Weekly Free Speech Forum
established Jan. 6, 1951
College of Complexes
The Playground for People Who Think
sustaining the academic tradition of “One Fool at a Time”
Dappers East Restaurant
2901 West Addison St. (3600 north)
Free Parking, Presentation at 6:00 PM
CTA Bus Routes 52, 82, 152
Addison stop on Blue, Brown, Red Lines
January 9th
A Forecast for the Next 100 Years
Meeting # 3,356 - The geopolitical prognostications of college regular
Tim Bolger, based upon evidence from various sources. Included will be
the role of the United States, and the world situation. Come hear how Tim
will tell about the coming defeat finally of the former Soviet Bolc, the
expansions of globalization, the aging of the population, and the solving
of global warming.
Special evidence on how reliable forecasting really is. Program
includes a powerpoint presentation.
January 16th
Venezuela: Report on Trip There During
Their Elections, US Interference, and the
Economic Situation
Meetings # 3,357 - Stanfield Smith , photos to be shown
Jan 23rd
How Capitalism Was Built in the USA
Was it by ambitious people with some good ideas and money to
invest, or was it built on slavery, war, and brutality?
Meetings # 3,358 - Using "Empire of Cotton" by Sven Beckert as a text,
and other books and research, Librarian Daniel Weinberg reviews the
period of American history from 1780 to 1850. He encourages everyone
to come with questions and opinions.
Jan 30th
Was Malthus Correct?
Meetings # 3,359 - college regular Corina Schusheim states that: “My talk
will be an inquiry about whether the Robert Malthus Theory of Population
Growth applies to today's society. Does a high rate population growth cause
poverty, or does poverty cause a high rate of population growth? Is there a
relationship between a society's level of prosperity and its population
growth? I will present examples of neo-Malthusian themes in literature, and
contemporary media. Then we will discuss modern birth control, and
conclude with predictions from demographers and economists.
A
bibliography will be provided of source materials on this topic.
Feb 6th
Classical Economics: What It Is, and Why It
Still Provides the Best Foundation for
Understanding Our Economy Meeting # 3,360
This talk, by economist Michael Weinert, will focus on the three titans of
Political Economy: Smith, Ricardo, and Marx, and on why their
contributions are as relevant today as when they were written.
Feb 13th
Smart Phones: Are We Becoming Zombies or
Truly Connecting with Each Other?
Meeting # 3,361 - Jerry Evans premise is that all of our smart phones,
computers, and social media are turning us into Zombies, and we are truly
missing out on the human connection.
Feb 20th
Incumbency vs Diversity
Meeting # 3,362 - college regular Steve Kungis says "If diversity is such
a wonderful thing in our society, why do we keep voting for the same
people over and over to office. He will look at a variety of situations, and
will be looking at this issues from many angles.
Feb 27th
Good and Bad in Karl Popper
Meetings # 3,363 - Chicago -based libertarian author David Ramsay
Steele
Kark Popper argued that there can be no predictive science of human
history. He rejected Marxist historicism, which he associated with
questionable means, and later socialism, which he associated with placing
equality before freedom. The open society as conceived of by Popper
may be defined as “an association of free individuals respecting each
other's rights within the framework of mutual protection supplied by the
state, and achieving, through the making of responsible, rational
decisions.”
March 5th
Election Program in Progress
Meetings # 3,364 - Illinois primary on Tuesday March 15th
March 12th
Rob Sherman, Candidate for U.S. Congress
5th District of Illinois, Illinois Green Party
Meeting # 3,365 - Candidate in the March 15, 2016, Primary Election
No More Income Taxes
Secular Government For All, State/Church Separation For Everybody
No More Animal Abuse For Entertainment
Election Reform That You Would Love But The Incumbents Would Hate
Environmental Sanity, Labor Sanity, And Financial Sanity
Better O'Hare Airport Noise Mitigation
No More Internet Spying By Corporations on Web Site Visitors
Significantly Reduce Global Warming
Ban Red Light Cameras And Speed Cameras
March 19th
The New Imperialism of Globalized Monopoly
Financed Capital
Meetings # 3,366 - college regular Sid Cohen, who states that: This is
about a new type of imperialism designed to make more profits for the
bankers and industrialists. Any country that gets in their way gets
overthrown."
March 26th
Agent Orange and Dioxin
Meeting # 3,367 – Author Liane C. Casten talks about her new book
April 2nd
The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
and the False Hope of the Presidency
Meeting # 3,368 - In this presentation historian Ted Aranda examines the
followup to the American Oligarchy's 1963 assassination of President
John F. Kennedy: its further assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
More broadly Aranda will argue that the liberal Left's continual efforts to
elect a populist/progressive president are futile. In the past half century
presidents have been either members of the Oligarchy, tools of the
Oligarchy, or dead. We Americans need an entirely new political system
wherein we govern ourselves and the elite has no such all-encompassing
power as it now has, extending to murder (JFK, RFK, MLK) and mass
murder (9/11) with absolute impunity.
April 9, 16
May 21, 28
Open
Meeting # 3,369 +70, 74 – contact the Program Coordinator Charles
Paidock if you would like to speak at (312) 842-5036, (312) 714-7790 or
cpaidock@hotmail.com
April 23rd
Special Earth Day Speaker
Contrasting Ecological Worldviews of the
Neo-Malthusians vs the Cornucopians
Are the Earth's Resources Finite, or
Are There No Limits to Growth?
