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Lawrence Hrubes

Maya Angelou and the Internet's Stamp of Approval - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...he-internets-stamp-of-approval

arts poetry internet media errors misinformation

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • his week, the United States Postal Service came in for a full news cycle’s worth of ridicule after it was&nbsp;pointed out, by the Washington&nbsp;Post, that the agency’s new Maya Angelou stamp featured a quotation that the late poet and memoirist didn’t write. The line—“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song”—has been widely attributed to Angelou. And it seems like something she might have written, perhaps as a shorthand explanation for the title of her most famous book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” But the line, in a slightly different form, was originally published in a poetry collection from 1967 called “A Cup of Sun,” by Joan Walsh Anglund. The&nbsp;Post&nbsp;reported this on Monday. By Tuesday, when such luminaries as First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey stood onstage in front of a giant reproduction of the Angelou stamp at the official unveiling, everyone knew that the words behind them belonged to someone else. According to the U.S.P.S., more than&nbsp;eighty million Angelou stamps were produced, and there are no plans to retract them. <!doctype html>div,ul,li{margin:0;padding:0;}.abgc{height:15px;position:absolute;right:16px;text-rendering:geometricPrecision;top:0;width:15px;z-index:9010;}.abgb{height:100%;}.abgc img{display:block;}.abgc svg{display:block;}.abgs{display:none;height:100%;}.abgl{text-decoration:none;}.cbc{background-image: url('http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/images/x_button_blue2.png');background-position: right top;background-repeat: no-repeat;cursor:pointer;height:15px;right:0;top:0;margin:0;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:16px;z-index:9010;}.cbc.cbc-hover {background-image: url('http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/images/x_button_dark.png');}.cbc > .cb-x{height: 15px;position:absolute;width: 16px;right:0;top:0;}.cb-x > .cb-x-svg{background-color: lightgray;position:absolute;}.cbc.cbc-hover > .cb-x > .cb-x-svg{background-color: #58585a;}.cb-x > .cb-x-svg > .cb-x-svg-path{fill : #00aecd;}.cbc.cbc-hover > .cb-x > .cb-x-svg > .cb-x-svg-path{fill : white;}.cb-x > .cb-x-svg > .cb-x-svg-s-path{fill : white;} .ddmc{background:#ccc;color:#000;padding:0;position:absolute;z-index:9020;max-width:100%;box-shadow:2px 2px 3px #aaaaaa;}.ddmc.left{margin-right:0;left:0px;}.ddmc.right{margin-left:0;right:0px;}.ddmc.top{bottom:20px;}.ddmc.bottom{top:20px;}.ddmc .tip{border-left:4px solid transparent;border-right:4px solid transparent;height:0;position:absolute;width:0;font-size:0;line-height:0;}.ddmc.bottom .tip{border-bottom:4px solid #ccc;top:-4px;}.ddmc.top .tip{border-top:4px solid #ccc;bottom:-4px;}.ddmc.right .tip{right:3px;}.ddmc.left .tip{left:3px;}.ddmc .dropdown-content{display:block;}.dropdown-content{display:none;border-collapse:collapse;}.dropdown-item{font:12px Arial,sans-serif;cursor:pointer;padding:3px 7px;vertical-align:middle;}.dropdown-item-hover{background:#58585a;color:#fff;}.dropdown-content > table{border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;}.dropdown-content > table > tbody > tr > td{padding:0;}Ad covers the pageStop seeing this ad.feedback_container {width: 100%;height: 100%;position: absolute;top:0;left:0;display: none;z-index: 9020;background-color: white;}.feedback_page {font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;;font-size: 13px;margin: 16px 16px 16px 16px;}.feedback_title {font-weight: bold;color: #000000;}.feedback_page a {font-weight: normal;color: #3366cc;}.feedback_description {color: #666666;line-height: 16px;margin: 12px 0 12px 0;}.feedback_closing {color: #0367ff;line-height: 16px;margin: 12px 0 12px 0;}.feedback_logo {position: absolute;right: 0;bottom: 0;margin: 0 12px 9px 0;}.feedback_logo img {height: 15px;}.survey_description {color: #666666;line-height: 17px;margin: 12px 0 10px 0;}.survey {color: #666666;line-height: 20px;}.survey_option input {margin: 0;vertical-align: middle;}.survey_option_text {margin: 0 0 0 5px;line-height: 17px;vertical-align: bottom;}.survey_option:hover {background-color: lightblue;cursor: default;}It&amp;#39;s gone. UndoWhat was wrong with this ad?InappropriateRepetitiveIrrelevantThanks for the feedback! BackWe’ll review this ad to improve your
Lawrence Hrubes

