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sissij

With Mass Protests, South Koreans Wield a Familiar Weapon in a New Era - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...th-korea-protests-history.html

new york times social media

shared by sissij on 12 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Then as now, mass protest was a powerful weapon deployed by enraged citizens who felt they had nowhere else to turn but the streets. Thirty years later, it’s clear how far Korean democracy has advanced. Then, South Korea was a dictatorship, protests were outlawed and the threat of torture, imprisonment and martial law ever-present.
  • Students have long been at the vanguard of South Korea’s robust history of protest, drawing on deep-rooted Confucian traditions that elevated scholars as guardians of morality.
  • Yonsei produced its own martyr, 21-year-old Lee Han-yol, who died after a tear-gas canister hit him in the head.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • I saw an older woman, hair neatly coifed, beat a policeman with her handbag. A young father hoisted his little girl on his shoulder, carefully affixing a surgical mask to her face, an imperfect shield from the gas. A student in Kwangju bit his finger and wrote protest slogans in his own blood.
  • At the trial, his father lunged at the three policemen, small and scared now, protected by more than 50 guards. Screams broke out and a purse flew through the air at the judges as the light sentence was read. Women whose sons were still in jail stormed the bus carrying the policemen, throwing bottles against the windows. Plainclothes police shoved the four of them onto the concrete, where they lay unconscious.
  • Laws are still on the books that can be used as tools to stifle dissent. South Korea remains shadowed by legitimate fears of North Korean aggression and espionage, but those were and are exploited by the government.
  • This is not a tame society, for all the comforts its public has won in the years since. This may be the land of Psy and Gangnam style, a country so wired that some of its children are sent to boot camps to wean them from internet addiction.
  • Politicians buck the popular will at their peril.
  • sissij on 12 Dec 16
     
    This article talks about the protests in South Korea. I found that there are deep conflict between the police and the the people. It makes me think of the police brutality we talked about recently. I think the police should protect the people but now they are using martial arts and tear-gas canisters. To what extent should the police yield the protest from the people? I also found it interesting that students are often more eager to attend those protest than adults. They are usually more radical than adults. Is it a good thing to always let out all their complaints? --Sissi (12/11/2016)
sissij

How Social Isolation Is Killing Us - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...l-isolation-is-killing-us.html

new york times brain science research psychology

shared by sissij on 23 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • About one-third of Americans older than 65 now live alone, and half of those over 85 do. People in poorer health — especially those with mood disorders like anxiety and depression — are more likely to feel lonely. Those without a college education are the least likely to have someone they can talk to about important personal matters.
  • Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.
  • The loneliness of older adults has different roots — often resulting from family members moving away and close friends passing away. As one senior put it, “Your world dies before you do.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “In America, you almost need an excuse for knocking on a neighbor’s door,” Dr. Tang told me. “We want to break down those barriers.”
  • “You don’t need a playmate every day,” Dr. Tang said. “But knowing you’re valued and a contributing member of society is incredibly reaffirming.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story
  • A great paradox of our hyper-connected digital age is that we seem to be drifting apart. Increasingly, however, research confirms our deepest intuition: Human connection lies at the heart of human well-being. It’s up to all of us — doctors, patients, neighborhoods and communities — to maintain bonds where they’re fading, and create ones where they haven’t existed.
  • sissij on 23 Dec 16
     
    We are always finding reasons to do something good for others. However, these barriers are just invented. We don't need reason to be kind and friendly. The digital age gives us access to more people, but it also limits attention and effort to form a friendship. Our brain is limited so there is attention blindness showing that we cannot handle too much information. What we should do is focus our attention on people in our community and actually make effort to form relationships and connections. Usually, people that's most realistic and close to us are not online. --Sissi (12/23/2016)
Javier E

