The Psychological Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives
Open Left - Front Page — (Direct link)  Psychology professor Jonathan Haidt discusses his research into the moral and psychological foundations of liberalism and conservativism.  See and take the tests he describes at yourmorals.org. The main thing I'd ask you to take from this is that conservativism and liberalism exist at a  fundamental level of human brain function.  They are facets of ingrained human psychology and not pure constructs of thought and rationality. ...

Essentialism...
Corrente — Not a good -ism, even when it's "good for our side." Read more…

Around the Web in 80 Seconds, 1.2.09
The Latest on Air America — Israel allows some foreigners to leave Gaza , and senior Hamas member was killed and ground troops are poised to attack, yet it looks for all the world like another cease-fire may be in the works. Brandon Friedman at Vet Voice looks at the Military Times poll that determines Obama is a bad thing for 2009 and for America in general, and then he looks at Obama, and then he lays out the truth .  Want to find out if you're a liberal or a conservative at heart? Open Left's Daniel de Groot thinks you should take head shrink Jonathan Haidt's little test and find out. The Christian Science Monitor ...

TED Talks
The Monkey Cage — ... was expensive and internet connections were slow. Now, costs have come down and connections are much faster, so we should have these available to the public (and less endowed universities). How great would it be to have these talks at Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc. available to the public. Until then, we have TED talks now available via their website and podcasts. Check out this great talk by Dan Gilbert.

A Psychology of Liberals and Conservatives
The Mahablog — Psychologist Jonathan Haidt presents five moral values he claims form the basis of our political choices, whether we’re left, right or center. Haidt isolates the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most. What’s interesting to me are those values we generally share with our opponents (harm/care, and fairness/reciprocity) that we don’t take advantage of to find common cause - our differences have been discussed at length elsewhere. I think you’ll find the talk interesting and entertaining, but if your ...

Digest for December 11th through January 5th
The Republic of T. — Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for December 11th through January 5th: Torture and the Crime of Aggressive War - Analysis: Bush’s personality shapes his legacy - It’s Not Too Late: Demand Obama Investigate Bush’s War Crimes - Don’t Let Them Get Away With It - Ex-Iraq PM: Bush policies a ‘failure’ - Talking While Brown: A Look at Racism in U.S. Airports - The Problem with ...

The Panoramic Photo
The American Scene — Have you seen Microsoft’s new photography application? Here’s Farhad Manjoo: The genius of Photosynth is that it takes advantage of the psychosis of digital photography. The software collects similar pictures that, by themselves, aren’t very interesting and builds an entirely new kind of image, what you might call a social photograph. Ordinary photos show you an event as one person captured it. A synth is a scene as seen by everyone. The technology’s potential is brought home by browsing President Obama’s inauguration. Or by watching this demonstration ...

Why Bill Gates Released Swarm Of Mosquitoes On Important People (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — Kidding aside, it's a good idea for Bill to bug people about how important it is to find more effective preventions and cures for malaria. It'd be a win-win if he triggers a viable anti-malaria approach, because not only would people in equatorial nations suffer less, but we at TreeHugger would no longer have to put up with the hostile accusations of Think Tank experts who are still convinced that a DDT sprayed liberally, everywhere bugs lurk, is the way to go. Read the full story here OR Watch Gates' talk: ...

Charles J. Brown: Bailouts: A Hedge we Should be Funding
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — As the Senate debates how many stimulus angels it can fit on a pin, and corporate executives continue to get caught using bailout money to score hookers and blow give themselves perks, the New York Times shared some incredibly distressing news: Because of the economic downturn, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is running short of money, global business and health leaders said last week. Pledges to the fund from donor nations are running about $5 billion short of what is needed through 2010, Rajat Gupta, the chairman of the fund's board, said in a conference ...

