University of Hong Kong

This course examines everyday ethical questions through the lens of different scales of human relationships. It will examine five key relationships through cross-cultural perspectives: (1) with oneself—including self-care, self-forgiveness, and conscience; (2) with friendship and dating; (3) with one’s immediate community—including family and professional life; (4) the larger society in which one lives—including social media and the politics of respect; and (5) with the transcendence of mystery, the divine, and the sacred—including urban space and the ecological other with which we participate.

Criminal justice refers to the agencies of the government charged with enforcing law, adjudicating crime, and correcting criminal conduct. The major components of the criminal justice system are the police, courts and correctional agencies. Although society maintains other forms of social control such as the family, school, and church, only the criminal justice system has the power to control crime and punish criminals. However, can the police arrest all criminals? Does crime pay? Does punishment deter? This course is specially designed to critically examine whether the criminal justice system is an effective way to deal with crime.m.

Is knowledge of the world possible? And is there even an objective world for our knowledge to be about? These are the topics of skepticism and relativism. Skeptics challenge our ability to know anything about the world. Relativists contest that there is no absolute, objective truth. In this class, we will study both historical and contemporary thinking about these perennial topics. We will address ancient arguments for skepticism, but also look to more contemporary relativistic thinking about science, morality, and other matters.

This course examines selected network protocols relevant to the World Wide Web (e.g., HTTP, DNS, IP); World Wide Web; technologies for programming the Web (e.g, HTML, XML, style sheets, PHP, JavaScript, Node.js.; other topics of current interest (AJAX, HTML5, web services, cloud computing).