The Anger Wave That May Just Wipe Out Laissez-Faire Economics - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...t-laissez-faire-economics.html

market fundamentalism populism theory economics crisis

shared by Javier E on 28 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • few would have guessed that the economic order built upon Mr. Reagan’s and Mrs. Thatcher’s common faith in unfettered global markets (and largely accepted by their more liberal successors Bill Clinton and Tony Blair) would be brought down by right-wing populists riding the anger of a working class that has been cast aside in the globalized economy that the two leaders trumpeted 40 years ago.
  • The so-called Brexit vote was driven by an inchoate sense among older white workers with modest education that they have been passed over, condemned by forces beyond their control to an uncertain job for little pay in a world where their livelihoods are challenged not just by cheap Asian workers halfway around the world, but closer to home by waves of immigrants of different faiths and skin tones.
  • It is the same frustration that has buoyed proto-fascist political parties across Europe. It is the same anger fueling the candidacy of Mr. Trump in the United States.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Mr. Trump, the bombastic businessman who’s never held office, and Mr. Johnson, the former journalist turned mayor of London, might not put it this way, since they continue to cling to a conservative mantle. But they are riding a revolt of the working class against a 40-year-long project of the political right and its corporate backers that has dominated policy making in the English-speaking world for a generation.
  • The British political scientist Andrew Gamble at the University of Cambridge has argued that Western capitalism has experienced two transformational crises since the end of the 19th century. The first, brought about by the Depression of the 1930s, ended an era in which governments bowed to the gospel of the gold standard and were expected to butt out of the battles between labor and capital, letting markets function on their own, whatever the consequences
  • Mr. Keynes’s views ultimately prevailed, though, providing the basis for a new post-World War II orthodoxy favoring active government intervention in the economy and a robust welfare state. But that era ended when skyrocketing oil prices and economic mismanagement in the 1970s brought about a combination of inflation and unemployment that fatally undermined people’s trust in the state.
  • The Keynesian era ended when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan rode onto the scene with a version of capitalism based on tax cuts, privatization and deregulation that helped revive their engines of growth but led the workers of the world to the deeply frustrating, increasingly unequal economy of today.
  • After the Brexit vote, Lawrence Summers, former Treasury secretary under President Clinton and one of President Obama’s top economic advisers at the nadir of the Great Recession, laid out an argument for what he called “responsible nationalism,” which focused squarely on the interests of domestic workers.
  • Instead of negotiating more agreements to ease business across borders, governments would focus on deals to improve labor and environmental standards internationally. They might cut deals to prevent cross-border tax evasion.
  • There is, however, little evidence that the world’s leaders will go down that path. Despite the case for economic stimulus, austerity still rules across much of the West. In Europe, most governments have imposed stringent budget cuts — ensuring that all but the strongest economies would stall. In the United States, political polarization has brought fiscal policy — spending and taxes — to a standstill.
kushnerha

When Was America Greatest? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...when-was-america-greatest.html