How Do We Increase Empathy? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ow-do-we-increase-empathy.html

TOK empathy emotion ethics literature

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • “Probably the biggest empathy generator is cuteness: paedomorphic features such as large eyes, a large head, and a small lower face,” Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist, tells me. “Professional empathy entrepreneurs have long known this, of course, which is why so many charities feature photos of children and why so many conservation organizations feature pandas. Prettier children are more likely to be adopted, and baby-faced defendants get lighter sentences.”
  • Likewise, the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans give significantly less to charity as a fraction of income (1.4 percent) than the poorest 20 percent do (3.5 percent), according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That may be partly because affluence insulates us from need, so that disadvantage becomes theoretical and remote rather than a person in front of us. Wealthy people who live in economically diverse areas are more generous than those who live in exclusively wealthy areas.
  • Professor Pinker, in his superb book “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” explores whether the spread of affordable fiction and journalism beginning in the 18th century expanded empathy by making it easier for people to imagine themselves in the shoes of others. Researchers have found that reading literary fiction by the likes of Don DeLillo or Alice Munro — but not beach fiction or nonfiction — can promote empathy.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Yet I’ve come to believe that service trips do open eyes and remind students of their good fortune. In short, they build empathy.So let’s escape the insulation of our comfort zones. Let’s encourage student service projects and travel to distant countries and to needy areas nearby. Whatever the impact on others, volunteering may at least help the volunteer.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - The Forum, Goethe: The Story of Colour - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p04q77bx

sensory perception perception colour vision theory emotion

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 31 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 31 Jan 17
     
    "The German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe considered his monumental book known in English as The Theory of Colours to be his greatest achievement. The book is a record of hundreds of Goethe's observations about the way colour affects our mood, as well as a long and heated polemic with Isaac Newton's colour theory. Goethe's understanding of light and colour was scientifically flawed yet his book had a surprisingly strong influence on the fine and applied arts. To find out why, Bridget Kendall talks to art historian Alexandra Loske, colour writer Victoria Finlay and designer Odette Steele."
Lawrence Hrubes

What's Behind Big Science Frauds? - NYTimes.com - 3 views

www.nytimes.com/...behind-big-science-frauds.html

science ethics lies

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 23 May 15 - No Cached
  • Remember that study showing vaccines were linked to autism? The time scientists claimed to have cloned human embryonic stem cells? Or that simple, easy way that was supposed to revolutionize the creation of such stem cells?Those were all frauds published in the world’s top scientific journals — The Lancet, Science and Nature. The vaccine scare has been associated with a surge in cases of measles, some of them deadly.Every day, on average, a scientific paper is retracted because of misconduct. Two percent of scientists admit to tinkering with their data in some kind of improper way. That number might appear small, but remember: Researchers publish some 2 million articles a year, often with taxpayer funding. In each of the last few years, the Office of Research Integrity, part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, has sanctioned a dozen or so scientists for misconduct ranging from plagiarism to fabrication of results.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - The Why Factor, Memory - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p01fx887

TOK memory psychology BBCRadioPodcastTheWhyFactor

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 08 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 08 Sep 13
     
    "Memory plays a big part in shaping our identity, but can we rely on what we recall about ourselves and about others? Mike Williams finds out how human memory works and why some memories flood back more easily than others. He also explores whether different senses trigger different types of memories. Mike speaks to memory experts Martin Conway, Elizabeth Loftus, Gisli Gudjonsson, Maria Larsson and Simon Chu. The reader is Roberto Pistolesi."
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - More or Less, The death toll in Syria - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p01fyvkc

TOK maths statistics SocialScience BBCRadioMoreOrLess podcast

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 08 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 08 Sep 13
     
    As global leaders remain divided on whether to carry out a military strike against Syria in response to the apparent use of chemical weapons against its people, Tim Harford looks at the different claims made about how many people have been killed. The United States, the UK and France are sharing intelligence, but all quote different estimates of how many people they think died in the attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces. Tim speaks to Kelly Greenhill, a professor of political science at Tufts University in the US, and co-author of Sex, Drugs and Body Counts about why the numbers vary so widely. And he speaks to Megan Price from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, who has been trying to keep a tally of the deaths in Syria since the conflict began.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - Exchanges at the Frontier, Exchanges at the Frontier, Kay Redfield ... - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p01sqlyp

TOK human sciences SocialScience psychiatry psychology depression science

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 03 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 03 Mar 14
     