TED Conference: Elizabeth Gilbert, "Eat, Pray, Love" Author, On Genius And How We Ruin It
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

Bill Gate’s Research on Education
Say Anything — Bill Gates recently gave a talk about what his foundation is up to.  Apparently he is dedicating most of his time and money towards alleviating suffering due to Malaria and improving US education.  You might have seen a news story on this talk because this is where he released a jar full of mosquitoes for some reason.   I don’t have a lot to comment about his Malaria crusade aside from the fact that it seems that the use of DDT could save millions of lives.  Too bad the enviro-nuts ...

TED Talks: Gustavo Dudamel And The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra (Sinfónica Juvenil Teresa Carreño) is the national high school age youth orchestra of El Sistema, Venezuela's groundbreaking, life-changing musical education program. Led here by Gustavo Dudamel, they play Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, 2nd movement, and Arturo Márquez' Danzón No. 2. Gustavo Dudamel, himself a product of the El Sistema, conducted the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela for several years, and recently was named the Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director. He also continues to conduct other orchestras around the world. The orchestra's namesake, Teresa Carreño, was ...

Creating Video Games for Girls.
Feministing — I am a huge fan of TED. I watch their videos every week. One of our readers sent this in and I thought it was really interesting. Brenda Laurel did years of research to design a game for young girls. She discusses that two types of people were her opposition. Male gamers and feminists. And what we have in common is we don't listen to children. Well, I know she isn't talking about me, hehe, but it is really interesting. It is from 10 years ago and things have changed in terms of video games and young girls since then, so even more interesting. How do you create video games for girls? ...

Happy Birthday, Maya
Suburban Guerrilla — Here’s some cool geek stuff for you!

Video: The Sixth Sense
Hot Air » Top Picks — Video: The Sixth Sense posted at 4:12 pm on March 11, 2009 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | Share on Facebook | printer-friendly It won’t let you see dead people, but the concept’s so ingenious that I wouldn’t rule it out for v2.0. The clip’s long — eight and a half minutes, with almost three minutes devoted to intro — but bear with it. You won’t be sorry. I can’t wait for the day when the words “Beta Male” light up across my chest every time I meet an attractive woman. Brave new world!

Unveiling The Sixth Sense
Pat Dollard | Young Americans — “Imagine ‘Minority Report’, and then some”

Eric Lewis rocking jazz
Maggie's Farm —  h/t, Marginal Rev.

A Conversation About Augmentation & Shakespear’s Shylock
The Moderate Voice —

Hacking the Wii Remote
Dean's World — How awesome. This reminds me of what had me so in love with personal computers in the first place, way back in the ’80s.

Kary Mullis On The Research-Industrial Complex
Dean's World — I was startled when I watched this, as Mullis was saying pretty much everything I’ve been saying for the last few years: He even used the phrase “Science-Industrial Complex,” virtually identical to my own coinage of “Research-Industrial Complex.” They both obviously mean the same thing. Drat, a Nobel laureate was ahead of me by years! Ah well. This speech was made in 2002, but I don’t think a thing has changed that makes any difference in what Mullis says here. And a measure of the intellectual seriousness of those ...

Industrial Farming, Foie Gras and Jews
The Latest on Air America — [image] Advertisement Blog Industrial Farming, Foie Gras and Jews By SEDER [ March 24, 2009 · 1:28pm ] This very cool Ted Talk brings it all together: Log in to Add Your Comment Commentary [0] Login Register About BRL Past Shows BRL Blog Clip Museum Guests Subscribe Facebook Audio Only MVS Showtime Countdown 0 1 2 1 3 5 Today: Break Room Live Stream Weekdays from 3-4 PM EST Sign up for alerts! Recently on the Show: See video 03.23.09 Monday's Full Show [ EMBED ] x Embed this clip: [ SHARE ] x ...

"Dirty Jobs" Mike Rowe Talks About the War on Hard Work
AMERICAN DIGEST — Daphne @ Jaded Haven urged me to spend 20 minutes with this video. I started, but after 5 minutes of his graphic description of gelding lambs with his teeth I had to click off. That was a mistake. This is 20 minutes of brilliance from a man who's been in the trenches with the people that actually make the things and do the work that makes the world revolve. If you've spent 3 minutes gobstoppered at that tool and fool Corinne Brown in the House (see below) and come to despair, this will restore you to life.

