Before the Soul of Dawn: Helen Keller on Her Life Before Self-Consciousness

January 22, 2015

“Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another. So I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my brain when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me. I thought only of objects, and only objects I wanted. It was the turning of the freezer on a larger scale. When I learned the meaning of “I” and “me” and found that I was something, I began to think.”

http://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-helen-keller-on-her.html

Here is a handout I made on this topic:

Helen Keller Reading

Radiolab Podcast: Words

January 22, 2015

It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without words. But this hour, we try to do just that.

We meet a woman who taught a 27-year-old man the first words of his life, hear a firsthand account of what it feels like to have the language center of your brain wiped out by a stroke, and retrace the birth of a brand new language 30 years ago.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/

Here is a shorter version of the podcast I made for my class:

Here’s How Differently The Media Covers An Assault Before And After Learning It Was Done By A Cop

January 22, 2015

“The next day, the police released images of the attacker and asked the public for help identifying him. The New York Daily News ran the story in their typically sensationalist way. They described the man as a “brute” and a “thug” and described the incident in lurid detail and begged for readers to help ID the coward who attacked the woman and “ran away smiling.”

The problem? The man turned out to be an off-duty NYPD police officer and the New York Daily News, like almost every other media outlet in the country — liberal or conservative — has a completely different set of rules for covering police officers accused of committing a crime. By the next day, the story had been cleaned up.”

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/01/04/heres-how-differently-the-media-covers-an-assault-before-and-after-learning-it-was-done-by-a-cop/

20 Examples of Great Euphemisms

January 22, 2015

1. If you are offered a career change or an early retirement opportunity, a career or employee transition, or you are being involuntarily separated, or if personnel is being realigned or there is a surplus reduction in personnel, or the staff is being re-engineered or right sized, or if there is a workforce imbalance correction then: You’re fired!

http://lynnschneiderbooks.com/2011/12/23/20-examples-of-great-euphemisms/

RSA Animate – Language as a Window into Human Nature

January 22, 2015

Why do we indirect language and innuendo?
What does the language we use tell us about our social relationships?
How does the language we use reflect ideas of personal and shared knowledge?

In this new RSA Animate, renowned experimental psychologist Steven Pinker shows us how the mind turns the finite building blocks of language into infinite meanings.