Wow, not sure why I have not posted this one yet. In college, I was one of four students who showed up to the showing of a video of Pinker talking about his book How the Mind Works. It reinforced for me Psychology was a good choice for me. So this talk on decline in…
Google Labs’ Ngram Viewer lets us look at the use of phrases over time. For example, my name, Ezra, appears to have been most popular usage peaks back in the 1600s and 1700s, but has been more consistently used since the 1800s. This kind of thing can get me lost for hours at a time.…
Nina’s book Skin was a great read. It was the first time I understood melanin and vitamin D. And cancer. If the video below does not work, then try Nina Jablonski breaks the illusion of skin color.
We tend to think of memory the same as an audio-visual recording of the events in our life. Unfortunately, it is not. Memory captures snapshots which influence what we recall later. So a relatively good experience with a particularly bad ending can bias memory to recall the whole as bad. If the below video does not…
E.O. Wilson on inspiring people to get into science. If the below video does not display, then try E.O. Wilson: Advice to young scientists
Two major recurring political issues in the United States are related, I think, to issues of mixing cultures. There is an instinct to trust those like us more implicitly and consider those who do not look or act like us as bad. Coming to trust people as members of our “tribe” can reverse this instinct.…
Four lessons on how to be more human learned from robotics. If the video below does not work, then try Ken Goldberg: 4 lessons from robots about being human.