The Act of Killing is a movie by Werner Herzog and Errol Morris about a group of Indonesian mass murderers.
In The Act of Killing, Anwar and his friends agree to tell us the story of the killings. But their idea of being in a movie is not to provide testimony for a documentary: they want to star in the kind of films they most love from their days scalping tickets at the cinemas. We seize this opportunity to expose how a regime that was founded on crimes against humanity, yet has never been held accountable, would project itself into history.
And so we challenge Anwar and his friends to develop fiction scenes about their experience of the killings, adapted to their favorite film genres – gangster, western, musical. They write the scripts. They play themselves. And they play their victims.
While psychologists can’t know exactly what goes on inside our heads, they have, through surveys and laboratory studies, come up with a set of traits that correlate well with conspiracy belief. In 2010, Swami and a co-author summarized this research in The Psychologist, a scientific journal. They found, perhaps surprisingly, that believers are more likely to be cynical about the world in general and politics in particular. Conspiracy theories also seem to be more compelling to those with low self-worth, especially with regard to their sense of agency in the world at large. Conspiracy theories appear to be a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness.
Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories, an interesting article over at the NYT for those interested in knowing the latest research about this particular topic.
While psychologists can’t know exactly what goes on inside our heads, they have, through surveys and laboratory studies, come up with a set of traits that correlate well with conspiracy belief. In 2010, Swami and a co-author summarized this research in The Psychologist, a scientific journal. They found, perhaps surprisingly, that believers are more likely to be cynical about the world in general and politics in particular. Conspiracy theories also seem to be more compelling to those with low self-worth, especially with regard to their sense of agency in the world at large. Conspiracy theories appear to be a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness.
How to have better sex, courtesy of Alain de Botton.
How to have better sex, courtesy of Alain de Botton.
Where are our movie stars?
Hollywood has notably failed to produce a major new movie star in a generation. As Scott Mendelson pointed out in Forbes last month, only Will Smith, Denzel Washington, and Kristen Stewart appear able to “open” films, while a handful of other stars, notably Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and Mila Kunis, are able to “add value” to strong film concepts. Star power of the sort that Sandra Bullock possessed in the nineties, where her name alone was able to launch any number of subpar tentpoles, no longer exists. “That is what movie stardom is in 2013,” Mendelson writes.
And so Popstars rule the world. This article is full of excellent quotes, check it out.
Where are our movie stars?
Hollywood has notably failed to produce a major new movie star in a generation. As Scott Mendelson pointed out in Forbes last month, only Will Smith, Denzel Washington, and Kristen Stewart appear able to “open” films, while a handful of other stars, notably Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and Mila Kunis, are able to “add value” to strong film concepts. Star power of the sort that Sandra Bullock possessed in the nineties, where her name alone was able to launch any number of subpar tentpoles, no longer exists. “That is what movie stardom is in 2013,” Mendelson writes.
And so Popstars rule the world. This article is full of excellent quotes, check it out.
The Lego school
Kirk Kristiansen is the rather wealthy grandson of the founder of Lego. In the Danish town of Billund, Kristiansen has built many Lego-inspired, children-centred, like Legoland or some playground filled with rubberised toys.
But now, he is aiming for something bigger, the Lego school:
The campus will feature bicycle routes, learning labs, music studios, and playgrounds. And also, yes, lots of Legos. As the school explains of its approach to what it calls “Systematic Creativity,”
When the Lego system is used in a learning environment young people become creative, active and collaborative learners. They take ownership and are self-driven. They express their originality. They also learn from the interpreted experiences of other people as they share their ideas. They learn by reflecting on experiences and discussing how things work and they help each other to learn through the shared language of the brick.
Will Nordic countries keep revolutionising how kids should be thought, this time helped by Legos? Or will this turn out much worse than expected?
We’ll know in about 20 years, I guess. See if Warston is still going to be there.
The Lego school
www.theatlantic.com/technolog…
Kirk Kristiansen is the rather wealthy grandson of the founder of Lego. In the Danish town of Billund, Kristiansen has built many Lego-inspired, children-centred, like Legoland or some playground filled with rubberised toys.
