Revolutionary Minds is a new(ish) video series from Seed Magazine well worth your time. Each instalment profiles a number of scientists with one thing in common: their ideas are revolutionising how science advances. So far:
The Game Changers
Competition, legal difficulties, information overload, a lack of money, and public relations problems can impede the progress of science. [These 'revolutionary minds'] are prizing openness over secrecy, access over scarcity, and they are creating a future that will help science fulfill its potential to make all our lives better.
The Re-envisionaries
The more science advances, the less, it seems, that any one discipline holds all the answers—even to the problems that a discipline was originally conceived to answer. So it’s not surprising that some of today’s most innovative scientific thinkers are making breakthroughs by hybridizing multiple fields.
Design and Architecture
The drawings, structures, renderings, and sculptures of these designers and architects expand and clarify our knowledge of the world around us, demonstrating that design is an integral step in the scientific method.
The reason why Britons believe that the Germans have no sense of humour is a language problem, not a humour problem. One example:
The German phenomenon of compound words also serves to confound the English sense of humour. In English there are many words that have double or even triple meanings, and whole sitcom plot structures have been built on the confusion that arises from deploying these words at choice moments. Once again, German denies us this easy option. There is less room for doubt in German because of the language’s infinitely extendable compound words. In English we surround a noun with adjectives to try to clarify it. In German, they merely bolt more words on to an existing word. Thus a federal constitutional court, which in English exists as three weak fragments, becomes Bundesverfassungsgericht, a vast impregnable structure that is difficult to penetrate linguistically.
Why many Americans miss the irony in British humour.
It’s not so much about having a different sense of humour as a different approach to life. More demonstrative than we are, Americans are not embarrassed by their emotions. They clap louder, cheer harder and empathise more unconditionally. It’s an openness that always leaves me feeling slightly guilty and apologetic when American personalities appear on British chat shows and find their jokes and stories met with titters, not guffaws, or their achievements met with silent appreciation, rather than claps and yelps. We don’t like them any less, we just aren’t inclined to give that much of ourselves away. Meanwhile, as a Brit on an American chat show, it’s difficult to endure prolonged whooping without intense, red-faced smirking.
via Mind Hacks
Did the American economist Harry Dent correctly predict the recession, and is it really the fault of retiring baby boomers?
Dent popularised the ‘age wave’ theory through his research on “the highly predictable nature of consumer spending based on a family formation pattern”.
Some experts expect the worst consumer recession since 1980 to occur when ageing boomers start retiring, adding to rising unemployment, decline in house values, and declining stock prices. However other experts have suggested that immigration to the US and rise of emerging economies will offset the demographic impact.
The biggest ‘boom’ in baby boomer retirements started in 2007 and will continue ’til 2009.
Malcolm Gladwell chats with environmentalist Amy Norquist about the real benefits of ‘green roofs’ (what GOOD Magazine calls, “one of the most unsung and low-tech green solutions out there”).
MG: So you have this technology, and there are three arguments for it: an aesthetic argument, an economic argument, and an environmental arguments. Which of those three do you think is the most powerful with the public?
AN: I think it comes down to the economics, with aesthetics and the environment tied for second. New York is proposing a tax abatement which would be given to building owners who install green roofs. When and if that is approved by the state legislature, it will have a big impact with consumers.
via Seed
I’m considering treating someone (possibly myself!) to David Attenborough’s The Life Collection: the full set of David Attenborough’s Life series, consisting of over 60 hours of some of the best nature footage in history.
As is the norm when I’m intrigued by anything, I head over to Wikipedia and read all I can on a subject. This time I was interested more in Attenborough himself, and came across the following:
In a December 2005 interview […] Attenborough stated that he considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story:
“My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that’s going to make him blind. And [I ask them], ‘Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child’s eyeball? Because that doesn’t seem to me to coincide with a God who’s full of mercy’.”
If you’re a newcomer to Attenborough, I suggest these YouTube videos, courtesy of the BBC. One not to miss is the call of the lyrebird, voted as ‘the best Attenborough moment’.
My favourite fact: Attenborough’s reputed to be the most travelled person on Earth: while filming The Trials of Life he travelled almost a quarter of a million miles in just over three and a half years.