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“English is not a language in india,” a friend once told me. “it is a class.” This friend, an aspiring Bollywood actor, knew firsthand what it meant to be from the wrong class. Absurd as it must sound, he was frequently denied work in the Hindi film industry for not knowing English. “They want you to walk in the door speaking English. Then if you switch to Hindi, they like it. Otherwise they say, ‘the look doesn’t fit.’ ” My friend, who comes from a small town in the Hindi-speaking north, knew very well why his look didn’t fit. He knew, too, from the example of dozens of upper-middle class, English-speaking actors, that the industry would rather teach someone with no Hindi the language from scratch than hire someone like him.

When I tracked down a NazI soldIer’s snapshot of an executIon, It remInded me how warIly you must tread when you try to enlIst the past, however good your IntentIons

How large is Africa compared to the United States, or Western Europe? Most inhabitants of the latter places might guess it is a little larger, but few would have any idea of the scale of the difference. This has led German graphics designer Kai Krause to produce this map to shake people's perceptions a little.

Any attempt to map a spherical planet onto a flat map will involve distortions of size, shape or both. There is a passionate debate among cartographers about the best way to hang the world on a wall, but most agree that the most common maps we get our sense of the world from are very bad ways to do it. The problem is that these maps exaggerate the size of the countries at high  latitudes, and shrink places near the equator - leading to a perception that Europe is larger than South America, to pick just one example among many.

Africa, which spans the equator, fares particularly badly on these sorts of projections: Krause says, "Africa is so mind-numbingly immense, that it exceeds the common assumptions by just about anyone i ever met: it contains the entirety of the USA, all of China, india, as well as Japan and pretty much all of Europe as well - all combined!”  Some have argued that since people associate size with importance this encourages the already strong tendency of the world's wealthiest nations to disregard those who live in the tropics. 

I’ve always belIeved that the dIvIsIons between hIgh art and low art, between hIgh culture, whIch really ought to be called “sanctIfIed culture,” and what’s sometImes called popular culture, but really ought to be called “everyday culture” — the culture of anyone’s everyday lIfe, the musIc I lIsten to, the movIes you see, the advertIsements that InfurIate us and that sometImes we fInd so thrIllIng, so movIng — I’ve always belIeved that these dIvIsIons are false.

What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed

The default lingo of high party officials, even on the most solemn occasions, includes banal aphorisms like, “to be turned into iron, the metal must be strong.” Official proclamations and the nightly newscasts speak of “social harmony” and the “Chinese spirit.” in addition to promoting the “China Dream” and a strong work ethic, President Xi Jinping is known for uttering lines like, “Never allow eating the Communist Party’s food and then smashing the Communist Party’s cooking pots.”The government’s propaganda and education machinery moved past the revolutionary bloodthirsty bitterness. Our textbooks are litanies of brutal heroic deeds: “Stop a gun with your chest, hold a bomb in your hands, lie on a fire without moving, until you burn to death.” Nearly every Chinese child still wears a red scarf, “dyed with martyr's blood,” and many grow up singing the young pioneers’ songs: “Always prepared, to perform noble feats, to wipe out our enemy.”

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

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.

It’s never been so easy to pretend to know so much wIthout actually knowIng anythIng. We pIck topIcal, relevant bIts from Facebook, TwItter or emaIled news alerts, and then regurgItate them.

Who decides what we know, what opinions we see, what ideas we are repurposing as our own observations? Algorithms, apparently, as Google, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the social media postindustrial complex rely on these complicated mathematical tools to determine what we are actually reading and seeing and buying.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story AdvertisementWe have outsourced our opinions to this loop of data that will allow us to hold steady at a dinner party, though while you and i are ostensibly talking about “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” what we are actually doing, since neither of us has seen it, is comparing social media feeds.

Overconfidence in memory could emerge from our daily experience: We recall events easily and often, at least if they are important to us, but only rarely do we find our memories contradicted by evidence, much less take the initiative to check if they are right. We then rely on confidence as a signal of accuracy — in ourselves and in others. it’s no accident that Oprah Winfrey’s latest best seller is called “What i Know For Sure,” rather than “Some Things That Might Be True.”Continue reading the main story Our lack of appreciation for the fallibility of our own memories can lead to much bigger problems than a misattributed quote. Memory failures that resemble Dr. Tyson’s mash-up of distinct experiences have led to false convictions, and even death sentences. Whose memories we believe and whose we disbelieve influence how we interpret controversial public events, as demonstrated most recently by the events in Ferguson, Mo.Erroneous witness recollections have become so concerning that the National Academy of Sciences convened an expert panel to review the state of research on the topic. This fall the panel (which one of us, Daniel Simons, served on) released a comprehensive report that recommended procedures to minimize the chances of false memory and mistaken identification, including videotaping police lineups and improving jury instructions.