The Elitist War on Honest Work
The Anchoress — Stopped over at American Digest (which is a good thing to do each day) and watched this 20 minute video of Discovery Channel’s Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) talking about how biting a lamb’s testicles off brought enlightenment. It’s well worth watching - jogs the brain out of the stuff we “know” so well, we no longer think about them. And really, it’s good to review and reconsider everything, from time to time, don’t you find? Related: from a while back: ...

"We have declared war on work"
Maggie's Farm — Discovery's Mike Rowe on work. 20 minutes. Just wonderful. (h/t, Synthstuff):  

Excellent!
Right Wing Nation — H/T to Maggie’s Farm for this 20-minute talk by Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs and narrator of Deadliest Catch. Although he doesn’t say it, what he does say is the best argument against the “everybody needs to go to college” line I have seen.

The War on Work
Dean's World — Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy from Discovery Channel, lays it out for us. Well worth your time to watch.

Video: Theo Jansen: The art of creating creatures
Theo Spark — H/T Chad

Race and the 2008 Election, Revisited
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — In February, I had the chance to travel to Palm Springs, California to participate in the TED conference, where I gave a 9-minute presentation on race and the 2008 election. In particular, I looked at whether race had negatively impacted Barack Obama's vote in states like Arkansas and Tennessee, where he performed worse than most polls anticipated and also worse, in some cases, than John Kerry had four years earlier. My conclusion was that race probably had been a factor. In fact, it doesn't exactly take a genius to figure this out, because in about 35 of the 50 states, the exit polls explicitly asked voters whether race had ...

Keeping Plants Indoors May Improve Your Productivity (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — Brian Merchant over at Planet Green writes that keeping plants indoors not only cleans the air, but may have an added benefit: But there's more--according to GreenSpaces, these three plants will actually lead to an increase in your productivity, too: the Areca Palm, the Mother-in-Law's-Tongue, and the Money Plant. Check out this TED talk video explaining how to use the plants: More on Green Living ...

In Defense of Wonder Bread
The American Mind — Louise Fresco argues that foodstuffs like Wonder Bread (which are awesome for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) are how we’ll feed billions with fewer and fewer people. ...

The Progressive Tribe and Improving the World
Commondreams.org Views — The world is in need of some serious change. We all know this. And many people have taken the call personally and seriously. I encourage you to do the same. You can be an engine of creativity. You can be a catalyst for positive change in the world. It all starts when you see yourself as part of something bigger. And it helps to have a way to connect to the community you find yourself in. One key element of this is having a name that reflects your tribe - the particular group that you resonate deeply with. In the political world, this is the label that captures your identity. In recent decades our labels have been conflated and, in many cases, ...

A One-Woman Global Village
The Moderate Voice — This is amazing.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Big O
Suburban Guerrilla — Orgasm, that is - probably not safe for work! (h/t Natasha)

Seek happiness
Corrente — NSFW. Via, like, everywhere

Secret of Success: Delay Gratification
The American Mind — For centuries patience and rejecting instant gratification have been known as keys to success. Now, we have Joachim de Posada offering experimental proof. Such virtue would help ease a lot of our current problems. ...

The All New TED@State
techPresident — Like dogs and cats living together, my friends. Like dogs and cats living together. The State Department has announced that it will be importing a bit of West Coast thinking to Washington DC, hosting a two-hour session of TED talks right there in Foggy Bottom at 2:30pm ET today. The State Department, which has appeared eager to innovate since the start of the Obama Administration, says this afternoon's session marks the first government-sponsored TED talks in the history of the republic. Officially, today's event -- featuring the likes of Hans ...

Dictionaries
Maggie's Farm — This is long, wonderful, nerdy, and informative. h/t, Language Log:  

We Need Nukes, Poor Cities, Genetically Modified Plants, and Terra Forming and We Need Them Now: Stewart Brand proclaims 4 environmental 'heresies'
AMERICAN DIGEST — Sixteen provocative minutes with "the man who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his major new book, sure to provoke widespread debate." -- Stewart Brand proclaims 4 environmental 'heresies' | Video on TED.com Recorded June 2009.

