Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden   

Overexploitation of groundwater aquifers occurs worldwide. The Atlantic and Coastal Plains Aquifer in the U.S. exemplifies recent trends to rely more on groundwater. Emerging topics include undersea freshwater aquifers, how groundwater pumping is altering the rotation of the earth, and geoengineering to mitigate climate change. As water scarcity becomes more acute—by 2030, freshwater demand may exceed supply by 40%. Water-supply contamination and water-management issues are affecting drinking-water supplies in rural areas. A case study in Guanajuato state in Mexico will involve water-supply contamination, regulatory conflicts, and frustrations by local community activists to resolve this issue. Mitigation of climate change using geoengineering may help reduce freshwater demands. Some proposed geoengineering methods include three broad categories: (1) carbon dioxide removal (CDR); (2) solar radiation management (SRM); and (3) earth surface interventions such as glacial geoengineering and ocean heat management.

The League of Women Voters of Jefferson County is partnering with Jefferson County Public Library to offer a series of workshops on media misinformation/disinformation and how media is polarizing the country. We're using the book "True or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News" by Cindy L. Otis as the basis for the workshops and modeling them on the Great Decisions format.

Workshops include:

Week One: The evolution of media and recent changes brought by deregulation and technology

Week Two: How to recognize and combat bias in ourselves and the media

Week Three: How to spot and avoid "fake news" and begin to bridge the political divide

Week Four: The dangers of AI

Week Five: A panel discussion with local experts to address the dangers of media disinformation and how to combat them

The workshops will include presentations and encourage audience participation through planned activities and discussions.

Recommended Reading: True or False, A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News, available at the News, available at the library or on Amazon.

Seven Colorado Authors League writers will be sharing their unique paths to becoming published in this fascinating speakers series. Learn about their books, their techniques, their successes and their failures. Genres include science fiction, historical fiction, historical nonfiction, poetry, thriller, children's and romantic comedy. There will be ample time for Q&A and an optional writing exercise. Please note these are all different League authors from those who led the fall session.

The First World War was the defining moment of European history in the 20th century. It led to the collapse of four empires: Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman. It greatly weakened the British Empire and hollowed France for the rest of the 20th century. It redefined the nature of European imperialism and led to the growth of communism, Nazism, fascism, and isolationism. It redefined national borders and led to the creation of numerous "national" states in the Balkans and central Europe. It was the precursor to World War II. Why was Europe so fragile that so much collapsed? And how did these catastrophic events come about? This course will address the antecedents of the war in the 19th century and the events in the 20th century that led to this conflict. Although this was a worldwide war, its main battlefields were in and about Europe. The course will focus on the European events that led to the war.

Something as ubiquitous and eternal as stupidity has naturally received formal consideration by many philosophers.

In this discussion course, we will load formal theories of irrationality into AI and then explore them using a chatbot. The goal will be to decide whether AI can help ordinary people avoid leading unexamined lives and falling into regret over their decisions. With the participants setting the pace, weekly topics will range from Daniel Kahneman’s cognitive biases and Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations framework to Frankfurt’s lying versus "BS" in public discourse and Dunning-Kruger’s warning that overconfidence is often a lack of self-awareness. Throughout the course, we'll use AI tools to spot propaganda in historical texts, distinguish between spin and lies in media, and find self-deceptive patterns in our own narratives. We might even configure AI to speak in real time, taking the persona of each thinker we've studied, asking questions that let us consider AI's analytical accuracy and its own biases.

This course will examine the rise of contemporary Paganism from the abolishment of the last anti-witchcraft law in England in 1952 through today. We will look at major figures and scholarship, and students will be urged to participate actively in discussions. But Paganism is an embodied religion, and learning about it also requires active engagement in its practices. Therefore, students will be invited to join, as participants or observers, in rituals based on Wicca, the largest contemporary form of Paganism. There will be no required readings, but the facilitator will provide resources for discussion and a list of Pagan events in Denver to attend if students wish.

Why do you think the way you do, and how could reality be changed? Do you know, absolutely know, that you know the facts of something, and that it is immutable? How can your senses change things in your brain, and what is normal anyway? And what about my memory—I know it's rock solid. Why can't I remember some things and yet not remember other stuff? What about dementia and Alzheimer's and how do you know if you might have it, especially since you may have it 20 or more years before your symptoms? Some of the newest findings in neuroscience will be discussed and how this affects your life.