new york times politics memory bias greatness patriotism research

shared by kushnerha on 28 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The slogan evokes a time when America was stronger and more prosperous. But Mr. Trump doesn’t specify whether he’s expressing nostalgia for the 1950s — or 10 years ago. That vagueness is reflected by his voters, according to the results of a new survey, conducted online by the digital media and polling company Morning Consult.
  • Trump supporters offered a wide range of answers, with no distinct pattern. The most popular choice was the year 2000. But 1955, 1960, 1970 and 1985 were also popular. More than 2 percent of Trump’s supporters picked 2015, when Mr. Trump’s campaign began.
  • Political science research suggests that Americans’ optimism can be influenced by whether their political party is in the White House. So it’s perhaps not surprising that Democrats feel better than Republicans about current circumstances.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In March, Pew asked people whether life was better for people like them 50 years ago — and a majority of Republicans answered yes. Trump supporters were the most emphatic, with 75 percent saying things were better in the mid-1960s.Democrats, though, were less enthusiastic about the past. Forty-eight percent said life was better now than it was 50 years ago, while 17 percent of Democrats said it was the same, and only 28 percent said it was worse.
  • In the Morning Consult survey, 44 percent of people over all said America’s greatest years were ahead of it, while 36 percent said those years had already passed. But in an election when America’s past greatness has played such a starring role, we wanted to see more details about just how voters saw the past and the future.
  • So, when was the greatest year?Over all, 2000 was the most popular choice, a preference that cut across political party, candidate preference, gender and age. The year’s popularity may partly reflect people’s fondness for round numbers. But many voters explained their choice by referring to a greater sense of security. The Sept. 11 attacks occurred the following year. (An election year also has something for all partisans to grab onto. Bill Clinton was president that year, but George W. Bush won the election to replace him.)
  • Some people, of course, reached farther back into history. The year the Declaration of Independence was signed, 1776, got a few votes. One person chose 1789, the year the Constitution took effect. One person chose 1800. One chose 1860, the year Southern states began to secede from the Union. But most answers were of a more recent vintage.
  • partisan patterns in views of America’s greatness. Republicans, over all, recall the late 1950s and the mid-1980s most fondly. Sample explanations: “Reagan.” “Economy was booming.” “No wars!” “Life was simpler.” “Strong family values.” The distribution of Trump supporters’ greatest years is somewhat similar to the Republican trend, but more widely dispersed over the last 70 years.
  • Democrats seem to think America’s greatest days were more recent; they were more likely to pick a year in the 1990s, or since 2000. After 2000, their second-most-popular answer was 2016. Sample explanations: “We’re getting better.” “Improving social justice.” “Technology.” Even 2008, a year of financial collapse, was pretty popular, perhaps because President Obama was also elected that year.
Javier E

Resist the Internet - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...resist-the-internet.html

internet crisis culture social media psychology education addiction

shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Definitely if you’re young, increasingly if you’re old, your day-to-day, minute-to-minute existence is dominated by a compulsion to check email and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram with a frequency that bears no relationship to any communicative need.
  • it requires you to focus intensely, furiously, and constantly on the ephemera that fills a tiny little screen, and experience the traditional graces of existence — your spouse and friends and children, the natural world, good food and great art — in a state of perpetual distraction.
  • It certainly delivers some social benefits, some intellectual advantages, and contributes an important share to recent economic growth.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • They are the masters; we are not. They are built to addict us, as the social psychologist Adam Alter’s new book “Irresistible” points out — and to madden us, distract us, arouse us and deceive us.
  • We primp and perform for them as for a lover; we surrender our privacy to their demands; we wait on tenterhooks for every “like.” The smartphone is in the saddle, and it rides mankind.
  • the internet, like alcohol, may be an example of a technology that should be sensibly restricted in custom and in law.
  • Used within reasonable limits, of course, these devices also offer us new graces. But we are not using them within reasonable limits.
  • there are also excellent reasons to think that online life breeds narcissism, alienation and depression, that it’s an opiate for the lower classes and an insanity-inducing influence on the politically-engaged, and that it takes more than it gives from creativity and deep thought. Meanwhile the age of the internet has been, thus far, an era of bubbles, stagnation and democratic decay — hardly a golden age whose customs must be left inviolate.
  • So a digital temperance movement would start by resisting the wiring of everything, and seek to create more spaces in which internet use is illegal, discouraged or taboo. Toughen laws against cellphone use in cars, keep computers out of college lecture halls, put special “phone boxes” in restaurants where patrons would be expected to deposit their devices, confiscate smartphones being used in museums and libraries and cathedrals, create corporate norms that strongly discourage checking email in a meeting.
  • Then there are the starker steps. Get computers — all of them — out of elementary schools, where there is no good evidence that they improve learning. Let kids learn from books for years before they’re asked to go online for research; let them play in the real before they’re enveloped by the virtual
  • The age of consent should be 16, not 13, for Facebook accounts. Kids under 16 shouldn’t be allowed on gaming networks. High school students shouldn’t bring smartphones to school. Kids under 13 shouldn’t have them at all.
  • I suspect that versions of these ideas will be embraced within my lifetime by a segment of the upper class and a certain kind of religious family. But the masses will still be addicted, and the technology itself will have evolved to hook and immerse — and alienate and sedate — more completely and efficiently.
caelengrubb

