1 . The Davis-Moore thesis argues that social inequality is beneficial to society. Do you agree or disagree with this thesis? Why or why not?

2. Table 1 gives the prestige rankings for a number of different occupations. Do you think that the prestige rankings reflect the most important jobs in society? (Are the jobs with the highest prestige the most important to society?) Why or why not?

3. Some experts argue in favor of class-based affirmative action. That is, giving people born to lower-class families an advantage in college admissions and company hiring. Do you think that society should do something like this? Why or why not?

4. Think about your parents and grandparents. Do you think that social mobility has happened in your own family? What type(s) of social mobility have happened? Include in your discussion the events or reasons for your answers.

5. Choose a popular television show and discuss which social class you believe the main character or family represents. What factors (occupation, wealth, power, prestige, education, etc.) lead you to believe that they belong in this social class?

Here is the ready-to-answer question of Christian theology

January 27: Rigby, Speaking of God (chapter three on Incarnation)

Question: Drawing on Rigby's observations on pp. 86-90 (on Chalcedon), what difference does Jesus being fully divine and fully human make to how you live your everyday life as a person of faith? If you don't identify as Christian, how do you think the identify of Jesus should influence Christian choices?

      In her book Living by Fiction, Annie Dillard points out, along these lines, that most of what we have to say to one another is about "artifacts"-that is, specific things that have already been made by human beings that can be created, managed, examined, known, and mastered. 86  Dillard seems to include, in her understanding of artifacts, not only physical objects we make and use, or make and admire. She includes, also, the systems we develop that frame what is beyond our scope-perhaps the periodic table, the color wheel, or, even, a birdwatchers' guide. What is lacking in our world and our lives is not intriguing discussions of artifacts. What is lacking, she says, are those who are courageous enough to say something immediate about existence itself. "Who will interpret the raw universe?" she asks. "We have a shortage of metaphysicians." 87   This is a problem, Dillard thinks, because "if we confine our interpretive investigations to strictly bounded aspects of culture ... we miss learning what we most want to know."88