Gordon Brown's Interconnected World
techPresident — At TED Global in Oxford last week, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a passionate (well, passionate for Gordon Brown, at least) argument in favor of the idea that social media is transforming the world. The web and digital technologies, said Brown, are creating a moment of interconnectedness unique in the world's history. Brown drew a line from Phan Thị Kim Phúc, the Vietnamese girl captured in the famous AP photograph of a South Vietnamese napalm attack, to Neda Soltan, the young Iranian woman ...

Interesting Lecture
Rook's Rant —

It's Friday
doubleplusundead — It's Friday And so I give to you another video you can't listen to in earshot of your boss. Posted by: Alice H at 11:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.

Dog Friendly Training
Balloon Juice — Via Jim Henley, who has an adorable new pup, this TED presentation with Ian Dunbar is well worth your time: Good stuff.

Walkies
Unqualified Offerings — My phone thwarted my attempts to get pictures of Zach and Kate at play yesterday, so here are three videos of training guru Ian Dunbar: at TED, somewhere else, and at a shelter-related organization. Among positive-training exponents, Dunbar stands out as the man who argued that it’s not only possible to train puppies as soon as you get them – previous doctrine held that you didn’t start dog-training before six months – but necessary . He argues in the third video that failing to train puppies is a system for manufacturing shelter dogs.  All thanks to Kerry Howley for putting me on to Dunbar, BTW.  Meanwhile, the Dunbar Family’s ...

Aquatic Apes
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — by Chris Bodenner I Heart Chaos highlights a video of TED's Elaine Morgan discussing the aquatic ape hypothesis of human evolution. Here's the gist: As compared to the great apes, their nearest living relatives, humans exhibit many significant differences in anatomy and physiology, including bipedalism,[1] almost hairless skin like some marine mammals,[2] hair growth patterns following water flow-lines,[3] increased subcutaneous fat for ...

Wires Suck: Eric Giler Demos Witricity
The Moderate Voice — Ted Talks: Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT’s breakthrough version, WiTricity [link, Wikipedia entry] — a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker. Endgadget: What started out as an MIT project two years ago has now progressed into a full-fledged company — ladies and gentlemen, meet WiTricity ...

Wireless Electricity
The American Mind — Eric Giler demonstrates wireless electricity. The technology could power cars, recharge your mobile phone, or just get rid of some of the wires around your computer. ...

Developing Convergence
Classical Values — Developing Convergence A fascinating video by Hans Rosling on development, income, and health outcomes. The software he uses in the video can be found at Gap Minder . The exact page is Gap Minder World . It is fun to play with. Possibly even educational. H/T Betruger at Talk Polywell Cross Posted at Power and Control

Fun stats for the non-statistical
Maggie's Farm — Regular readers know how much I love Stats. Peter Donnelly is wonderfully fun here: How Stats fool Juries. I don't think the lawyers understand the stats either, but you can in a few minutes. (H/t Bird Dog via the Right Wing Prof)  

Looking at stuff: How the brain finds meaning in images
Maggie's Farm — Information designer Tom Wujec on how the brain makes connections, in 6 quick minutes:  

Time-Lapse Videos Of Extreme Ice Loss Show Vivid Evidence Of Climate Change (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — Photographer James Balog unveiled some amazing time-lapse videos of extreme ice loss during the recent TED conference. The images are from the Extreme Ice Survey: "a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers receding at an alarming rate, some of the most vivid evidence yet of climate change." WATCH: (The time-lapse videos start about halfway through the lecture) Send us tips! Write us at tv@huffingtonpost.com if you see any newsworthy or notable TV moments. Read more about our media ...

Moral Adolescence and Leftism
The Ten O'Clock Scholar — This blogger reveals fascinating research on morality and ideology: With research in the field of moral psychology as a guide, we may discover that the split between the so-called “liberal” and “conservative” mindsets derives from a paradigm we already understand quite well. Haidt: Ideology and the Moral Mind The ideological key described above comes from what may seem an unlikely source: a self-described atheist and liberal academic – moral psychology researcher and U. Va. Associate Professor Jonathan Haidt. Through extensive research, Haidt and his colleagues have characterized notions of morality, and ...

