Skip to main content

Home/ TOK@ISPrague/ Group items tagged language

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Vicki Close

Science Shows Something Surprising About People Who Still Read Fiction - Mic - 0 views

mic.com/...eople-who-love-reading-fiction

TOK arts emotion language

shared by Vicki Close on 02 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Literary fiction enhanced participants' empathy because they had to work harder at fleshing out the characters. The process of trying to understand what those characters are feelings and the motives behind them is the same in our relationships with other people. 
  • Vicki Close on 02 Dec 14
     
    Brain research finds that readers of literary fiction demonstrate increased levels of empathy over readers of non-fiction, social media and popular fiction.
Lawrence Hrubes

What to Call a Doubter of Climate Change? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...te-change-whats-in-a-name.html

TOK language science climate skepticism

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • People who reject the findings of climate science are dismissed as “deniers” and “disinformers.” Those who accept the science are attacked as “alarmists” or “warmistas. ” The latter term, evoking the Sandinista revolutionaries of Nicaragua, is perhaps meant to suggest that the science is part of some socialist plot.
  • The petition asks the news media to abandon the most frequently used term for people who question climate science, “skeptic,” and call them “climate deniers” instead. By Degrees A column by Justin Gillis about our changing climate. 3.6 Degrees of Uncertainty DEC 15 A Tricky Transition From Fossil Fuel NOV 10 Shining Star Power on a Crucial Subject SEP 22 In the Ocean, Clues to Change AUG 11 Picking Lesser of Two Climate Evils JUL 7 See More » Climate scientists are among the most vocal critics of using the term “climate skeptic” to describe people who flatly reject their findings. They point out that skepticism is the very foundation of the scientific method. The modern consensus about the risks of climate change, they say, is based on evidence that has piled up over the course of decades and has been subjected to critical scrutiny every step of the way.
  • In other words, the climate scientists see themselves as the true skeptics, having arrived at a durable consensus about emissions simply because the evidence of risk has become overwhelming. And in this view, people who reject the evidence are phony skeptics, arguing their case by cherry-picking studies, manipulating data, and refusing to weigh the evidence as a whole.The petition asking the media to drop the “climate skeptic” label began with Mark B. Boslough, a physicist in New Mexico who grew increasingly annoyed by the term over several years. The phrase is wrong, he said, because “these people do not embrace the scientific method.”
Lawrence Hrubes

Vermont Proposes Official Latin Motto, Wingnuts Tell Vermont To Go Back To Mexico | Won... - 0 views

wonkette.com/...l-vermont-to-go-back-to-mexico

TOK language history politics

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 06 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Here’s a sweet little story of Democracy in Action. A bright eighth grader writes to her state legislator with an idea for a law: Vermont doesn’t have an official Latin motto, so why not adopt one? And for that matter, make it a reference to history? Neato! So state Sen. Joe Benning — a Republican who was actually trying to do a good thing, which he has probably learned to never try again — introduced a bill to adopt the motto “Stella quarta decima fulgeat.” — May the fourteenth star shine bright.” Because Vermont was the 14th state, see? Benning noted that when Vermont briefly minted its own currency, it was engraved with “Stella Quarta Deccima,” so the phrase had real historical cachet.ADVERTISEMENTAnd then Burlington TV station WCAX put the story on its Facebook page with the headline, “Should Vermont have an official Latin motto?” and all Stupid broke loose when morons thought that Vermont was knuckling under to a bunch of goddamned illegal immigrants. Charles Topher at “If you Only News” collected some of the worst of the over 600 comments from some of the geniuses worried about protecting ‘Merca from the invading Latin hordes:
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 06 Feb 15
     
    Note: In addition to the article itself, see the comments from angry citizens.
Vicki Close

Does reading fiction make you a more empathic, better person? - 2 views

www.slate.com/...re_empathic_better_person.html

TOK arts emotion language

shared by Vicki Close on 02 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Vicki Close on 02 Dec 14
     
