gimmes” along the way – seriously, “Your answer should be 3”, why is this even a question? And “your answer to d should be the same as your answer to b” gives you two chances to come up with the goods – hence my impression that there’s some padding going on. 
Another way I used this course, besides the obvious learning about probability, was to improve my ability to “read’ math. I’m by nature a reader, but when it comes to math, I look at page of notation which presumably contain their own explanations, and my eyes just glaze over. It’s why moocs are so much more useful to me than textbooks. Here, where each lecture includes a PDF handout which is often the entire lecture, I went through the handouts first, literally copying them into my notes document, and tried to understand what was going on. Then I’d listen to the lectures, which meant two passes over the material. I still struggle with reading math, but it’s a start. 
profs also offers the benefit of realizing that one person’s “find the density of X” is another’s “find the PDF of X”. It’s an approach I find helpful: the first time through, I get some idea of the lay of the land, and by the second (or maybe the third, or fourth, whatever it takes) time, I’m ready to actually start learning. 
straightforward interpretive approach, the 
The final week focused on an extended interview with playwright/director/actor Keith Hamilton Cobb, whose American Moor is not a setting of the play but an “
the score, so some written work is necessary to earn a passing grade. Whether you wish to cheat or not is between you and your conscience. 
Week 1 was a general introduction to the Book of Kells, which until embarrassingly recently I thought was something like The Book of Runes, with kells as a form of ancient alphabet. No, no, no: the book is a four-volume compendium of the Gospels, and Kells is the town of the monastery where the book was probably partly written, then was housed (and stolen! but recovered) for centuries. Written about 800 CE (a 1200 year old book!), it has a complex history, and in the 17th century was given to the Trinity College library where it is on exhibit to the public. It’s become a prominent symbol of Ireland and an example of the earliest Irish art. 
digitalized images, is remarkably similar. For someone not that familiar with, or interested in, manuscript production, this might be just the right depth. 
Week 4 looked at how the book became a symbol of Irish culture, from the knot imagery to its incorporation into literature – everything from James Joyce to Guardians of the Galaxy. More about its display was explained, including the Turning of the Page every eight weeks or so: each of the four volumes is kept in a glass case to protect it from the elements, but different pages are displayed throughout the year. And of course the pages have been digitized and can be viewed 
iconography, which was marvelous and memorable; I also pasted lost of images into my notes for future reference. 
used by Handel and others early in the period, and the more melodic and dramatic style that emerged later with Mozart, culminating in Don Giovanni.
Overall the course is probably best described as music appreciation: a conversational approach to the music’s history, the stage presentation, the conventions of singing and stage performance at the time, explanations of why the opera was written to begin with, and details of the opening night performances. Much of it is told in an anecdotal manner rather than the typical lecture style. A few questions, mostly multiple choice (but a couple aiming for listening skills) follow each video. For me, it was a recreational mooc, a wonderful way to wind down for an hour or so at the end of the day.
some arias from another dozen, but you’d have to chain me to my seat to get me to sit through Fidelio again (the first time I saw it at least I was at Tanglewood, which is beautiful no matter what’s playing). The truism that understanding changes attitudes is a truism for a reason: it’s true. And if Prof. Kelly ever explains Wagner, well, I just might surprise myself by liking that, too. And oh, by the way – there’s a 19th century session in the works. I can’t wait! 
Length: 6 weeks, 4-6 hrs/wk (New session starts Oct. 13, 2018)
The course is structured so that all the lectures are presented for the week, at which point I would feel generally confused. I felt like I was missing an overview, a sense of where we were going, the connective tissue of narrative. But I have learned patience, and it paid off: the lectures were followed by three problem sets of non-graded practice questions, complete with answers and varying degrees of detailed explanation. This is where the course really worked well for me: doing these questions – or in many cases, not doing them because I didn’t know what to do at first – and reviewing the given solutions made sense of the lectures. I do wish there had been a few “basic nuts and bolts” questions after each video, but that’s me. 
Because it took me a while to catch on to the rhythm of the course, I think I still have more to learn from the first weeks in particular, which is why I signed up again. It will also be helpful to have forums for questions (I still don’t think I fully understand how to calculate variance, particularly using the “diagonal” approach shown in the video), though I found I could get most of my questions answered through old forum posts. 
along the line, since often I didn’t figure out how something worked until the last question, but there were no further questions on that aspect to make sure I knew what I was doing. 
Course: 
It’s a short course, three weeks (there is a Week 0, for purposes of getting used to the edX platform, but there’s no content). There’s very little solid content; it’s mostly open response to acted-out scenarios and discussions of the issues raised. Ostensibly the weeks had different foci, but I found it all to boil down to: keep an eye on your assumptions, notice when you’re being triggered by a difficult patient, and think about what isn’t being said as well as what is being said. The instructors were mostly emergency room physicians, a setting that often requires action when there isn’t a lot of time to gather a great deal of data. 