Meeting # 3,371 - For his traditional "EARTH DAY/EARTH MONTH"
presentation, energy-environmental researcher, writer, and speaker
DENNIS NELSON, a Neo-Malthusian himself, will examine one of the
most fascinating chapters in the history of our environmental controversy-the (in)famous bet between Stanford University population biology
professor Paul Ehrlich (author of THE POPULATION BOMB) and
University of Illinois-Urbana business administration professor Julian
Simon (author of THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE). This wager will be used
as a springboard to discuss the contrasting (and conflicting) worldviews of
the Neo-Malthusians (represented by Paul Ehrlich) vs. the Cornucopians
(represented by Julian Simon). Neo-Malthusianism maintains that the
Earth's resources are finite, and that we must use our creativity and
innovation to constructively live within limits. By contrast,
Cornucopianism maintains that the Earth's resources are infinite, and that
there are no "limits to growth." What are the current policy implications of
the Ehrlich-Simon bet? How is this wager being (mis)used by right-wing,
polluter-funded think-tanks to attack the environmental movement?
April 30th
Special Earth Day Speaker
Climate Change: How Much Time is Left
Before It Takes Effect, and Some Things We
Must Do
Meeting # 3,372 - Lindson (Andy) Anderson will tell us what the
scientific community is saying about this
May 7th
Teaching To Hearts & Minds
Meeting # 3,373 - Louis Silverstein, PhD, Distinguished Professor of
Humanities, HHSS Department, Columbia College Chicago
Prof Silverstein states that his presentation willbe drawn from the
following words of Winston Churchill::
"As the technological capability of humans continues on its relentless
march to who knows where, we must remember that there is a thin veil
that separates civilized man from savage man. Unless there is as much
effort put into the cultivation of the teachings of the heart—compassion,
mercy and caring—as there is into the cultivation of the mind, history
teaches us that the human race is in store for barbaric tragedies on a scale
that dwarfs the imagination."
May 14th
Chicago Chapter of Veterans for Peace
"Education Not Militarization"
Meeting # 3,374 - Chicago VFP works to abolish war as an instrument of national policy,
to counteract the perpetual drumbeat for war, to discuss options to conflict resolution by
violence, increase public awareness of the costs of war, restrain our government from
intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations, and to end the
arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons.
Ex-Army Ranger, with two deployments to Afghanistan, published author Rory
Fanning will speak about war and life in the military. His writings have appeared in the
Guardian, the Nation, Mother Jones, Salon, Truthout, Common Dreams, etc. Rory is
concerned that 10,000 students are currently enrolled in the Junior Reserve Officers
Training Corp (JROTC) in the Chicago Public Schools, which is more than any other
school district in the country
Solicitation for Speakers
If you would like to make a presentation, or know of an individual or organization
we should invite, contact: Charles Paidock, Program Coordinator at (312) 842-5036
or (312) 714-7790 cell, email: cpaidock@hotmail.com
www.collegeofcomplexes.org
Saturdays
Presentation at 6:00 PM
Please Note: New Location
$3 Tuition, dinner optional
Dappers East Restaurant until 9:00 PM
2901 West Addison St. (3600 north)
Free Parking, #52, 82, 152 CTA Bus Routes
Addison stop on Blue, Brown, Red Lines
www.collegeofcomplexes.org
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CofC Lecture Library
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or go to main page for link
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Statement on Free Speech
Our constitution and laws encourage the freest possible exchange of opinions, ideas, and information. In
part, that recognizes our worth and dignity as human beings. To forbid us to speak our minds demeans us
and makes us more like slaves or robots than citizens of a free country. But as important as freedom of
expression is for us as individuals, it is perhaps more important to society at large.
“the legendary forum for free-thinkers and iconoclasts”
“the entire spectrum of ideas…to the very far out”
“always ahead of its time, or completely out of step with it”
“people who have strong opinions on every topic under the sun,
or beyond it”
“a weekly debate group that attracts outsiders and political obsessives”
“rabble rousers who argue the pros and cons of everything”
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Studia Humanitatis
(“the studies of human things”)
Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) exhibited an immoderate ambition to study and know everything. He
was the Renaissance man par excellence. By age twenty-three Pico believed himself the equal in learning
of any man alive. In a daunting challenge, perhaps unequaled in history, he proposed to defend a list of
nine hundred theses (Conclusiones Nongentae in Omni Genere Scientiarum – “900 Conclusions in Every
Kind of Science”) drawn from various authors. He invited scholars from all of Europe to come to Rome to
dispute with him publicly.
The public battle of minds never happened. Unfortunately for Pico, his list of topics came to the attention
of the Vatican, which declared thirteen of them heretical. Pico, stunned, issued an immediate recantation.
This was insufficient to keep him out of prison. (A History of Knowledge: Past Present and Future –
Charles Van Doren)
Were Pico alive today, I believe he would have become a “regular” at the College of Complexes, and
participate in our own public battle of minds. Although none of us is as massive an intellect as Pico, each
of us has at least a few theses we might like to defend. Nevertheless, if you’re interested in studia
humanitatis, join us some Saturday evening. And you won’t be put in prison.
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