    Response to Science journal research paper by Castano and Corner Kidd reporting increased levels of empathy in readers of fiction. (http://mic.com/articles/104702/science-shows-something-surprising-about-people-who-love-reading-fiction)
markfrankel18

How Our Minds Mislead Us: The Marvels and Flaws of Our Intuition | Brain Pickings - 2 views

www.brainpickings.org/...daniel-kahneman-intuition

TOK Kahneman intuition perception

shared by markfrankel18 on 01 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • There is no sharp line between intuition and perception. … Perception is predictive. . . . If you want to understand intuition, it is very useful to understand perception, because so many of the rules that apply to perception apply as well to intuitive thinking. Intuitive thinking is quite different from perception. Intuitive thinking has language. Intuitive thinking has a lot of word knowledge organized in different ways more than mere perception. But some very basic characteristics [of] perception are extended almost directly to intuitive thinking.
  • What’s interesting is that many a time people have intuitions that they’re equally confident about except they’re wrong. That happens through the mechanism I call “the mechanism of substitution.” You have been asked a question, and instead you answer another question, but that answer comes by itself with complete confidence, and you’re not aware that you’re doing something that you’re not an expert on because you have one answer. Subjectively, whether it’s right or wrong, it feels exactly the same. Whether it’s based on a lot of information, or a little information, this is something that you may step back and have a look at. But the subjective sense of confidence can be the same for intuition that arrives from expertise, and for intuitions that arise from heuristics. . . .
  • Andrea Barlien on 01 Nov 13
     
    The Marvels and Flaws of Intuition (from the Brain Pickings Blog)
markfrankel18

Everyone's Trying Really Hard Not to Call the Germanwings Co-Pilot a Terrorist - Mic - 3 views

mic.com/...rmanwings-co-pilot-a-terrorist

TOK language

shared by markfrankel18 on 28 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Daniel Lamken on 28 Mar 15
     
    The Breivek analogy in this article has some resonance to the notion of media reporting to a certain audience--in this case, western/white, though first impressions necessarily need revision. At this time, we don't know enough about Lubitz, a curiosity in this instant-access age of information. Even his now inaccessible facebook information reduces our impression to a seemingly relaxed tourist enjoying the backdrop of the Golden Gate bridge. To the point of the article, we crave to have more 'backdrop', more cues to connect any dots. Some crave to have preconceptions confirmed, others to reverse common assumptions. For my part, I jotted first impressions via poetry, which doesn't purport veracity but should still, as John Keats reminds in 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', probe to know beauty and truth, the former of which defies understanding in this event. Thus, my first impressions: http://lostmenagerie.blogspot.cz/2015/03/meanwhile-tuesday.html
markfrankel18

Why Can't Robots Understand Sarcasm? - The Atlantic - 1 views

www.theatlantic.com/...384714

TOK technology language

shared by markfrankel18 on 25 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • According to Noah Goodman, an assistant professor at Stanford University specializing in psychology, computer science, and linguistics, humans will first need to firm up our own understanding of sarcasm. “Before you can program a computer to do something cool, you have to understand what the cool thing is,” Goodman said. “We’re sort of only at the beginning of understanding what nuanced communication actually is.”
Lawrence Hrubes

How '-Phobic' Became a Weapon in the Identity Wars - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...apon-in-the-identity-wars.html

language emotion culture prejudice identity

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 31 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • The ‘‘-phobic’’ suffix has emerged as the activist’s most trusted term of art for pinning prejudice on an opponent. There’s ‘‘xenophobic,’’ ‘‘homophobic,’’ ‘‘Islamophobic,’’ ‘‘transphobic,’’ ‘‘fatphobic’’ and ‘‘whorephobic’’: Any blowhard who spews bigotry against a marginalized group — or any journalist who pens an article perceived as insufficiently sensitive — risks being called out for an irrational anxiety over one Other or another. When did this particular diagnosis become such a powerful weapon in the identity wars?
  • ‘‘Homophobia’’ was a hit. Weinberg had intuited that culture wars are waged not just in hearts and minds, but also in conversation.
Lawrence Hrubes

