Skip to main content

Home/ TOK Friends/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by catbclark

Contents contributed and discussions participated by catbclark

Simple Middle Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics
catbclark

Is Your Red The Same As My Red? | IFLScience - 0 views

www.iflscience.com/...your-red-same-my-red

science research

shared by catbclark on 02 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • It’s a question that everyone has pondered at one time or another: does everyone view colors in the same way?
  • . But among the rest of us with normal color vision, can we ever be sure we’re seeing exactly the same thing?
catbclark

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-most-of-our-dna-garbage.html

dna science misconceptions

shared by catbclark on 07 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?
  • Gregory believes that while some noncoding DNA is essential, most probably does nothing for us at all, and until recently, most biologists agreed with him.
  • Recent studies have revealed a wealth of new pieces of noncoding DNA that do seem to be as important to our survival as our more familiar genes.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Large-scale surveys of the genome have led a number of researchers to expect that the human genome will turn out to be even more full of activity than previously thought.
  • “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.”
  • If every piece of the genome were essential, then many of those mutations would lead to significant birth defects, with the defects only multiplying over the course of generations; in less than a century, the species would become extinct.
  • “Much of what has been called ‘junk DNA’ in the human genome is actually a massive control panel with millions of switches regulating the activity of our genes.”
  • It’s no coincidence, researchers like Gregory argue, that bona fide creationists have used recent changes in the thinking about junk DNA to try to turn back the clock to the days before Darwin. (The recent studies on noncoding DNA “clearly demonstrate we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ by our Creator God,” declared the Institute for Creation Research.)
  • Over millions of years, the human genome has spontaneously gotten bigger, swelling with useless copies of genes and new transposable elements.
catbclark

*** Using Color to Your Advantage *** - 0 views

www.urbachletter.com/...1102_HiddenLanguageOfColor.htm

color advantage bias science psychology

shared by catbclark on 06 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Hidden Language of Colo
  • Hey, what's your favorite color? If you're a guy, I'll bet you said "blue." (57% of the male population does)
  • Nearly a quarter of the surveyed women said purple is their favorite whereas not a single man did. There isn't
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • I couldn't find any formal negative connotations, but many people simply don't lik
  • Blue ranks highest. No surprise that so many corporations, banks, and other financial institutions have one or more shades of blue in their logos. White also connotes trustworthiness. All the other colors trail far behind.
  • When people were asked which color best represents "high quality," black surpassed blue to become the top pick by far.
catbclark

True or False: Scandinavians Are Practically Perfect in Every Way - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...den-denmark-culture-ngbooktalk

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Thanks to big government and high taxes, Scandinavia is a success story—mostly
  • as an example of everything wrong with Big Government, the Scandinavian countries are, in fact, some of the richest, most successful societies on Earth, with exceptionally high levels of education, health care, and safety.
  • Britain and America fell in love with Nordic noir is that they look different
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • In numerous polls over the past decade, Denmark has ranked as the "happiest" country in the worl
  • . (The U.S. is number 17.) The country also has the second highest consumption of antidepressants. Are these two statistics connected?
  • They also have among the highest levels of alcohol consumption, eat the most candy in the world, and have among the highest consumption of pork product
  • The New York Times called Denmark the best place to be laid off. Why does anyone bother to work?
  • supported people from cradle to grave. If you get sick or lose your job or just fall by the wayside in some way, it's there to pick you up. As a result, there is a disincentive for people to take menial, low-pay jobs.
  • Danes also work fewer hours than anybody else
  • Norway now has, not just per capita but in absolute terms, the biggest pot of gold in the world. It's called the sovereign wealth fund, but it's nicknamed the oil fund, and it's up at something like $600 billion to $700 billion.
catbclark