Lunch Break
Ezra Klein — I'm unabashed in my enthusiasm for Imogen Heap, and her new album, "Ellipse," has done nothing to diminish my admiration. Here she plays 'Wait It Out" at the TED Global Conference in London. Give the video three minutes. It'll put you in a whole different place.

What global warming looks like
Crooked Timber — Some amazing time lapse sequences of glacier retreat and a spectacular ice-shelf collapse:

Global Warming
J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles — Via Chris Bertram: What global warming looks like — Crooked Timber: Some amazing time lapse sequences of glacier retreat and a spectacular ice-shelf collapse:

Late Night Video — What Global Warming Looks Like
Delaware Liberal — This is one of the great TED talks, this one accompanied by time lapse imagery by James Balog and the Extreme Ice Survey. This is remarkable imagery from a remarkable project. Worth all 19 minutes of this video.

"We Should Not Treat Other Nations As We Would Not Want To Be Treated Ourselves"
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — I'm still reading Karen Armstrong's new book, "The Case For God." I'm deeply impressed by its candor and sincerity and erudition so far. I'll try and write up more detailed thoughts when I've read and tried to think and pray on it some more. But for now, a reader sent me this video of Armstrong's TED lecture of last year. This blog has tried to offer a forum whereby we can have an honest, free-wheeling debate and an argument about religion today. I got a little tetchy recently, a little battered by the constant barrage of atheist argument. Forgive me. I've had a lot on my plate recently and my moods are hard for me to disguise ...

The Seven Year Itch
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — Stefan Sagmeister on the power of time off (the first half of the video is better than the second half): (Hat tip: Core77) ...

How Could A Loving God Have Done This?
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — In 2005, a few months after the South Asian tsunami, Rev. Tom Honey dealt with several of the issues the Dish has been wrestling with recently: ...

The Republican Base Operates In Another World
Delaware Liberal — James Carville’s political polling organization, Democracy Corps, released a very interesting report last week (warning: PDF). They surveyed the base of the Republican party and found that they had a different understanding of the world than the rest of the U.S. It’s a much more paranoid view. The self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of America, according to focus groups conducted by Democracy Corps. These base Republican voters dislike Barack Obama to be sure – which is not very surprising as base Democrats had few positive things to say about ...

The New World Map
PoliPundit.com —

F***ing with your Brain
PoliPundit.com — With magnets!

Happiness
PoliPundit.com — Can be found in surprising places.

Green Cars Made by Better Place
Pacific Views — Last night, NOW discussed Denmark and the culture of energy thrift that has transformed their country and economy. One way that Denmark is ahead of the curve is in acting on Shai Agassi's idea which makes electric cars a no-brainer. In this TED video Agassi explains how he expects to see the transportation economy transform in the next 10 years through his company Better Place. He predicts that eMiles (the amount of electric energy to go one mile) which currently costs 8 cents per mile will drop to 2 cents per mile by ...

Lunch break
Ezra Klein — Becky Blanton talks about the year she spent homeless:

Lunch break
Ezra Klein — We've been talking a bit about how technology does, or does not, kill romance this week, so it's interesting to watch ethnographer Stefana Broadbent present her research on the ways in which technology encourages intimacy:

The Future Of Warfare
Classical Values — The Future Of Warfare Thomas Barnett gave this talk in 2005 when Iraq was falling apart. If you listen closely he discusses the mistake President Present is about to make in Afghanistan. The video is quite funny and full of salty language. It is also about a half hour and worth every minute. The bottom line: we need a procedure for fixing failed states. So far the effort has been ad hoc. It needs to be formalized. You can get more Thomas Barnett at Thomas Barnett ...

Lunch break
Ezra Klein — The talk is called "life lessons from an ad man," and the point is that "advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself, [and ] a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider 'real' value." Interesting stuff.