“Most politicians choose their words carefully, to shape the reality they hope to create. But does it work? Etymologist Mark Forsyth shares a few entertaining word-origin stories from British and American history (for instance, did you ever wonder how George Washington became “president”?) and draws a surprising conclusion.”
“Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” — standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident — can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.”
Part of an interesting video series, Do You See What I See. The first part of this link shows an African tribe, the Himba, whose language and environment differ so much from ours that they are able to distinguish different shades very differently from us. The link below is for the part that shows the Himba tribe. At the bottom of the video player are links for the rest of that show.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xl7eh1_horizon-do-you-see-what-i-see-part-4-4_shortfilms
Here is an new york times article about the same issue.
http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/its-not-easy-seeing-green/
One of my favorite TED Talks.
“What does real scientific work look like? As neuroscientist Stuart Firestein jokes: It looks a lot less like the scientific method and a lot more like “farting around … in the dark.” In this witty talk, Firestein gets to the heart of science as it is really practiced and suggests that we should value what we don’t know — or “high-quality ignorance” — just as much as what we know.”
Is it ethical to make artwork if the process kills other living things? Does it matter that those things that are dying are ants? What if we gain scientific knowledge in the process? Take a look at the videos below. Consider those questions.
Video of the process
Pictures of the various casts he has made
http://www.ebay.com/blogs/stories/aluminum-anthill-art-fever-hits-ebay
From an episode of South Park (season 2, episode 14 “Chef Aid”), the Chewbacca defense is a funny example of a non sequitur reasoning fallacy in which someone employs an argument whose conclusion does not logically follow from its reasons. In particular, this is a red herring fallacy. Check out the link below. There is an ad first and there is some foul language but a funny clip.
Episode 1 of Michael Sandel’s acclaimed course, Justice, titled, The Moral Side of Murder. From the episode description:
“If you had to choose between (1) killing one person to save the lives of five others and (2) doing nothing, even though you knew that five people would die right before your eyes if you did nothing—what would you do? What would be the right thing to do? That’s the hypothetical scenario Professor Michael Sandel uses to launch his course on moral reasoning.”
A short, interesting video, of a blind man discussing what it’s like to have people who can see describe colors to him.
A well-made video that gets into the issue of whether we can ever know that two different people experience color the same way. This video comes from a great youtube channel, VSauce, which you should definitely check out.
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