The acted-out scenarios in W1 and 2 were dramatic as conflicts arose between patients and staff, patients and their families, families and staff. I very much liked the Week 3 exercise, in which an abstract painting was the focus: what story do you see in the painting? Look at the negative space (I had trouble with this; I didn’t see any negative space). Map one of the patient scenarios to the painting in a way that makes sense to you. 
My main thought was: I wonder how possible any of this approach is in the current healthcare system, which focuses on efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Insurance companies and accountants have reduced primary care physicians to something like data entry clerks, and socioeconomic factors more than medical factors impact patient decisions. 
I took a class similar to this one in college, but of course that was a very long time ago. I tracked down the textbook through my library, a thousand-page-in-tiny-print-on-onionskin compilation of Profound Thoughts from creation to last week (I had a book very much like this in college, too). Alas, I confess, I did very little of the reading. I’m not 20 years old any more (not that I was 20 years old in college, either; it took me a while to get there), after all. 
genius, well, it’s probably because you don’t have little kids. Tony the Tow Truck is a picture book for toddlers, clocking in at about 188 words total. In keeping with Russian formalism, Prof. Fry parsed it linguistically (the repeated “t” sounds common in folklore), psychologically (the narcissism of the repeated “I” sentences and the return to an earlier, safer state), socially (the snooty cars that won’t help Tony, and the friend that will), and in terms of identity and community (relationships). It’s kind of amazing. I wrote papers like this. I always thought it was sophistry. 
Of course, there are no tests or quizzes, and it’s purely a solo effort with no other students. I’ve tried to get others interested, but no one wants to play. 
Course: 
As it turned out, the mooc was a broad overview of the major themes and techniques, consisting of a total of about 2 hours of videos in 15-minute stints. The additional work included annotating the poem for specific features (highlight indications it is an Epic, that Satan is a hero in the opening books, etc). This required using an annotation package that afforded the opportunity to see others’ annotations. I hate this sort of thing, so I skipped it. The other coursework was mandatory discussion posts, which I also skipped. 
fact, an extreme radical, since he called for beheading King Charles I, which eventually happened in the English Civil War. And, oh yeah, he had daddy issues, one of the recurrent phrases in Overly Sarcastic Production’s very sarcastic (and irreverent, and hilarious, but not inaccurate) 
Courses:
The first mooc examines a pair of manuscripts describing the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and the Tabernacle (a temporary and portable version used before the Temple was built, particularly during the forty years the Hebrews wandered around the Sinai). The second mooc looks at a codex with three different manuscripts on medieval medical practices, and uses these as a way to trace the flow of ideas from Galen to the Islamicate to Europe. 
end-page glossaries include local dialect vocabularies for practitioners who need to buy these substances from Italian vendors. 
renowned physician/philosopher Avicenna came along and wrote an even better text, overshadowing Majusi’s work and pushing him into relative historic obscurity. 
pertinent sections of the manuscript are embedded in the videos. Links to the complete digitized manuscripts from the Penn collection are hard to find, but they’re there (check the Syllabus). 
I almost missed these offerings entirely. edX hasn’t publicized the current Tabernacle course at all (I saw it on a tweet by Class Central), and it was only through the Syllabus that I learned about the Jewish Medicine course. That’s a shame, since they’re terrific. I’ve been a bit of a snob about mini-moocs (I’ve called them “Youtube plus a quiz”) but I have to re-think that. For anyone interested in Jewish cultural history, medieval medicine, or manuscript studies, these are tiny little gems. 
biology, and chemistry, it pretty much started where my knowledge starts to thin out, and covered quite a bit. It is intended as an intro to physiology, so there’s a lot more detail left for future explorations. The material offers it as a good review for the MCATs, so that’s probably a good estimate of the level: some background is necessary, but we’re still in undergrad territory.
The remaining nine weeks all covered different organ systems. There was a lot of overlap, but it was handled very smoothly. We started with nervous system and senses, then moved into muscles (which of course require some understanding of the nervous system), then heart (which requires some understanding of nerves and muscles)… you get the idea. 
The lectures were a bit uneven. Some of them were great; others were hard to follow, and at some point became a flood of words. The transcripts weren’t much help in this case since they contained all the hesitations, restarts, half-thoughts abandoned in mid-word, but without the auditory clues to ignore them. However, what was very helpful was a lecture note summary outlining the lecture material. These were at a higher academic level, without a lot of preparation or metaphor to help with understanding, but combined with the lectures I found them invaluable. I wish I’d started using them before the last couple of weeks (stubbornness is my downfall again). Yet, again, I found the content to be great, which made up for any quirks of delivery. Example: I’ve been struggling with the different hormones secreted by the three layers of the adrenal cortex for years now, but one phrase – “salt, sugar, sex” – clarified everything. 