But now, he is aiming for something bigger, the Lego school:
The campus will feature bicycle routes, learning labs, music studios, and playgrounds. And also, yes, lots of Legos. As the school explains of its approach to what it calls “Systematic Creativity,”
When the Lego system is used in a learning environment young people become creative, active and collaborative learners. They take ownership and are self-driven. They express their originality. They also learn from the interpreted experiences of other people as they share their ideas. They learn by reflecting on experiences and discussing how things work and they help each other to learn through the shared language of the brick.
Will Nordic countries keep revolutionising how kids should be thought, this time helped by Legos? Or will this turn out much worse than expected?
We’ll know in about 20 years, I guess. See if Warston is still going to be there.
Game of Thrones characters re-imagined as 1990s stereotypes.
[gallery]
Game of Thrones characters re-imagined as 1990s stereotypes.
We all know that humans are wired to listen to stories, and metaphors abound for the narrative structures that work best to engage people. When I think about compelling presentations, I think about taking an audience on a journey. A successful talk is a little miracle—people see the world differently afterward.
How to give a killer presentation by TED’s curator Chris Anderson.
We all know that humans are wired to listen to stories, and metaphors abound for the narrative structures that work best to engage people. When I think about compelling presentations, I think about taking an audience on a journey. A successful talk is a little miracle—people see the world differently afterward.
Why aren't planes faster?
Why aren’t planes taking us from Paris to New York faster? Where is the heir to the Concorde?
I initially thought that it was because money and resources were invested in enhancing airplane security but, as it turns out, we’re simply too cheap to fly faster:
The newest, most technologically advanced airliner flying today [Boeing 787] is almost 10 percent slower than its grandfather, the 707. This year Airbus is following suit with its new A350, another fuel efficient jumbo jet.
The flying public made itself clear, with its wallet: We don’t want to fly faster, we just want to fly cheaper. The airline business of today is all about efficiency, not speed. The cruise control is firmly set at Mach .85. But what about Mach 5?
Interesting article on Medium.
Why aren’t planes faster?
Why aren’t planes taking us from Paris to New York faster? Where is the heir to the Concorde?
I initially thought that it was because money and resources were invested in enhancing airplane security but, as it turns out, we’re simply too cheap to fly faster:
The newest, most technologically advanced airliner flying today [Boeing 787] is almost 10 percent slower than its grandfather, the 707. This year Airbus is following suit with its new A350, another fuel efficient jumbo jet.
The flying public made itself clear, with its wallet: We don’t want to fly faster, we just want to fly cheaper. The airline business of today is all about efficiency, not speed. The cruise control is firmly set at Mach .85. But what about Mach 5?
Interesting article on Medium.
Uncover lets you customise your Mac with a laser-cut design that replaces the Apple logo
Uncover lets you customise your Mac with a laser-cut design that replaces the Apple logo
Here’s how it works: you send them your MacBook Pro (it’s in Amsterdam, keep that in mind), they take the lid apart, laser-cut a cool design into it (you choose one from their gallery or request a custom one), then they fill that design with a half-translucent, high-strength polycarbonate plastic before putting the lid back together and sending the device back to you.
If you have time and money and you want to advertise something everywhere, check them out.
Uncover lets you customise your Mac with a laser-cut design that replaces the Apple logo
Here’s how it works: you send them your MacBook Pro (it’s in Amsterdam, keep that in mind), they take the lid apart, laser-cut a cool design into it (you choose one from their gallery or request a custom one), then they fill that design with a half-translucent, high-strength polycarbonate plastic before putting the lid back together and sending the device back to you.
If you have time and money and you want to advertise something everywhere, check them out.
Survivorship Bias
youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/2…
You Are Not So Smart is back with a new post on Survivorship Bias. If you don’t know YANSS, click and read until your curiosity is quenched.
This blog introduced me to cognitive biases and there is not a single day that passes when I do not think of all the things I learned on this website.
Simply put, survivorship bias is your tendency to focus on survivors instead of whatever you would call a non-survivor depending on the situation. Sometimes that means you tend to focus on the living instead of the dead, or on winners instead of losers, or on successes instead of failures. In Wald’s problem, the military focused on the planes that made it home and almost made a terrible decision because they ignored the ones that got shot down.
It is easy to do. After any process that leaves behind survivors, the non-survivors are often destroyed or muted or removed from your view. If failures becomes invisible, then naturally you will pay more attention to successes. Not only do you fail to recognize that what is missing might have held important information, you fail to recognize that there is missing information at all.