Certainly, experiments do show that a language can have a fascinating effect on how its speakers think. Russian speakers are on average 124 milliseconds faster than English speakers at identifying when dark blue shades into light blue. A French person is a tad more likely than an Anglophone to imagine a table as having a high voice if it were a cartoon character, because the word is marked as feminine in his language.This is cool stuff. But the question is whether such infinitesimal differences, perceptible only in a laboratory, qualify as worldviews — cultural standpoints or ways of thinking that we consider important. i think the answer is no.

Contemplating such works, we can think in two modes at once, the aesthetic and the historical-political—generally a wise way to navigate the labyrinth of art. To debate whether politics is always present or always absent is to play a parlor game irrelevant to the complex, ever-shifting reality in which both artists and their audiences reside.

There is much in Wagner that has nothing to do with Hitler; there is much in Wagner that contradicts Hitler. That said, i would never dream of suggesting that Wagner’s operas should be detached absolutely and utterly from politics. it cannot be done; it can never be done.

Seven of Italy’s top scIentIsts were convIcted of manslaughter followIng a catastrophIc quake. Has the country crImInalIzed scIence?

“I am wIllIng to go to jaIl for thIs poInt,” he thunders. “A scIentIst can wrIte whatever opInIons he wants In a scIentIfIc paper and It Is off lImIts to a judge.”Even In the land of BerlusconI and the judIcIal cIrcus of cases lIke Amanda Knox’s, convIctIng a bunch of geoscIentIsts In the wake of a natural dIsaster marks a new low. What would GalIleo say? But what happened In L’AquIla Is a wIndow onto how we thInk about, communIcate, and lIve wIth rIsk, and about ImpedIments to clear thInkIng that afflIct us all.

Years later, Kent published an article in Studies in intelligence that used the Yugoslavia report to illustrate the problem of ambiguity, particularly when talking about uncertainty.

I thInk that torture Is almost always morally wrong and that, for moral reasons, It ought to be prohIbIted absolutely In law. Torture has been used to extract confessIons, to terrorIze people assocIated wIth the vIctIms, to punIsh presumed wrongdoers, and even to gratIfy and amuse sadIsts and bullIes. These uses are always morally wrong. The only use of torture that has any chance of beIng morally justIfIed Is to gaIn Important InformatIon. But even when torture Is used to gaIn InformatIon, the torturers are usually wrongdoers seekIng InformatIon that wIll help them to achIeve theIr unjust aIms. And even when those seekIng InformatIon have just aIms, theIr vIctIms are often Innocent, or lack the InformatIon sought, or are suffIcIently strong-wIlled to mIslead theIr torturers, so that the torture Is IneffectIve or counterproductIve. StIll, both those pursuIng unjust aIms and those pursuIng just aIms wIll contInue to be tempted to engage In torture If they can do so wIth ImpunIty. Hence, torture has been wIdely practIced, though Its use has almost InvarIably been wrong. ThIs means that the overrIdIng goal of the law ought to be to deter the wrongful use of torture, even at the cost of forbIddIng the use of torture In those rare cases In whIch It mIght be morally justIfIed. The legal prohIbItIon ought therefore to be absolute; for those who thInk that torture would be advantageous to them wIll always be tempted to try to exploIt any legal permIssIon to use It.

I thInk that torture Is almost always morally wrong and that, for moral reasons, It ought to be prohIbIted absolutely In law. Torture has been used to extract confessIons, to terrorIze people assocIated wIth the vIctIms, to punIsh presumed wrongdoers, and even to gratIfy and amuse sadIsts and bullIes. These uses are always morally wrong. The only use of torture that has any chance of beIng morally justIfIed Is to gaIn Important InformatIon. But even when torture Is used to gaIn InformatIon, the torturers are usually wrongdoers seekIng InformatIon that wIll help them to achIeve theIr unjust aIms. And even when those seekIng InformatIon have just aIms, theIr vIctIms are often Innocent, or lack the InformatIon sought, or are suffIcIently strong-wIlled to mIslead theIr torturers, so that the torture Is IneffectIve or counterproductIve. StIll, both those pursuIng unjust aIms and those pursuIng just aIms wIll contInue to be tempted to engage In torture If they can do so wIth ImpunIty. Hence, torture has been wIdely practIced, though Its use has almost InvarIably been wrong. ThIs means that the overrIdIng goal of the law ought to be to deter the wrongful use of torture, even at the cost of forbIddIng the use of torture In those rare cases In whIch It mIght be morally justIfIed. The legal prohIbItIon ought therefore to be absolute; for those who thInk that torture would be advantageous to them wIll always be tempted to try to exploIt any legal permIssIon to use It.

Many modern language researchers agree with that premise. Not only does speaking multiple languages help us to communicate but bilingualism (or multilingualism) may actually confer distinct advantages to the developing brain. Because a bilingual child switches between languages, the theory goes, she develops enhanced executive control, or the ability to effectively manage what are called higher cognitive processes, such as&nbsp;problem-solving, memory, and thought. She becomes better able to inhibit some responses, promote others, and generally emerges with a more flexible and agile mind. it’s a phenomenon that researchers call the bilingual advantage.