How to Read the News Without Going Insane | Vanity Fair - 0 views

www.vanityfair.com/...-the-news-without-going-insane

shared by caelengrubb on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • In the years since smartphones were invented, there have been smart people with advice about leaving this little black box of horrors behind, about containing the content Pandora created. But maybe this time is my chance to change, and maybe it’s yours.
  • “Right now is an extremely, extremely challenging time to have a healthy relationship with the news, and that’s regardless of your political orientation, or even if you care about politics at al
  • Recognize it’s not your fault
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Begin to build boundaries by starting with the easy stuff, whatever that means for you
  • This one is relatively simple: don’t have television news on in the background (or better, a news podcast). Clean up the passive background noise
  • Assess the situation
  • Figure out your main problem area
  • Choose what, when, where, and how
  • “What level of news is going to make me feel suitably up-to-date and responsible without driving me insane? Recognize that may be a moving target and that it’s going to be extremely difficult to stick with, but at least have some kind of goal.
  • A word on the “when” part 
  • Sometimes this means buying an alarm clock and putting your phone in a different room/closet than the one where you sleep. 
  • Ask for help
  • Who profits from my fear, my elation, my outrage? It’s a nice question to keep in the back of one’s head when you’re down the rabbit hole—especially when you’re not really getting much out of it, but just half-remembered ideas about what you’re reading and why.
tongoscar

Noah Berlatsky : Trump voters motivated by racism may be violating the Constitution. Ca... - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...stitution-can-they-ncna1110356

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • If the Trump era has taught us anything, it's that large numbers of white people in the United States are motivated at least in part by racism in the voting booth.
  • Some politicians deny the evidence, no doubt because they don't want to alienate white voters, including prejudiced ones.
  • The government, Smith says, has the ability, and the responsibility, to address it.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • This sounds radical. But Smith argues that it's in line with the Constitution and with years of court rulings. For example, Smith points out that racist appeals in union elections are illegal and that an election in which one side uses racist appeals can be invalidated by the National Labor Relations Board. Similarly, in the 2016 case Peña v. Rodriguez, the Supreme Court ruled that when a juror expresses overt bigotry, the jury's verdict should be invalidated.
  • So how can you tell when voters are acting out of prejudice? Again, Smith says, employment discrimination law provides a useful analogy. In discrimination cases, courts look for pretexts.
  • Even more ambitiously, Smith suggests expanding the Voting Rights Act to address the racist patterns of voting in Senate elections in the South.
  • It's difficult to address injustice, however, if you're unwilling to say injustice exists. Politicians and pundits, Republican and Democratic alike, have been unwilling to reprimand voters or hold them accountable.
katherineharron

Rich people are living healthy lives for almost a decade more than poor people - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 19 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Rich people live healthy, disability-free lives an average of nine years longer than less wealthy people, according to a major study that lays bare the troubling economic inequalities behind lifespans in the US and UK.
  • The biggest socioeconomic factor in predicting when those problems began was wealth, the team discovered, with richer people enjoying almost an extra decade before experiencing difficulties.
  • "While life expectancy is a useful indicator of health, the quality of life as we get older is also crucial," lead author Paola Zaninotto, a public health specialist at University College London, said in a statement. "By measuring healthy life expectancy we can get an estimate of the number of years of life spent in favorable states of health or without disability."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Research in 2016 found that men in the top financial 1% in the US can expect to live until the age of 87.3, nearly 15 years longer than those in the bottom 1%. The gap for women was 10 years.
  • Inequalities in healthy life expectancy exist in both countries and are of similar magnitude," the authors wrote in their conclusion. "In both countries efforts in reducing health inequalities should target people from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups."In general, the global life expectancy at birth in 2016 -- the latest year for which data is available -- was 72 years, according to the World Health Organization. The global average life expectancy rose by 5.5 years between 2000 and 2016, the fastest increase since the 1960s, WHO said.
aliciathompson1

