TOK Teacher
“But just having a strange and powerful experience doesn’t determine what you believe. I walked off that train with a new respect for why people believed in magic, not a new understanding of reality. Sometimes people have remarkable experiences, and then tuck them away as events they can’t explain.”
“Even though the World Health Organization has stated that all GM food on the market have been tested and approved, many Americans still question how safe they are.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-nye-science-guy-finally-003414394.html
“Research shows the appeal of untestable beliefs, and how it leads to a polarized society
“As public debate rages about issues like immunization, Obamacare, and same-sex marriage, many people try to use science to bolster their arguments. And since it’s becoming easier to test and establish facts—whether in physics, psychology, or policy—many have wondered why bias and polarization have not been defeated. When people are confronted with facts, such as the well-established safety of immunization, why do these facts seem to have so little effect?”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-fly-from-facts/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20150303
A really interesting piece on the notion and consequence of race in America. The focus is on the perceived attractiveness of various races and genders. This article traces some of the historical origins and evolution of how we came to hold the beliefs that we do as a society. Attraction is largely an intuitive response cultivated by many different factors that work on our psyche over our lifetimes. Influences include our family background, friends, neighborhoods and schools as well as media influence and societal beliefs.
“If you think of Asian men or black women as less attractive than other races, it is because of you, not because of them, Sharma says. Since the day you were born, different influences on your mind – the bedtime stories your Mom read, the cartoons you saw as kid, the school you went to and the wallpaper on your computer – have come together to create a cohesive image of the world.”
A really interesting podcast in which experts in various fields discuss ideas that seem to persist that really should go away. Sometimes these are ideas that exist among experts (the use of mice in clinical trials of cancer drugs) and sometimes these are ideas that exist among common people (the idea that people are either left or right brained)
“In our latest episode of Freakonomics Radio, we run that progression in reverse. Rather than asking if a new idea is a good one, we ask whether it’d be better if some of the ideas we cling to were killed off.”
http://freakonomics.com/2015/03/05/this-idea-must-die-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/
How does a person’s notion of faith affect their charitable giving? How does it affect how honestly they donate their money? In an interesting Planet Money podcast and accompanying article, economists study how Mormons think about what they give to the church and what they don’t and principles the IRS could learn from them.
“I asked a Mormon bishop in Salt Lake City if a few more rules defining income might make tithing easier on Mormons or bring in more money for the church. He said all this soul-searching about what you owe God is kind of the point.”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/02/147749784/what-the-irs-could-learn-from-mormons
“‘People are so afraid of variety that they try to fit everything into a tiny little box with a specific label,’ says 16-year-old Rosie King, who is bold, brash and autistic. She wants to know: Why is everyone so worried about being normal? She sounds a clarion call for every kid, parent, teacher and person to celebrate uniqueness. It’s a soaring testament to the potential of human diversity.”
“But there are no pauses or inflections in digital communication; we aren’t speaking the words out loud. Which means that even within the tiniest spaces, punctuation fills in the tonal holes.”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/style/when-your-punctuation-says-it-all.html?_r=1
“Changing a color’s appearance by changing the background or lighting is one of the most common techniques in optical illusions. As the examples below show, colors can change dramatically against different backgrounds. (If you’ve ever held a sock up to something black to see whether it was black or navy, you understand the concept.)”
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