Items to share: 28 April

General

• The delightful science of laughter (Mind Hacks)

• How the Author of ‘Quiet’ Delivered a Rousing Speech (NYTimes.com) The paradox of the public introvert.

• The Irrationality of Irrationality: The Paradox of Popular Psychology (Scientific American Guest Blog)  A counter-balance (or perhaps meta-narrative) to much of the recent popular psychology/economics argument.

• BPS Origins An excellent interactive timeline (from 1900) of the history of psychology--I hope it continues to grow in detail.

• The Higgs Boson Explained (PHD Comics) Excellent animation--you almost feel you understand it! (7:44)

• John Gray: The Knowns And The Unknowns Review of Jonathan Haidt on the bases of morality.

• "Rupert Murdoch--a portrait of Satan" Adam Curtis reprises an earlier feature on relations between the BBC and Murdoch; not as conspiracy-focused as usual, but compelling nonetheless.

• Harvard sociobiologist E.O. Wilson on the origins of the arts (Harvard Magazine May-Jun 2012) Excellent long piece.

• It’s Mark Twain’s birthday — go the whole hog The timing is wrong, but who cares? This goes beyond mere clever aphorisms.

• A Point of View: In defence of obscure words Will Self--inimitable (fortunately)--but I have to agree with him this time. A few months ago I was instructed to remove all Latin phrases from a course handbook (syllabus), particularly the notoriously difficult "et al." in case the students didn't understand them. I had naively thought we were in the business of expanding their understanding, not restricting ours... I somehow never got round to complying, and as expected no-one ever checked, and the person making the demands has quietly left the university.

• The Freud Files: How Freud Architected His Own Myth (Brain Pickings) Fascinating book review, but also the first time I've seen "architect" used as a verb! Yuck!

• Shift Happens (The Chronicle of Higher Education) Good evaluation of Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", 50 years on. And here is Michael Ruse's 50th anniversary review.

• Absurd "academic publishing racket" is past its sell-by date (Boing Boing) An update--I touched on this a few months ago here.

Education focus 

• BBC iPlayer - Adventures in Poetry: Series 12: Dear Mr Lee How could I have missed this up to now? Wonderful! U A Fanthorpe imagines a pupil writing to Laurie (Cider with Rosie) Lee, and incidentally eviscerates the current teaching of literature. (In case the iPlayer recording has gone down, the text is here.)

• Let a hundred flowers bloom. (Jonathan Rees at More or Less Bunk) [A follow-up to a previous post on the uselessness of Virtual Learning Environments]

• Learn Anything Faster with the Feynman Technique (Farnam Street) A simple four-step self-help programme endorsed by Richard Feynman (he's not the guy in the video--Feynman was a charismatic and Nobel-winning physicist and a gifted teacher--there are other "related videos" actually by him on the YouTube page).

• TED-Ed Website Tour (YouTube) Introducing new education resources from TED; and  New TED-Ed Site Turns YouTube Videos Into 'Flipped' Lessons (Chronicle of Higher Education)

• Jonathan Rees on the Virtual Learning Environment as a dead-end

• Great Lives: George Lyward (BBC Radio 4) I only met GL twice, shortly before he died and some maintain he was then "past it", but even so he was simply one of the most extraordinary people I have ever encountered. This is a great attempt at a tribute by Tom Robinson, but sadly it was bound to fall short...