Who Are Donald Trump's Supporters? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...471714

donald trump politics

shared by aliciathompson1 on 07 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • The first story about the typical Trump buyer was simple: These were poorly informed voters, swept up by a modern circus act orchestrated by a mass-media-age P. T. Barnum with arguably worse hair. But Trump’s appeal has proven to be more than a passing fad.
  • Back in December, a Washington Post analysis found that Trump's support skewed male, white, and poor.
  • The single best predictor of Trump support in the GOP primary is the absence of a college degree.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • If there were one question to identify a Trump supporter if you knew nothing else about him, what might it be? “Are you a middle-aged white man who hasn’t graduated from college?” might be a good one. But according to a survey from RAND Corporation, there is one that’s even better: Do you feel voiceless?
  • They Want to Wage an Interior War Against Outsiders
  • They Live in Parts of the Country With Racial Resentment
sissij

'I Saw My Father Dying': A View From Aleppo's Government-Held Side - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...aleppo-syria.html

social media bias new york times

shared by sissij on 07 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • President Bashar al-Assad’s main pitch to his people is that they are safer in the territory he controls, a far cry from the bombs and hunger on the rebels’ half of the storied and strategic city.This is what the government wanted international journalists to see when it invited a group into the country this week after years of keeping most out. But when I stepped off the bus, I found a war zone.
  • Dr. Mazen Rahmoun, a city health official in a neat brown suit, moved gingerly through the chaos with the preternaturally calm stare of a man long ago traumatized into numbness.
  • Instead, they are trying to break the siege, with Qaeda-linked groups and those backed by the United States working together — the opposite of what Russia has demanded.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “Moderate rebels” was a sarcastic refrain we heard often, making fun of the Obama administration’s description of groups it backs; the Syrian government calls them terrorists.
  • “Don’t tell me he died! Don’t!” she shrieked. “I only have this one son.”“He will survive,”
  • Soldiers there said they did not expect the evacuation deal to work.
  • A senior military official said simply, “It’s over.”
  • sissij on 07 Nov 16
     
    I found this news very interesting because it shows flawed the media can be. It also reveals that countries sometimes invite journalists to write some news in their favor. All the deceptions seem normal because their standard for abnormal is way higher than us. They are so numb to war and death that they can accept the worst situation with out being surprised. --Sissi (11/7/2016)
sissij

Divisions in My Dorm Room - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...divisions-in-my-dorm-room.html

social media bias new york times

shared by sissij on 29 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • If I had voted, however, I would have picked Mr. Trump. I was focused on school. I had no idea that a few days later I would be dismissed as a “Trump supporter” and a person of “privilege” who “reflected an us versus them mind-set” in an essay by my college roommate in this publication — an essay that would go viral and change my life.
  • As minorities, my mother, father, grandparents and I have experienced racial hate. My skin may be light, but I understand discrimination. I may not know each person’s individual experience, but am able to empathize with others.
  • Why should we be afraid to express our opinions? If we see one another not as a Clinton supporter or a Trump supporter, but as human, perhaps we can discover empathy in the troubled nation in which we exist.The narrative should be one of inclusiveness, openness, respect and love. It is not only about making “America Great Again,” it is about making America home again.
  • sissij on 29 Nov 16
     
    This article shows a slice of the conflict that happening around us everywhere since the result of the election is announced. This is from the perspective of a college student who prefer Donald Trump and her reasoning doesn't sound all like crazy, it's rather rational. From the cries and intense argument over the election, we can see that America is still far from being inclusive. People are still very extreme. The one-sided information on the social media might be one of the reason why people are so blinded to only one side and refuse to respect others' choices. --Sissi (11/28/2016)
sissij