Nazi atrocities: Implying Polish guilt to become crime - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-europe-35581708

history language ethics law

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 15 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • The government of Poland plans to introduce a law making it a crime to imply the country bears any responsibility for atrocities carried out on Polish soil by Nazi Germany.
  • The bill would make it illegal to say that Poland "took part, organised or was co-responsible for the crimes of the Third Reich"
Lawrence Hrubes

Don't Ban 'Bossy' : The New Yorker - 2 views

www.newyorker.com/...dont-ban-bossy.html

language gender TOK

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 14 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • There are precedents for such reclaiming—pejorative words like “queer” and even “slut,” for instance, which their targets have taken over and brandished with pride. But maybe a more apt comparison would be the word “nerd.” “Nerd” used to be a put-down—and it used to cover boys more often than girls. Like “bossy,” it wasn’t really that harsh, but it wasn’t nice, either. It actually had a gender dimension, too, because it called out brainy boys who were not athletic or aggressive. It was a dis of boys who lived in their heads and wore pocket protectors and ate their lunch indoors, playing chess. Just as “bossy” might be said to undermine female leadership, “nerd” might be said to have undermined male intellectualism. But now “nerd,” and its close cousin “geek,” are words that lots of people are happy to identify with, humble-bragging about their obsessive expertise. Brainiac techies can get rich these days, and that has helped spiff up the image of nerdery. John Green, an author of young-adult novels, and his brother Hank have developed a thriving online and off-line community of “nerdfighters,” girls as well as boys, who like to say that they fight for good with their brains and hearts, calculators and trombones. They have heartthrobs like the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. They find each other on Tumblr.
Lawrence Hrubes

Teens do better in science when they know Einstein and Curie also struggled - Quartz - 0 views

qz.com/...stein-and-curie-also-struggled

science human sciences education motivation psychology children

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Students who learned that great scientists struggled, both personally and intellectually, outperformed those who learned only of the scientists’ great achievements, new research shows.
  • “In our culture we always say you don’t want to intimidate kids, you don’t want to tell them how hard the work is,” she noted. But the experiment showed the opposite strategy works better: Showing how great scientists had to muddle through lots of tough stuff made the subject matter real and allowed students to connect with them as people.
  • Some people learn better when the content has meaning to them. For those students, science comes to life more through personal stories than through the actual scientific content.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • And kids who learn that intellect is a malleable thing, something to be built rather than inherited, take more academic risks and perform better. The study adds to the growing body of research in favor of teaching this “growth mindset” or the belief that the brain, like other muscles in the body, can be strengthened and improved through struggle and hard work.
Lawrence Hrubes

The Rise of Hate Search - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-rise-of-hate-search.html

language religious knowledge systems prediction prejudice

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 13 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • People often have vicious thoughts. Sometimes they share them on Google. Do these thoughts matter?Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes.
Lawrence Hrubes

The Words That Killed Medieval Jews - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...that-killed-medieval-jews.html

history language

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • No historian can claim to have insight into the motives of living individuals. But history does show that a heightening of rhetoric against a certain group can incite violence against that group, even when no violence is called for. When a group is labeled hostile and brutal, its members are more likely to be treated with hostility and brutality. Visual images are particularly powerful, spurring actions that may well be unintended by the images’ creators.
markfrankel18

How Culture Shapes Our Senses - NYTimes.com - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...culture-shapes-our-senses.html

perception TOK

shared by markfrankel18 on 07 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • In recent years anthropologists have begun to point out that sensory perception is culturally specific.
  • Recently, a team of anthropologists and psychologists at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University, both in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, set out to discover how language and culture affected sensory awareness. Under the leadership of Asifa Majid and Stephen C. Levinson, they made up a kit of systematic stimuli for the traditional five senses: for sight, color chips and geometric forms; for hearing, pitch, amplitude and rhythm variations; for smell, a set of scratch-and-sniff cards; and so forth. They took these kits to over 20 cultural groups around the world. Their results upend some of our basic assumptions.
« First ‹ Previous 181 - 200 of 213 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page