    "Kay Redfield Jamison is a clinical psychologist with a rare insight. She is a world leader in the study of bipolar (manic-depressive) illness, a condition that she herself has had since adolescence. As a highly regarded clinician with direct experience of the illness she treats, she has a special perspective on the debilitating nature of this psychiatric disorder and its seductive but disastrous highs, depressions and disordered thinking. She tells A.C.Grayling and an audience at Wellcome Collection in London about mania, creativity and the best medicine for an extraordinary condition."
markfrankel18

Where Time Comes From - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...where-time-comes-from

TOK time science

shared by markfrankel18 on 14 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The time that ends up on your smartphone—and that synchronizes GPS, military operations, financial transactions, and internet communications—originates in a set of atomic clocks on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, Chief Scientist for USNO's Time Services, gives a tour.
Lawrence Hrubes

Why Teach and Study English? : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...why-teach-english.html

ToK English humanities literature

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 28 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The reward is that it remains the one kind of time travel that works, where you make a wish and actually become a musketeer in Paris or a used-car salesman in Pennsylvania. That one knows, of course, that the actuality is “fictional” or artificial doesn’t change its reality. The vicarious pleasure of reading is, by the perverse principle of professions, one that is often banished from official discussion, but it remains the core activity.
  • So: Why should English majors exist? Well, there really are no whys to such things, anymore than there are to why we wear clothes or paint good pictures or live in more than hovels and huts or send flowers to our beloved on their birthday. No sane person proposes or has ever proposed an entirely utilitarian, production-oriented view of human purpose. We cannot merely produce goods and services as efficiently as we can, sell them to each other as cheaply as possible, and die.
markfrankel18

Tennessee Pastor Disputes Wildlife Possession Charge by State - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ossession-charge-by-state.html

ToK religion ethics

shared by markfrankel18 on 16 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • In a mix of old-time religion, modern media and Tennessee law, a 22-year-old preacher who has become a reality television star because of his experience in handling poisonous snakes pleaded not guilty on Friday to illegally keeping dozens of them that he and his congregants routinely touch during worship services.
  • “We don’t allow anybody other than a permitted individual to possess venomous snakes,” said Matthew Cameron, a spokesman for the wildlife agency. “We don’t view him as any different from anyone else in the general public who has a king cobra in his room.”
  • “This ain’t no longer just a fight for snake handling,” Mr. Hamblin, the father of five, told a group of supporters wearing red — to symbolize the blood of Christ — before his arraignment on a misdemeanor wildlife possession charge. “This is a fight for freedom of religion.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But to Mr. Hamblin and his supporters, the case is little more than state-instigated discrimination against a religious practice that has been present in East Tennessee for more than a century. “When those officers entered the house of God, that cooked it with me,” said James Slusher, who attends Mr. Hamblin’s church but said he does not handle snakes.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - The Why Factor, Swearing - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p01j2vps

TOK language swearing

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 11 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 11 Oct 13
     
    "#*?@! %$&@*! Why do a few, select words have such power to shock and offend? With help from swearing historian Melissa Mohr, Mike Williams traces the history of taboo language from Roman times to the present day and hears how cultural taboos have shaped offensive language down the centuries. He talks to American psychologist Professor Tim Jay about why we swear and discovers that children start using profane language at a much earlier age than you might imagine. And he meets psychologist Dr Richard Stephens who persuades him to take part in two swearing experiments, one of them rather painful, with some surprising results. "
Lawrence Hrubes

Danish Radio Station Defends Host Who Clubbed Rabbit to Death During Animal Welfare Deb... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ing-animal-welfare-debate.html

ethics animals

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 27 May 15 - No Cached
  • A radio station in Denmark argued on Tuesday that it was merely fulfilling its public service mandate to provoke debate when the host of a morning show beat a baby rabbit to death with a bicycle pump this week during a live discussion of animal welfare.Jorgen Ramskov, the editor in chief of Radio 24syv, a private station supported by fees from listeners, explained in an email that the killing of a nine-week-old rabbit named Allan during a broadcast on Monday was intended to highlight the Danish public’s “hypocrisy when it comes to animal welfare.”
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - The Forum, Advantage - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p01ksh9h

TOK science SocialScience biology disability education success

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 10 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 10 Nov 13
     
    "We explore what can confer advantage. Bridget Kendall talks to best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell about whether the power of the underdog has been under-estimated; psychologist Kathryn Asbury on why some kids start school with a biological advantage over their peers, and globalisation professor Ian Goldin on ensuring future generations' advantage now."
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - Hardtalk, Medical Ethicist - Julian Savulescu - 1 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p01lqqv5