Your Dog Remembers More Than You Think - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dogs-memory.html

brain science language research

shared by sissij on 24 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • In people it is called episodic memory, and it involves a sense of self. In animals, it’s called episodic-like memory, because it’s difficult to try to plumb something as elusive as self without the aid of language.
  • Dr. Fugazza and colleagues reported online in Current Biology that this showed that the dogs remembered an event they hadn’t been concentrating on, the trainer’s action. She said one aspect strengthened that conclusion: The dogs tended to lie down immediately when they got back to the mat, suggesting that their heads were in “lie down” mode, not “do it” mode.
  • He said human episodic memory is lost in Alzheimer’s disease and he and others study animal memory in hopes of learning how to combat that loss. The work on dogs offers a new technique that could be very useful, he said.
  • sissij on 24 Nov 16
     
    I found this experiment very interesting because it shows some aspect of how animals memory works. The result can be used to see how memory work without language. I think language and memory have an intertwined relationship because sometimes I can feel that the information stored in my brain is in language rather than abstract form such as knowledge. For example, my memory of chemistry knowledge is stored in English, so when I am reading a chemistry related book in Chinese, I would usually get lost because there aren't any vocals on Chemistry in Chinese in my memory. It would be a very interesting question to consider that how our memory will construct if we don't have a language. There is a kind of mental disease called "aphasia", meaning the loss of ability to understand language. How do they remember things when they lose the ability to assign meanings and communicate? --Sissi (11/24/2016)
sissij

Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back Into China - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ook-censorship-tool-china.html

censorship bias social media

shared by sissij on 24 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • But the project illustrates the extent to which Facebook may be willing to compromise one of its core mission statements, “to make the world more open and connected,” to gain access to a market of 1.4 billion Chinese people.
  • sissij on 24 Nov 16
     
    As Facebook planning to enter the Chinese market, it has to compromise the government's request on censorship, which ironically opposed Facebook's core mission statement. But I think censorship is not all that bad because the false use of the mass media such as the "fake news"  would make the society very unstable. For a country that has 1.4 billion of population, an totally open and free internet may cause much more problem than a censorship. It all depends on a balance. I hope the more open Facebook and the Chinese government and negotiate their points and reach a balance between too open and too restrained. --Sissi (11/24/2016)
sissij

Let Women Drive, a Prince in Saudi Arabia Urges - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...audi-arabia-women-driving.html

new york times research bias

shared by sissij on 02 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • he couched his views in economic terms, noting that foreign drivers are typically paid 3,800 riyals, or about $1,000, a month to shuttle women around.
  • The driving ban is enforced by Saudi Arabia’s religious police, and it has been the occasional target of protests. Women were allowed to vote and run in local elections last December for the first time.
  • Ending the ban would allow the kingdom to eventually “dispense with” the services of an estimated one million drivers and would stimulate the economy by allowing women to work by driving other women who did not feel comfortable behind the wheel.
  • sissij on 02 Dec 16
     
    I think this article is very interesting because it shows how religion is conflicted with the modern society. I think religion should be able to adapt with the modern society. It shouldn't be misused for personally considerations and discriminations. It is very hard to make clear the line of proper religion and using it as a reason for our own benefit because religion itself is an invented thing. --Sissi (12/2/2016)
sissij

What Not to Say to a Cancer Patient - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...o-say-to-a-cancer-patient.html

new york times Language psychology knowledge

shared by sissij on 01 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • “Really” I was fine, I told her. But what if I hadn’t been? Would I have wanted to launch into a description of bad medical news at what was supposed to be a fun event? Would I have wanted even to be reminded of a bout with cancer?
  • False optimism devalued what was going on in my body. People were insensitive not from a lack of compassion but from not knowing what is really helpful.
  • What he and those he’s counseled have found to be most helpful were not words but actions
  • sissij on 01 Dec 16
     
