"This clip from SAMSARA showing food production and consumption has been getting a lot of attention!"

"This month, the Guardian launched a campaign in conjunction with Change.org (the petition is here) to end "female genital mutilation" (FGM) in the UK-see Dominic Wilkinson's recent analysis on this blog. I support this campaign and I believe that FGM is impermissible. Indeed, I think that all children, whether male, female, or intersex, should be protected from having parts of their genitals removed unless there is a pressing medical indication; I think this is so regardless of the cultural or religious affiliations of the child's parents; and I have given some arguments for this view here, here, here, here, and here. But note that some commentators are loath to accept so broadly applied an ethical principle: to discuss FGM in the same breath as male circumcision, they think, is to "trivialize" the former and to cause all manner of moral confusion."

"In delivering aid to drought-stricken California last week, President Obama and his aides cited the state as an example of what could be in store for much of the rest of the country as human-caused climate change intensifies. But in doing so, they were pushing at the boundaries of scientific knowledge about the relationship between climate change and drought. While a trend of increasing drought that may be linked to global warming has been documented in some regions, including parts of the Mediterranean and in the Southwestern United States, there is no scientific consensus yet that it is a worldwide phenomenon. Nor is there definitive evidence that it is causing California's problems."

"This is the first in a series of interviews about religion that I will conduct for The Stone. The interviewee for this installment is Alvin Plantinga, an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, a former president of both the Society of Christian Philosophers and the American Philosophical Association, and the author, most recently, of "Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.""

"The guiding idea behind formalism is that mathematics is not a body of propositions representing an abstract sector of reality but is much more akin to a game, bringing with it no more commitment to an ontology of objects or properties than ludo or chess. This idea has some intuitive plausibility: consider the tyro toiling at multiplication tables or the student using a standard algorithm for differentiating or integrating a function. It also corresponds to some aspects of the practice of advanced mathematicians in some periods-for example, the treatment of imaginary numbers for some time after Bombelli's introduction of them, and perhaps the attitude of some contemporary mathematicians towards the higher flights of set theory. Finally, it is often the position to which philosophically naïve respondents will gesture towards, when pestered by questions as to the nature of mathematics."

Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia. From Homo erectus to the present day - more than a million years of history in just one year of lessons. That is how, at the age of 14, I first learned of Japan's relations with the outside world.

"Creativity is a habit. The problem is that schools sometimes treat it as a bad habit. And the world of conventional standardized tests we have invented does just that. Try being creative on a standardized test, and you will get slapped down just as soon as you get your score. That will teach you not to do it again."

"Some museum exhibitions put up disclaimers about sex. Others warn about violence in their art. The impressive Andy Warhol show that opens today at the Corcoran Gallery of Art ought to begin with a big sign that reads something like this: "The following exhibition may cause depression or anxi"

Useful TOK resource on the Arts including some very insightful and discussable definitions of Art. Kenneth Clark's definition of a Masterpiece is particularly relevant and challenging.

How the Mind Works By Steven Pinker Chapter One: Standard Equipment Why are there so many robots in fiction, but none in real life? I would pay a lot for a robot that could put away the dishes or run simple errands. But I will not have the opportunity in this century, and probably not in the next one either. There are, of course, robots that weld or spray-paint on assembly lines and that roll through laboratory hallways; my question is about the machines that walk, talk, see, and think, often better than their human masters. Since 1920, when Karel Capek coined the word robot in his play R.U.R., dramatists have freely conjured them up: Speedy, Cutie, and Dave in Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, Robbie in Forbidden Planet, the flailing canister in Lost in Space, the daleks in Dr. Who, Rosie the Maid in The Jetsons, Nomad in Star Trek, Hymie in Get Smart, the vacant butlers and bickering haberdashers in Sleeper, R2D2 and C3PO in Star Wars, the Terminator in The Terminator, Lieutenant Commander Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the wisecracking film critics in Mystery Science Theater 3000.

It's easy for us to ridicule the foolishness of people in the past who believed things that turned out to be absurdly false. We are horrified that the Aztecs would make human sacrifices to appease a volcano god. We laugh that people were afraid Columbus would sail off the edge of the earth. We are amazed that the people of Salem, Massachusetts would hang people for being witches and we are shocked that religious authorities would burn Giordano Bruno at the stake for teaching that the earth went around the sun. And we are particularly appalled by the hatred of the Nazis that enabled Hitler to murder millions.

"Epistemology is the study of the nature, source, limits, and validity of knowledge.  It is especially interested in developing criteria for evaluating claims people make that they "know" something.  In particular, it considers questions such as: What is knowledge?  What is the difference between knowledge and opinion or belief?  If you know something, does that mean that you are certain about it?  Is knowledge really possible?"

"Our society is divided into castes based upon a supposed division between theoretical knowledge and practical skill. The college professor holds forth on television, as the plumber fumes about detached ivory tower intellectuals. The felt distinction between the college professor and the plumber is reflected in how we think about our own minds. Humans are thinkers, and humans are doers."

"In 1959, an American researcher named Ted Sterling reported something disturbing. Of 294 articles published across four major psychology journals, 286 had reported positive results - that is, a staggering 97% of published papers were underpinned by statistically significant effects. Where, he wondered, were all the negative results - the less exciting or less conclusive findings? Sterling labelled this publication bias a form of malpractice. After all, getting published in science should never depend on getting the "right results"."

"Scientists and biotechnology companies are developing what could become the next powerful weapon in the war on pests - one that harnesses a Nobel Prize-winning discovery to kill insects and pathogens by disabling their genes."

In this classic talk on creativity, John Cleese talks about finding your "open" and "closed" modes of creativity (viewing time = 36 mins, 10 secs.):

"Platonists believe that there is a universal truth underlying all of mathematics. Formalists believe all of mathematics can be defined by a set of predefined rules. Ever wonder about the deeper significance of these two critical mathematical philosophies? Using thought experiments like the Allegory of the Cave and the Barber's Paradox, the great mathematics popularizer and author of Is God a Mathematician?, Mario Livio, untangles these two didactic ways of viewing the world and the very nature of human knowledge."