Robert Sapolsky  – one of the world’s leading neurobiologists, a MacArthur Fellow, Stanford professor, and author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers — breaks down an intriguing question. Precisely in what ways are we (humans) different from other animals inhabiting our world? The differences are fewer than we think. But there are some, and they’ll make you sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes a little more confident in humanity, and sometimes motivated to change the world, even in these cynical times. The inspiration happens during the last minute. So stay with this engaging talk until the very last.

via TED’s Best of the Web

The Uniqueness of Humans is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

During the past decade, Tony Judt emerged as one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He’s combative, often controversial (especially when talking about Israel), and sometimes disliked. But he’s taken seriously. And many have had nothing but sheer praise for his master work, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. The NYU historian had built up a career that many envied. But then things started going wrong … physically, not intellectually. In 2008, Judt was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. And he made his diagnosis widely known earlier this year, when he published an essay, “Night,” in The New York Review of Books. The article is short, but it brings you right inside his daily experience. He writes:

During the day I can at least request a scratch, an adjustment, a drink, or simply a gratuitous re-placement of my limbs—since enforced stillness for hours on end is not only physically uncomfortable but psychologically close to intolerable. It is not as though you lose the desire to stretch, to bend, to stand or lie or run or even exercise. But when the urge comes over you there is nothing—nothing—that you can do except seek some tiny substitute or else find a way to suppress the thought and the accompanying muscle memory.

But then comes the night. … If I allow a stray limb to be mis-placed, or fail to insist on having my midriff carefully aligned with legs and head, I shall suffer the agonies of the damned later in the night. I am then covered, my hands placed outside the blanket to afford me the illusion of mobility but wrapped nonetheless since—like the rest of me—they now suffer from a permanent sensation of cold. I am offered a final scratch on any of a dozen itchy spots from hairline to toe; the Bi-Pap breathing device in my nose is adjusted to a necessarily uncomfortable level of tightness to ensure that it does not slip in the night; my glasses are removed…and there I lie: trussed, myopic, and motionless like a modern-day mummy, alone in my corporeal prison, accompanied for the rest of the night only by my thoughts.

This experience hasn’t slowed down Judt a bit. In fact, quite the opposite, Judt has been ramping up his publications, proving even more prolific than before. (His latest book, Ill Fares the Land, will be published this week.) Judt’s battle with ALS and his sense of intellectual urgency get discussed in the latest edition of New York Magazine. It’s a piece well worth reading. So also is the large profile that ran in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January. Above we feature an interview with Judt posted by The Guardian.

Tony Judt, Leading Public Intellectual, Confronts ALS is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

The place: A produce market in Valencia, Spain. The day: Just a day like any other. But then suddenly Verdi’s La traviata booms out over the speakers, and opera singers, initially masquerading as shopkeepers, take center stage. Stick with it until the end. The customer reaction is precious. We’ve added this one to our YouTube favorites. Thanks Charlie for the tip …

Opera in the Fruit & Veggie Market is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Join the Facebook Committee to Support Liao Yiwu is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

People preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics… Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list.

This goes a long way toward explaining why 3.4 million people have watched The Known Universe since mid December. And, as Bill Rankin rightly suggested to me, it says something good about online culture, and what makes Open Culture work as a site. Each day, we try to give you a little awe and challenge. And for our next post: 10,000 Galaxies in 3D.

Why You Share is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

You stare. You get stared at. It happens countless times every day. But have you ever pondered what’s really happening here? Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, a professor at Emory University, has been giving it some thought. You can get a quick introduction above, and more extensive thinking in her new book, Staring: How We Look. Thanks Nicole for sending this along…

What Are You Staring At? is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up.  I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something.  Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery.  People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap.  Who wants flowers when you’re dead?  Nobody.  ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 20

J.D. Salinger Dies at 91 is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

The 2:30 A.M. Nobel Prize Call is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

So how did you do?

Thanks Scott for the tip on that one.

Test Your Awareness is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Tranquil spectators of your brothers’ wreck,
Unmoved by this repellent dance of death,
Who calmly seek the reason of such storms,
Let them but lash your own security;
Your tears will mingle freely with the flood.

Note: Pat Robertson’s controversial remarks contained one basic historical fact, and it was wrong. He asserted that the Haitians brought disaster upon themselves when they broke free from “Napoleon III.” Robertson got the wrong guy here. It wasn’t Napoleon Lite (1808–1873). It was Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) who coopted the French Revolution 50 years earlier and tried to impose his will on Haiti. But, whatever…

via The Sun Times

Voltaire & the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com