Marriage: Wedding wows | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...-chinese-nuptials-wedding-wows

culture marriage

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • An emphasis on love is a new addition to Chinese weddings—and shines a pink-filtered spotlight on social change.
  • the bride’s family exchanged money or goods.
  • . An average wedding cost $12,000 in 2011 (the latest year for which such data exist)—the equivalent of more than two years’ income for the average urban household.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • . Parents have more to spend if they only have to fork out for one wedding (they usually share costs with the spouse-to-be’s family).
  • The result is evident in weddings, which now focus on the couple. Both sets of parents are represented, but their position is peripheral. Weddings often feature a day of wedding photos, shot before the event, with the couple in a range of outfits against romantic backgrounds, but with no family members.
catbclark

Why Our Children Don't Think There Are Moral Facts - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...nt-think-there-are-moral-facts

moral facts think children science education

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?
  • if students are already showing up to college with this view of morality, it’s very unlikely that it’s the result of what professional philosophers are teaching. So where is the view coming from?
  • First, the definition of a fact waffles between truth and proof — two obviously different features. Things can be true even if no one can prove them.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • It’s a mistake to confuse truth (a feature of the world) with proof (a feature of our mental lives).
  • Me: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?” Him: “It’s a fact.” Me: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.” Him: “Yeah, but it’s true.” Me: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?” The blank stare on his face said it all.
  • any claim with good, right, wrong, etc. is not a fact.
  • It should not be a surprise that there is rampant cheating on college campuses: If we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter as to whether cheating is wrong, we can’t very well blame them for doing so later on.
  • If there are no truths about what is good or valuable or right, how can we prosecute people for crimes against humanity? If it’s not true that all humans are created equal, then why vote for any political system that doesn’t benefit you over others?
  • Our children deserve a consistent intellectual foundation. Facts are things that are true. Opinions are things we believe. Some of our beliefs are true. Others are not. Some of our beliefs are backed by evidence. Others are not. Value claims are like any other claims: either true or false, evidenced or not.
catbclark

When Things Happen That You Can't Explain - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...pen-that-you-cant-explain.html

cant be explained supernatural

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • When Things Happen That You Can’t Explain
  • People believe what they believe for a range of reasons, but one of the most puzzling — at least for those who have not had events like these — is an explanation from personal experience. Such moments have cherished roles in conversion narratives, of course.
  • Sometimes people have remarkable experiences, and then tuck them away as events they can’t explain.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But just having a strange and powerful experience doesn’t determine what you believe.
  • What makes the difference between conviction and startled curiosity?
  • I’ve talked to hundreds of people who have had remarkable, unexpected experiences that startled them profoundly. Some see them as clear evidence of the supernatural and others do not. And there are those who come to a conclusive view of what these events mean, and those who hold them as evidence of the mystery of the human imagination itself.
catbclark

How We Learned to Kill - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...how-we-learned-to-kill.html

psychology

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • “There are two people digging by the side of the road. Can we shoot them?”
  • In war, of course, there are many ways to kill. I did so by giving orders. I never fired my weapon in combat, but I ordered countless others to
  • My initial reaction was to ask the question to someone higher up the chain of command.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • I wanted confirmation from a higher authority to do the abhorrent, something I’d spent my entire life believing was evil.
  • I realized it was my role as an officer to provide that validation to the Marine on the other end who would pull the trigger.
  • I also received affirmation to a more sinister question: Yes, I could kill.
  • The primary factors that affect an individual’s ability to kill are the demands of authority, group absolution, the predisposition of the killer, the distance from the victim and the target attractiveness of the victim.
  • Were the men in their sights irrigating their farmland or planting a roadside bomb?
  • Before killing the first time there’s a reluctance that tempers the desire to know whether you are capable of doing it
  • . Despite the rhetoric I internalized from the newspapers back home about why we were in Afghanistan, I ended up fighting for different reasons once I got on the ground — a mix of loyalty to my Marines, habit and the urge to survive.
  • The more I thought about the enemy, the harder it was to view them as evil or subhuman. But killing requires a motivation
  • If someone is shooting at me, I have a right to fire back
  • Until that moment, our deployment in Afghanistan had been exhilarating because we felt invulnerable. This invulnerability in an environment of death was the most powerful sensation I’d ever experienced.
  • The fog of war doesn’t just limit what you can know; it creates doubt about everything you’re certain that you know.
  • The madness of war is that while this system is in place to kill people, it may actually be necessary for the greater good. We live in a dangerous world where killing and torture exist and where the persecution of the weak by the powerful is closer to the norm than the civil society where we get our Starbucks.
catbclark

