Richard Dawkins on the Awe of Life & Science

in Science | January 24th, 2010

Here’s some vin­tage Richard Dawkins. Back in 1991, the Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gist pre­sent­ed a series of lec­tures for the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion. In the very first lec­ture (pre­sent­ed above), Dawkins forces his audi­ence to con­front some big ques­tions. (What’s the ori­gin of life? Where do we fall in the scheme of life on plan­et Earth? What’s our role in the larg­er uni­verse? etc.) And he reminds us that we’re extreme­ly priv­i­leged to have the brains and tools (name­ly, rea­son and sci­ence) to make sense of the awe­some won­ders that sur­round us. We’ve evolved and grown up, he says. We don’t need super­sti­tion and the super­nat­ur­al to explain it all. We just need our­selves and our faith in sci­ence and its meth­ods. It’s clas­sic Dawkins.

The 55-minute talk is now added to our YouTube favorites, and we’ve also added Dawkins’ YouTube Chan­nel to our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels.

via TED

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The Stanford Mini Med School: A Free Course Now Online

in Science, Stanford | January 20th, 2010

Image by King of Hearts, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Start­ing this past fall, Stanford’s School of Med­i­cine and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (my day job) teamed up to offer The Stan­ford Mini Med School. Fea­tur­ing more than thir­ty dis­tin­guished fac­ul­ty, sci­en­tists, and physi­cians, this year­long series of cours­es (three in total) offers stu­dents a dynam­ic intro­duc­tion to the world of human biol­o­gy, health and dis­ease, and the ground­break­ing changes tak­ing place in med­ical research and health care. 250 life­long learn­ers (like your­self) attend­ed the first course on Stan­ford’s cam­pus this fall. And you can now access it on iTunes. We’ve post­ed the first two lec­tures (in video), and eight more lec­tures will soon be com­ing online. (Update: You can now find the videos on YouTube too.) Below, I’ve added the course descrip­tion for the fall course, and you can also find it list­ed in the Biol­o­gy Sec­tion of our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. When the win­ter and spring cours­es arrive, I’ll be sure to give you a heads up.

This Fall, the Stan­ford Mini Med School will get start­ed with a jour­ney inside human biol­o­gy. We will start by famil­iar­iz­ing our­selves with the world of very small things. We will take a close look at DNA, stem cells, and microbes, and see how these and oth­er small play­ers form the build­ing blocks of the human body. This will allow us to under­stand how human organs devel­op (and can also regen­er­ate), how our ner­vous and immune sys­tems work, and how dis­eases can afflict us. From there, the course will move beyond the indi­vid­ual and take a more glob­al view of health. How do pan­demics take shape? How does the envi­ron­ment affect our col­lec­tive health? And how can we final­ly imple­ment a health­care sys­tem that makes sense for our nation? Var­i­ous experts from the Stan­ford School of Med­i­cine will address these and oth­er big pic­ture ques­tions dur­ing the first course in the Stan­ford Mini Med School.

For a descrip­tion of the cur­rent Mini Med School course (which we will even­tu­al­ly post online) please

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The Neurons That Shaped Civilization

in Science, TED Talks | January 13th, 2010

TED recent­ly took its show to India, and one of the more inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tions fea­tured neu­ro­sci­en­tist Vilaya­nur Ramachan­dran (UCSD) explain­ing how mir­ror neu­rons, a recent­ly dis­cov­ered sys­tem in the brain, “allow us to learn com­plex social behav­iors, some of which formed the foun­da­tions of human civ­i­liza­tion,” and also helped us evolve as a species. Good stuff. You can find more TED India Talks here.

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A.C. Grayling on “Teaching the Controversy”

in Philosophy, Religion, Science | January 12th, 2010

In this clip from Richard Dawkins’ YouTube Chan­nel, philoso­pher A.C. Grayling offers an argu­ment for why intel­li­gent design should’t be taught along­side evo­lu­tion in the class­room. Some will agree with his posi­tion, and some won’t. And prob­a­bly few will have no opin­ion. If you have reac­tions to Grayling’s argu­ment, please state them civil­ly and intel­li­gent­ly in the com­ments below.

via @courosa

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How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?

in Life, Science, Technology | January 11th, 2010

Every year, The Edge.org pos­es a thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tion to 150+ engag­ing thinkers, and the answers nev­er dis­ap­point. This year, they throw out the ques­tion: How is the Inter­net Chang­ing the Way You Think? In this col­lec­tion, you will find answers by George Dyson, Clay Shirky, Tim O’Reil­ly, Maris­sa May­er, Richard Dawkins and many more. Below, I’ve includ­ed an excerpt from Nas­sim Taleb (author of The Black Swan), who has a less san­guine out­look on how the inter­net is chang­ing our world. He writes:

I used to think that the prob­lem of infor­ma­tion is that it turns homo sapi­ensinto fools — we gain dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly in con­fi­dence, par­tic­u­lar­ly in domains where infor­ma­tion is wrapped in a high degree of noise (say, epi­demi­ol­o­gy, genet­ics, eco­nom­ics, etc.). So we end up think­ing that we know more than we do, which, in eco­nom­ic life, caus­es fool­ish risk tak­ing. When I start­ed trad­ing, I went on a news diet and I saw things with more clar­i­ty. I also saw how peo­ple built too many the­o­ries based on ster­ile news, the fooled by ran­dom­ness effect. But things are a lot worse. Now I think that, in addi­tion, the sup­ply and spread of infor­ma­tion turns the world into Extrem­is­tan (a world I describe as one in which ran­dom vari­ables are dom­i­nat­ed by extremes, with Black Swans play­ing a large role in them). The Inter­net, by spread­ing infor­ma­tion, caus­es an increase in inter­de­pen­dence, the exac­er­ba­tion of fads (best­sellers like Har­ry Pot­ter and runs on the banks become plan­e­tary). Such world is more “com­plex”, more moody, much less pre­dictable.

So con­sid­er the explo­sive sit­u­a­tion: more infor­ma­tion (par­tic­u­lar­ly thanks to the Inter­net) caus­es more con­fi­dence and illu­sions of knowl­edge while degrad­ing pre­dictabil­i­ty.

You can find Tale­b’s full answer here, and the entire col­lec­tion of thoughts here. If you want to tell us how the inter­net has changed the world for you, please add your thoughts to the com­ments sec­tion below.

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Modern Physics: A Free 6‑Course Introduction by Stanford’s Leonard Susskind

in Physics, Science | January 9th, 2010

For the past two years, Stan­ford has been rolling out a series of cours­es (col­lec­tive­ly called Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum) that gives you a base­line knowl­edge for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac New­ton, to Albert Einstein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, to black holes and string the­o­ry, comes out of Stanford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram. And the cours­es are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an impor­tant physi­cist who has engaged in a long run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing. The final course, Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics, has now been post­ed on YouTube. The rest of the cours­es can be accessed imme­di­ate­ly below. (The cours­es also appear in our list of Free Online Physics Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.) Six cours­es. Rough­ly 120 hours of con­tent. A com­pre­hen­sive tour of mod­ern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

  • Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics — YouTube
  • Quan­tum Mechan­ics — YouTube
  • Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty — YouTube
  • Ein­stein’s Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty — YouTube
  • Cos­mol­o­gy — YouTube
  • Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics — YouTube

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

What Made Richard Feyn­man One of the Most Admired Edu­ca­tors in the World

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

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How to Live to Be 100 and Beyond: 9 Diet & Lifestyle Tips

in Health, Life, Science | January 6th, 2010

A lit­tle pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment… Dan Buet­tner, a writer for Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, has stud­ied the world’s longest-lived peo­ples. Most of his find­ings are summed up in his book, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Liv­ing Longer From the Peo­ple Who’ve Lived the Longest. And here, in this Ted Talk, he boils things down even fur­ther, giv­ing you 9 com­mon diet and lifestyle habits found among the world’s old­est pop­u­la­tions. They’ve been use­ful­ly sum­ma­rized by Pre­sen­ta­tionZen as fol­lows:

Move Nat­u­ral­ly
(1) You don’t need a for­mal, rig­or­ous exer­cise plan. We’re talk­ing here a change in lifestyle that is fun­da­men­tal­ly active. We’re designed to move. We’ve not meant to dri­ve 100 meters in a car to pick up chips at the local store. Walk, do yard work, what­ev­er. Do exercises/activities that you enjoy.

Have Right Out­look
(2) Slow down. When you’re con­stant­ly in a hur­ry and stressed out, this has a neg­a­tive impact on your health. Lim­it­ing neg­a­tive stress is one of the health­i­est things you can do for your­self.
(3) Have a clear pur­pose. The Japan­ese call it “iki­gai” 生き甲斐 (lit: life + val­ue, be worth while). You must have a pas­sion, a call­ing, a pur­pose. There’s got to be a rea­son to get out of bed every day.

Eat Wise­ly
(4) Drink a lit­tle (wine) every­day.
(5) Eat main­ly plant-based foods. Small amounts of meat and fish are OK.
(6) Hara Hachi Bu: Eat until 80% full. Do not eat eat until you’re stuffed. (I’ve talked about this many time before in the con­text of pre­sen­ta­tion.)

Be Con­nect­ed with oth­ers
(7) Put fam­i­ly, loved ones first.
(8) Belong to a com­mu­ni­ty. Many in his study belonged to faith-based com­mu­ni­ties.
(9) Belong to the right tribe. That is, hang out with peo­ple with healthy habits, phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al ones.

Takes these tips to heart, and please share them with friends…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Hot Action: Comet Gets Eaten by the Sun

in Science | January 5th, 2010

Two days ago, NASA’s Solar and Helio­scop­ic Obser­va­to­ry (SOHO) cap­tured a comet doing its best Icarus imi­ta­tion. You can see the comet’s mis­step at the end of the clip above. You can also find still shots over at the Dai­ly Mail.

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