I found the quiz material – some graded, some not – to be very well designed. Rather than a recitation of facts, most of the questions asked us to extrapolate from the pathways and processes covered and predict or explain the result of some action. I used Cerego for the rote stuff, but the in-video questions, the post-lecture practice quizzes, and unit exams were excellent opportunities to turn rote into reasoning. Example: “Increased delivery of Na+ to the principal cells of the renal tubule leads to increased…?” I was expecting one answer, but it wasn’t in the list; it took a bit of doing, but I realized another answer was, indeed, correct (and, in fact, turned out to be clearly stated in a lecture, though, hey, I can’t remember everything, y’know). Some units had fewer practice quizzes than others; I missed them terribly. It’s not just 
that I’m weird and I like taking tests (which, well, yeah, why take a course if there’s no test?), it’s that it really helped point out exactly what I needed to understand better, before getting to the end of the unit. 
I’ve overall been quite pleased with Duke courses, particularly their neuro and medical options; this one was no exception. At times things could get a bit wordy, but if the goal is to understand the basics of how the body works, this fits the bill very nicely. 
survey courses, that I prefer depth to breadth. Still, while there were a few “catalog lectures” early on (this god does that, this demon does the other thing), I found many of the units quite interesting – and last three weeks were great.
adaptations, was particularly rich in this. I was a bit surprised gods, angels, and demons weren’t explicitly connected across cultures (the nature theme, for example), since it seemed to me there were obvious similarities and differences. I probably should have been more active on the forums to discuss these.
the way). I found the lectures on Buddhism to be nearly incomprehensible (I stuck with my interpretation – Buddha was an agnostic who incorporated Hindu gods as a marketing tool – and moved on), but 23 out of 24 is still excellent any way you cut it. 
evolving story of the acheiropoieton, the miraculous portrait of Jesus “not painted by human hands”, to be of great interest. I also loved the last week, a more in-depth case study of another continuing saga of a miracle, this one from Coptic Egypt involving the moving of a mountain. Manuscripts got into the act, and, well, manuscripts, what else can I say. I feel like I finally have some understanding of Copts beyond “Egyptian Christians.” That, to me, is the real value of these types of courses: we feel more connected to places we’ll probably never go, places like the Muqattam area of Cairo, Ise in Japan, Armenia, and Georgia. These days, we need all the connection we can get. 
including archaeology, history in general, the history of ideas, the history of religions, the history of literature, and the branch of philology called textual criticism or (in a larger sense), textual scholarship.” Oooh, now there’s a mooc I want to take! We got a glimpse of this during the last two weeks, in the tracing of the miraculous portrait and the moving of the mountain. I hope to discover more along those lines in future moocs. 
some basics I needed to review, and went just a little beyond my comfort zone. Both the “how it works” and the “how to do it” were covered clearly. There was enough repetition to build a kind of security, in both explanation and exercises. An occasional hint of goofiness made it fun. I got lost a couple of times, but plenty of signposts helped me find my way back. Perfect.
The seven units that comprised the course were released two at a time. I see now that each unit was expected to take two weeks (I really MUST start paying attention to introductory material and instructions) but I had no problem completing it all in four weeks. Each lesson, usually three or four per unit, featured a lecture video that gave the basics of the concepts to be covered, showed how important formulas were derived, and ran through an example or two. Each of these lessons was followed by a short set of 2 to 4 practice exercises, complete with an “office hours” step-by-step video, usually showing a slightly different way of working the problem than was presented in the lecture (I could have used a couple more of these in some units, but it was sufficient as is). Each unit ended with an evaluation problem set covering all the lessons of the week. The instructors were all personable and relatable; diagrams helped concretize abstract ideas, and little drawings brought in a little fun. 
The practice exercises made up 20% of the grade – and, since they were mostly multiple choice and allowed unlimited attempts, were more or less “gimme” points. The weekly evaluations, also multiple choice but allowing 2 attempts, counted for 80%. 
The third unit covered the basics of probability, which boils down to: success over possibility, with slightly different twists depending on whether you’re dealing with coins, dice, or cards. Then we got into expected value in the fourth unit – why slot machines are a losing game – a topic I’ve seen several times in various contexts. Conditional probability in unit 5 – the Monty Hall problem, election probability – got a little scary but made sense. The sixth unit on Bernoulli Trials was one place I got lost – it was where I completely dropped the ball in a prior class – but eventually I caught on. Normal distribution, likewise, was tricky, but thanks to the Office Hours videos, I was able to work my way through it. 
I found this course extremely helpful in my continuing struggle to learn math, any math. I’m still concerned, because my grasp of all this is very context-dependent. For instance, I don’t really see the connection between Bernoulli trials, random walks, and distributions as covered in earlier classes, and as covered here. Maybe that means I just need to get a wider view.
is new material, but I’m betting it’s going to be worth it either way. [Addendum: The “Look! Animations!” teaser was bait-and-switch; this was seriously mathy stuff, theorems and proofs and now go figure out what to do with them. I got through the first two weeks just fine, but really, seriously crashed and burned on week 3; week 4 only got worse, so I went looking for a different sequel, and found Purdue’s course; it’s archived, so there’s no support, but it’s working out a little better]