    This reading helps me to see how we can do a better job at comforting the patients from the perspective of a patient. Many times, we are so eccentric and think we are doing something good. However, our language might be misunderstand because there is no fixed meaning or definition to any word or language. People from different background, in different mood, or from different standpoint may see the same sentence differently. What we think is appropriate is not necessarily appropriate from everybody else since language cannot fully, clear, or precisely express what we really mean. --Sissi (11/30/2016) 
sissij

The Downward Slide of the Seesaw - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nward-slide-of-the-seesaw.html

new york times social media psychology

shared by sissij on 14 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • The older seesaws were wooden planks that often hit asphalt directly, leading to occasional tailbone and spinal injuries, falls and pinched fingers, not to mention splinters. Children could slam each other by dismounting suddenly. Playgrounds that retained old seesaws were exposed to lawsuits.
  • “I think we have to take the kids out a little bit from the safety bubble,” she said, placing her 2-year-old daughter, Sadie, on a seesaw too.
  • “One little fall or a tooth broken and the next thing you know they are out,” she said.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • As a result, relatively few playground injuries are now attributable to seesaws. According to data collected by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, which sets the safety standards, the top three pieces of equipment associated with emergency room visits between 2009 and 2014 were monkey bars, swings and slides. Only 2 percent of injuries were from teeter-totters.
  • “A seemingly simple plaything actually provides so many important sensory experiences for kids,” she said.
  • “The more we live with the safety standards, the more you see people kind of innovating to bring back types of experiences that maybe for a while you weren’t seeing,” she said. “There’s no reason to think we won’t have traditional seesaws in the park at some point.”
  • sissij on 14 Dec 16
     
    This article mentioned a conflict between safety and experience. Can we be both safe and get the experience of overcoming difficulty? Obviously, we have to sacrifice one thing to get another. I think removing the seesaw is not a good idea if we just do it out of the concern of safety. We can never stay in our comfort zoom because once we grow up, we won't have our parents to protect us every time. Something related to TOK is that our mental shortcut of avoiding danger may not always benefit us. --Sissi (12/14/2016)
sissij

The Linguistic Evolution of 'Like' - The Atlantic - 1 views

www.theatlantic.com/...507614

evolution Language knowledge

shared by sissij on 28 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • In our mouths or in print, in villages or in cities, in buildings or in caves, a language doesn’t sit still.
  • What we are seeing in like’s transformations today are just the latest chapters in a story that began with an ancient word that was supposed to mean “body.”
  • So today’s like did not spring mysteriously from a crowd on the margins of unusual mind-set and then somehow jump the rails from them into the general population. The seeds of the modern like lay among ordinary people; the Beatniks may not even have played a significant role in what happened later.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Like LOL, like, entrenched in all kinds of sentences, used subconsciously, and difficult to parse the real meaning of without careful consideration, has all the hallmarks of a piece of grammar—specifically, in the pragmatic department, modal wing.
  • sissij on 28 Nov 16
     
    I found this article very interesting. The meaning of "like" does not spring from abstract concepts, it's rather related to ordinary people and physical meaning of "body". Also the meaning of similarity also reflects how people views the world. The way an ancient language develop to its modern form shows how the society evolves. --Sissi (11/27/2016)
sissij

Will 'Skam,' a Norwegian Hit, Translate? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...a-norwegian-hit-translate.html

new york times social media language

shared by sissij on 10 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • OSLO — “Skam,” a racy, emotionally intense, true-to-life Norwegian web and television series, follows a group of Oslo teenagers as they navigate sex, school, drinking, depression, rape, religion, coming out and the pains of status anxiety, in real life and online.
  • Each season of “Skam” centers on one character. Season 3, which wraps up next week, has focused on Isak (Tarjei Sandvik Moe), who is coming to terms with being gay and has fallen for an older boy, Even (Henrik Holm).
  • “‘Skam’ is combining reality and fiction and the line between them isn’t so clear,” said Mari Magnus, 27, the web producer for the show, who writes the text messages and masterminds the Instagram accounts.
  • sissij on 10 Dec 16
     