TOK ethics science medicine

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 25 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 25 Nov 13
     
    "From genetic engineering to bioscience, human beings are close to acquiring the ability not just to combat disease, but to enhance and perfect our species. But should we seek to do it, or should we shy away from a path that led to Nazi eugenics? Hardtalk speaks to the Australian born, Oxford based medical ethicist Julian Savulescu. Can we trust ourselves to be wise masters of our own biology?"
Lawrence Hrubes

The Search for Silence - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ff-the-search-for-silence.html

TOK sensory perception sound design senses

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 21 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • We hear the thrum of urban life, overhear the neighbors arguing next door; we eavesdrop, whether we want to or not, on the conversations of co-workers. In medical waiting rooms or hospitals, we’re often privy to nurses and doctors discussing a patient (or, worse, as I experienced recently, to the decidedly un-relaxing sounds of Southern country rock blaring in a mammography clinic). These are things we often don’t want to hear, and with smarter design we shouldn’t have to.Continue reading the main story All of ARUP’s offices have a resource — the Sound Lab — that allows clients to listen to the soundscape of an environment or the acoustics of a space at the early design stages, before that environment or space even exists.
markfrankel18

The Timekeeper: Behind the Scenes of Humanity's Most Accurate Atomic Clocks, Which Dict... - 0 views

www.brainpickings.org/...eeper-video-demetrios-matsakis

TOK time perception technology

shared by markfrankel18 on 24 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • In this fascinating micro-documentary, Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, chief scientist for Time Services at the U.S. Naval Observatory — the same federal agency that hired astronomer Maria Mitchell as the first woman employed by the government — takes us on a tour of the USNO’s 100 atomic clocks, where the time on your iPhone originates. Dr. Matsakis explains how these atomic clocks — which won’t fall behind or race forward by a single second in 300 million years, rendering them the most accurate measuring devices ever created by humanity — also synchronize GPS, coordinate military operations, dictate financial transactions, and orchestrate internet communication. He then peers into the future to imagine the time-accuracy that is to come, as well as the dark side of such precision.
markfrankel18

The Emerging Global Web - 0 views

kottke.org/...the-emerging-global-web

TOK economics technology

shared by markfrankel18 on 22 May 14 - No Cached
  • This slideshow on The Emerging Global Web shows how people in the rest of the world, particularly in countries with emerging economies, use the internet. Talks about things like selling sheep on Instagram, mobile-only internet use, online marketplaces in China like Tmall, a Chinese eBay for services, lifestyle bloggers as retailers, and mobile-only banking and payments.
marydanielyan777

Bear Traps Investing Letter | Keynote Speaker | Lawrence McDonald - Ethical Issues That... - 0 views

www.lawrencegmcdonald.com/fect-the-success-of-a-business

ethics business success economics

shared by marydanielyan777 on 08 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Ethics refers to a prescribed or accepted code of conduct. Ethical issues are a set of moral values that need to be addressed while carrying out business. Businesses operate in a society that is structured around moral values. Therefore, when conducting its operations, a business has certain responsibilities which are to provide the society with quality goods and services that will improve the people’s living standards.
markfrankel18

The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld (Part 1) - NYTimes.com - 2 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...inty-of-donald-rumsfeld-part-1

TOK reason evidence Iraq certainty history bias

shared by markfrankel18 on 28 Mar 14 - No Cached
tpakeman liked it
  • When I first met Donald Rumsfeld in his offices in Washington, D.C., one of the things I said to him was that if we could provide an answer to the American public about why we went to war in Iraq, we would be rendering an important service. He agreed. Unfortunately, after having spent 33 hours over the course of a year interviewing Mr. Rumsfeld, I fear I know less about the origins of the Iraq war than when I started. A question presents itself: How could that be? How could I know less rather than more? Was he hiding something? Or was there really little more than met the eye?
  • Few people today remember that Rumsfeld was ostensibly responding to Miklaszewski’s request for evidence. What evidence do you have that Iraq is supplying terrorists with W.M.D.? Rumsfeld’s answer was a non-answer — not just an evasion or a misdirection. Many people believe Rumsfeld’s reply was brilliant. I think otherwise.
  • These 17th century debates remind us that if you have an unshakable belief in something, then no amount of evidence (or lack of evidence) can convince you otherwise. (There are always anti-rationalist objections to everything and anything. It is curious, however, to hear them in the 21st century rather than in the 17th.)
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