Jawbone's Discovery Fills Barren Evolutionary Period - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...arren-evolutionary-period.html

discovery evolutionary science knowledge

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Jawbone’s Discovery Fills Barren Evolutionary Perio
  • This was a time when the human genus, Homo, was getting underway. The 2.8-million-year-old jawbone of a Homo habilis predates by at least 400,000 years any previously known Homo fossils.
  • Dr. Spoor’s predictions were drawn from a digital reconstruction of the disturbed remains of the jaws of the original 1.8-million-year-old Homo habilis specimen found 50 years ago by the legendary fossil hunters Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The reconstruction, suggesting a plausible evolutionary link between A. afarensis and H. habilis, yielded a remarkably primitive picture of a deep-rooted diversity of a species that emerged much earlier than the 2.3 million years ago suggested by some specimens. The teeth and jaws appeared to be more similar to A. afarensis than to subsequent Homo erectus or Homo sapiens, modern humans that emerged about 200,000 years ago.
  • possible result of widespread climate change affecting species changes and extinctions.
catbclark

Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science? - National Geographic Magazine - 0 views

ngm.nationalgeographic.com/...achenbach-text

science bias knowledge education Doubt Evolution Controverse Vaccin Reasonable

shared by catbclark on 24 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • But the notion of a vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and reinforced through the usual Internet filters. (Anti-vaccine activist and actress Jenny McCarthy famously said on the Oprah Winfrey Show, “The University of Google is where I got my degree from.”)
    • catbclark
      catbclark on 05 Mar 15
       
      Power of celebraties, internet as a source 
  • The scientific method doesn’t come naturally—but if you think about it, neither does democracy. For most of human history neither existed. We went around killing each other to get on a throne, praying to a rain god, and for better and much worse, doing things pretty much as our ancestors did.
  • We need to get a lot better at finding answers, because it’s certain the questions won’t be getting any simpler.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • That the Earth is round has been known since antiquity—Columbus knew he wouldn’t sail off the edge of the world—but alternative geographies persisted even after circumnavigations had become common
  • We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from climate change to vaccinations—faces furious opposition.Some even have doubts about the moon landing.
  • Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?
  • science doubt itself has become a pop-culture meme.
  • Flat-Earthers held that the planet was centered on the North Pole and bounded by a wall of ice, with the sun, moon, and planets a few hundred miles above the surface. Science often demands that we discount our direct sensory experiences—such as seeing the sun cross the sky as if circling the Earth—in favor of theories that challenge our beliefs about our place in the universe.
  • . Yet just because two things happened together doesn’t mean one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn’t mean they’re not still random.
  • Sometimes scientists fall short of the ideals of the scientific method. Especially in biomedical research, there’s a disturbing trend toward results that can’t be reproduced outside the lab that found them, a trend that has prompted a push for greater transparency about how experiments are conducted
  • “Science will find the truth,” Collins says. “It may get it wrong the first time and maybe the second time, but ultimately it will find the truth.” That provisional quality of science is another thing a lot of people have trouble with.
  • scientists love to debunk one another
  • they will continue to trump science, especially when there is no clear downside to ignoring science.”
catbclark

Why Are Elephants and Other Animals So Wrinkly? - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...als-elephants-science-genetics

purpose bias science

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Why Are Elephants and Other Animals So Wrinkly? For African elephants, baggy skin keeps them cool in the hot sun
  • "The elephant's wrinkled skin traps moisture in the hollows, which means it takes longer for the moisture to evaporate, thus keeping the elephant cooler for longer," Garrigan said.
  • Elephants have few sweat glands and can't use them for regulating their body temperature, so they disperse heat in other ways, including through their baggy skin.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "What happens when you put anti-wrinkle cream on an elephant?" (See National Geographic's elephant pictures.)
  • African elephants are also more wrinkled than their forest-dwelling Asian relatives.
  • Elephants aren't the only creased creatures that benefit from wrinkles. Take the naked mole rat, whose saggy skin makes moving around easier.
catbclark

