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History 104A, November 18: Connections-Film

I was on the phone with our career center here. I figured I

needed a new job. How many everybody asks me, aren't you going to

retire? I'm the oldest faculty member on campus now. If you leave

campus and you die, nobody knows you. If you die on campus, you get a

little bit of ceremony.

A Maybe someone will put out the effort of keeping you alive with

CPR.

Q What do you do with the grades?

THE PROFESSOR: I always wondered about that. How do they cover

their grades?

This was an ad that was in my box in the morning asking for chess

teachers -- and I knew it didn't come from our company -- but it was

hysterical because they said, you don't need to know chess. We'll

teach you chess to teach chess to kids. Unreal. Of course I knew it

wouldn't have been from our company because they said they had to have

a presentable appearance. We're smart enough to know that I've never

seen a chess teacher with a presentable appearance.

A I was looking at the notes from November 4th. And that day I

thought that we didn't have class in here, which I got confused with

the day before. And I told my mom that we didn't have classes and we

walked in and you told him not to listen to me because he said Jessica

told me that we didn't have class and you said don't listen to

Jessica.

THE PROFESSOR: Did it? That's odd? That's not odd. You're

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codified for life. Your name now appears in lecture notes.

The guy you just saw in the leisure suit, for those that were

viewing, is a guy names James Burke. James Burke is English and used

to come here actually to the Bay Area and lecture. And he'd be sold

out two years in advance. He is my idea of a kind of person that I

idealized quote/unquote. I don't idealize many other people. He can

take history and he can tie all of these connections together to show

things from the past and how they evolve and lead into the future.

Sadly to say, among the tapes that got thrown out when that head

librarian came in a few years ago was all his stuff. I picked up a

few DVDs, but for some reason I haven't gotten the series that James

Burke did. This one deals with the waning of the middle ages and some

of changes that transformed it. For some reason, I don't know if I

lent it out or whatever. I lost the one that I like the best. Again,

I haven't been able to get them. They were taped from PBS.

Fitting into this waning of the middle ages, this transformation

of Europe, before we get into the later part of our lectures on the

renaissance and on the reformation on the age of exploration, we'll

use this one. And in case you weren't aware, I believe there's a

group meeting on Monday to remind you; is that correct? I didn't

bring my schedule. I think I checked it yesterday. Of course with

the group meeting being on Monday, I guarantee you we'll have a

greater turn out on Monday than we have today. Let's go forth.

(Showing film)

What he goes is to show how the punch card is used to codify the

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people who came into the country based on where they came from. It

was the beginning of the sorting cards that became the computer.

Interesting stuff that you don't get to see too often in a history

book or in a history class, the connections simply between linen and

paper and the printing press. Well, I like that crap, so have a good

weekend. See you Monday. Get ready for gobble gobble.

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