The study of the origins of altruism is quite fascinating. There is increasing evidence that our cooperative, helpful, and altruistic behaviors have an innate component that we add to by acculturation. Felix Warneken has done some experiments on the origins of altruism and helpfulness and the results are quite remarkable.
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Those who advocate shredding people’s constitutional protections and using barbaric methods like torture in order to ‘protect us’ and ‘keep us safe’ have the easy side of the argument because they are appealing to emotions like fear. Those of us who argue that living with some risk is the necessary consequence of living in a free society are appealing to the rational part of the brain and that is a harder sell.
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Playing a character in a scripted play or film or TV show is what actors routinely do. So when Stephen Colbert dons his TV character for his show, he is just acting. But the really tricky part is being in character while doing interviews because then much of it cannot be scripted in advance and you have to genuinely inhabit that character so that the exchanges seem genuine.
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I am in the market for some patio furniture and looked up what was available online. Of course, in the days following that I saw ads for patio furniture popping up all over the place. This tracking of one’s online browsing and using that data to target marketing at you started out being something to be amazed by, then it turned to seeming creepy, and now it seems so routine that we scarcely even give it a thought.
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My university sends out security bulletins alerting the campus whenever anything occurs that might pose a danger to people or property. Since we are in a city, they also report on things that happen off campus but in its vicinity. Most of the time this involves petty crimes. But yesterday came a more serious series of bulletins in the middle of the night, first calling for a lockdown of the campus because of reports of a shot being fired and then soon after giving an all clear.
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While I think that Stephen Colbert will likely dramatically change the tired format of late night TV talk shows and bring a new energy to it, I will miss his skewering of people like Bill O’Reilly, like the one below he did a few weeks ago.
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Whenever I write about Buddhism in Sri Lanka and how militant Buddhists, including monks, have been leading the charge against minorities and even resorting to violence against them, western readers are often surprised. The image they have of Buddhism is that of a peaceful and contemplative religion. And they are right when it comes to the underlying philosophy of the religion.
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Yesterday there was a debate in Toronto on the proposition “Be it resolved state surveillance is a legitimate defence of our freedoms”. It was live streamed last night and I apologize for not giving advance notice. For some reason I did not know earlier but heard about it only on my way home and managed to catch only the second half of it live.
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The two authors of the study that looked at a large amount of data that enabled them to test various hypotheses about who runs America and came to the conclusion that the middle class and lower have no influence on policy had an extended interviewed on The Daily Show two days ago. They are careful to say that they themselves did not use the word oligarchy, which to them implies control by a very tiny group, say they top 0.1%. They think control here is by about the top 10%.
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The US Department of Education has released a list of 55 universities that they are investigating to see if they are responding properly to reports of sexual violence and harassment complaints, as required under legislation known as Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
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