Europe's Languages Were Carried From the East, DNA Shows - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...na-europe-language-archaeology

languages dna science research

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Europe's Languages Were Carried From the East, DNA Shows
  • New DNA evidence suggests that herders from the grasslands of today's Russia and Ukraine carried the roots of modern European languages across the continent some 4,500 years ago.
  • "First there are early hunter-gatherers, then come farmers, then farmers mix with hunter-gatherers—then comes a new population from the east, which is the major migration,"
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "You can see a direct genetic relationship between these two populations," says David Anthony, an archaeologist at Hartwick College, in Oneonta, New York, and a co-author of the study. "They're close cousins, at least."
  • "From a conservative archaeological point of view, I would not have predicted people from the steppe would have migrated from the mouth of the Danube to Denmark within a century or two," says Anthony. "This is a big surprise."
  • There's more work to be done. The genetic and linguistic data support the idea that Indo-European entered Europe via the steppes around 4,500 years ago, but "it's still not clear to me where the oldest branches" of the language come from,
catbclark

Oldest Human Fossil Found, Redrawing Family Tree - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...sil-jaw-ethiopia-olduvai-gorge

science Technology brain science fossil family tree

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Oldest Human Fossil Found, Redrawing Family Tree
  • The new Ethiopian fossil, announced Wednesday online by the journal Science, pushes the arrival of Homo on the East African landscape back almost half a million years, to 2.8 million years ago. The date is tantalizingly close to the last known appearance, around three million years ago, of Australopithecus afarensis, an upright-walking, small-brained species best known from the skeleton called Lucy, believed by many scientists to be the direct ancestor of our genus.
  • "This narrows the time period in which we can now focus our search for the emergence of the human lineage,"
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The authors of the Science paper point out that the only known specimens of A. sediba are almost a million years younger than the new Homo jaw from Ethiopia that they would have had to have given rise to.
  • "The idea that [the new jaw] makes anything else unlikely to be an ancestor is ludicrous," says Grine. "That would pretend that the fossil record is complete. And we know it can't be, since they just discovered something that wasn't there before."
  • "But it's still too soon to say that this means climate change is responsible for the origin of Homo."
  • Since it is unlikely that the three contemporaneous species Homo habilis, H. rudolfensis, and H. erectus evolved large brains independently, it follows that their common ancestor had already set the course toward an enlarged brain, much earlier than previously thought.
  • This could reestablish the link between the appearance of larger brains in the hominin lineage and the first stone tools.
  • So perhaps H. habilis—depending on how far back that species lived—was a bona fide Handy Man after all.
catbclark

6 Girl Scout cookies you thought you were getting but aren't - Los Angeles Times - 0 views

graphics.latimes.com/girl-scout-cookies

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
    • catbclark
      catbclark on 05 Mar 15
       
      $4 dollars here 
  • 6 Girl Scout cookies you thought you were getting but aren't
catbclark

Does Geography Influence How a Language Sounds? - 2 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...-ejective-language-linguistics

language geography knowledge coincidences

shared by catbclark on 28 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • These regions are the North American Cordillera, the Andes and the Andean altiplano, the southern African plateau, the plateau of the East African Rift and the Ethiopian highlands, and the Caucasus range and Javakheti plateau.
    • catbclark
      catbclark on 28 Oct 14
       
      This is interesting because these are in different areas that probably had no contact with each another when the languages were developing, yet they have simular sounds in the language. 
  • "I don't endorse [their] hypothesis but believe they were onto something."
    • catbclark
      catbclark on 28 Oct 14
       
      As cool as this article is, it does not seem to have very solid informations. This article seems to be based on assumptions. 
  • "I had this hypothesis that [certain sounds] might be more common at high altitudes,"
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Moreover, most of the languages containing ejectives were spoken in, or near, five out of six high-altitude regions around the world.
    • catbclark
      catbclark on 28 Oct 14
       
      How does altitude affect what sounds people say?
‹ Previous 21 - 37 of 37
Showing 20▼ items per page