    I strongly recommend this TV series because it has a very good depiction of the coming of age problems. I really like the way that the TV series switches the main character for every season. The main characters are all in the same story frame but with different identities. I really like this variety of perspectives in the TV series. Something related to TOK is that nobody is the center of the world, or rather there are a lot of different version of the world, so that why when we are referring to the same even we all experience, we may have completely different description. --Sissi (12/9/2016)
sissij

Color of 2017? Pantone Picks a Spring Shade - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ear-2017-pantone-greenery.html

new york times color psychology science brain science

shared by sissij on 09 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Not just any old green, of course: Pantone 15-0343, colloquially known as greenery, which is to say a “yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring.”
  • That is, the Color of the Year for 2017.
  • “This is the color of hopefulness, and of our connection to nature. It speaks to what we call the ‘re’ words: regenerate, refresh, revitalize, renew. Every spring we enter a new cycle and new shoots come from the ground. It is something life affirming to look forward to.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Certainly the psychology of color ranges from the obvious (red represents aggression; pink is swaddling and calms people) to the chiaroscuro.
  • a combination of yellow and blue, or warmth and a certain cool,” she said. “It’s a complex marriage.”
  • You could argue that the selection is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, except the point is that the products are already there (otherwise they couldn’t be marketed so immediately), which supports Pantone’s contention that it has identified a burgeoning trend.
  • sissij on 09 Dec 16
     
    I found this article very interesting because it talks about the different impression color can give us. Take the example in this article, the color of the year is greenery because it gives people a refreshing feeling. This is related to how we assign different meaning to things based on our pattern recognition. Since we always see color green in the nature, so it very easy for us to relate green with new life and energy. They way Ms. Eiseman said about color is also very interesting. She saw colors with significant meaning and though green is the kid of the complex marriage between blue and yellow. She even personified the colors. This shows how we tends to assign human properties to completely lifeless objects. --Sissi (12/9/2016)
sissij

What's the Best Music to Listen to While Working? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...509948

Music brain science psychology research

shared by sissij on 11 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Worse yet is the possibility that the constant soundtrack is poisoning my writing, with the lyrics somehow weaving into and scrambling my thoughts before they ever hit the keyboard. I try to tune it out, but after all, I’m still, I’m still an animal!
  • It turns out the best thing to listen to, for most office workers, is nothing.
  • An early study called “Music—an aid to productivity,” appropriately found that music could be just that. But the study subjects in that experiment were doing rote factory work, examining metal parts on conveyor belts.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The boost in productivity the researchers noticed happened because the music simply made the task less boring and kept the workers alert. This also helps explain later studies finding that music helped surgeons perform better.
  • When silence and music were put head to head in more cognitively complex tests, people did better in silence.
  • The more engaging the music is, the worse it is for concentration.
  • But lyric-free music is less distracting, and some of the people whose performance was improved may have come up with subconscious mental hacks to avoid getting sidetracked by music.
  • The reason this doesn’t work for most people, Levitin said, is most people can’t pay attention to very much at once. Lyrics can soak up precious attention, as can flashing lights or a really bad smell.
  • So, I asked Levitin, if listening to music while working is so bad, why do so many of us do it? Simple: We like it, and we can’t tell it’s messing us up.
  • sissij on 11 Dec 16
     
    It's surprising to see that not all music can improve our work quality. Many people always ask for some music while they are going their work, but they don't know that this could mess up their work and concentration. This reminds me of the attention blindness that we have. We are incapable of multi-tasking. The experiment mentioned in this article is also very interesting because it reflects how we interpret the result based on our favor. Even the conclusion we draw from the science evidences could be wrong. This is an example of the sound argument but invalid conclusion. --Sissi (12/10/2016)
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