Gaza and the language of modern war The propaganda battle in a modern war begins with its name. Israel's attack on Gaza this summer was given an official Hebrew name meaning "resolute cliff", so as to assure its victims of the futility of resistance. Only a fool would try to fight a cliff, even an irresolute one. The people fighting on either side of this "clash" or "conflict" (but rarely "war") were named in ways carefully emphasising a gulf in respectability: Israeli "soldiers" but Hamas "militants". That consequence was said rather to be the fault of Hamas, for using the people of Gaza as "human shields". Hamas told its supporters, when referring to those killed by Israeli actions, always to use the phrase "an innocent citizen", though some of those killed had actually been fighting or launching rockets at Israeli towns. The Gazan war has also expanded our taxonomy of ceasefires. All this slaughter was routinely called a "tragedy".
Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu: A mouse. A laser beam. A manipulated memory. Close Help with subtitles Desktop / laptop users: please make sure you have the most updated versions of your browser and Flash player, and that Flash is enabled when you visit TED.com. iOS users: to access subtitles, start playing the video, then tap the speech bubble icon that appears in the bottom row of video controls. Android users: although Android devices do not support subtitles, you can download the TED app from the Google Play store.
Proof that you should never believe your own eyes Your peripheral vision makes up part of your overall field of vision, which is around 190 degrees. However, it’s far from perfect, and sometimes it causes us to see things which don’t really exist. We’ve found a cool way to prove this to you. All you need to do is focus on the cross at the centre of the picture below, without glancing away. You’ll notice how your peripheral vision turns people’s ordinary faces into those of ’monsters.’ The faces begin to become distorted, right? There’s an area of our retina which is called the yellow spot. In this case, our main field of vision is empty; there’s just a dark area with a white cross. We’d love to hear your views on this…
Future - ‘I see colours you cannot perceive or imagine’ A few years ago, the artist Concetta Antico discovered that she was carrying a genetic mutation that gave her astonishingly sensitive perception of colour – seeing a spectrum of distinct shades where we only see one. As she told BBC Future in 2014, even the dullest pebble on the road shimmered like a kaleidoscope. “The little stones jump out at me with oranges, yellows, greens, blues and pinks,” she says. “I’m kind of shocked when I realise what other people aren’t seeing.” Most of us cannot attempt to contemplate the rainbow she is describing A seemingly plain green leaf may burst with vivid red shades, while a punnet of tomatoes is a multi-coloured palette of tones – Antico claims she can pick out the ripest fruit at a glance, thanks to subtle differences in its shade that would be invisible to most of us. In the same way that a colour blind person cannot imagine the variety of reds and greens that most people can see, most of us may not be able to picture the rainbow she is describing.
Want to 'train your brain'? Forget apps, learn a musical instrument | Education The multimillion dollar brain training industry is under attack. In October 2014, a group of over 100 eminent neuroscientists and psychologists wrote an open letter warning that “claims promoting brain games are frequently exaggerated and at times misleading”. Earlier this year, industry giant Lumosity was fined $2m, and ordered to refund thousands of customers who were duped by false claims that the company’s products improve general mental abilities and slow the progression of age-related decline in mental abilities. And a recent review examining studies purporting to show the benefits of such products found “little evidence ... that training improves improves everyday cognitive performance”. While brain training games and apps may not live up to their hype, it is well established that certain other activities and lifestyle choices can have neurological benefits that promote overall brain health and may help to keep the mind sharp as we get older. Changes in brain structure
Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena Project LITE - Home Page Ynetnews Opinion - No ‘Azaria effect’ in East Talpiot attack It was clear that someone would rush to link Elor Azaria’s verdict to the cadets’ response to the vehicular attack that took place in Jerusalem on Sunday. This is an artificial attempt to provoke the army from the wrong angle. Sunday’s incident exposed a professional failure that has nothing to do with Azaria’s faulty conduct. What was exposed on Sunday was a chronic disease that every chief of staff passes on to his successor: The military training given to soldiers serving in the home front as part of a basic officers course meant for soldiers in vocational positions in the army. Being a combat soldier requires long, specialized training. Documentation of Sunday's attack. The natural, human instinct when a truck drives towards you at full speed is to escape. The combat soldier’s training is aimed at creating an automatic response to threats. Moreover, it was a group of soldiers in a situation that entailed no alertness, just a field trip.
Logical Fallacies Introduction to Argument Structure of a Logical Argument Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, our arguments all follow a certain basic structure. They begin with one or more premises, which are facts that the argument takes for granted as the starting point. Then a principle of logic is applied in order to come to a conclusion. This structure is often illustrated symbolically with the following example: Premise1: If A = B, Premise2: and B = C Logical connection: Then (apply principle of equivalence) Conclusion: A = C In order for an argument to be considered valid the logical form of the argument must work – must be valid. Also it is important to note that an argument may use wrong information, or faulty logic to reach a conclusion that happens to be true. Breaking down an argument into its components is a very useful exercise, for it enables us to examine both our own arguments and those of others and critically analyze them for validity. Examine your Premises Ad hominem Straw Man
Logical Fallacies: The Fallacy Files The Dangerous World of Logical Fallacies | The Huffington Post Thinkers in disciplines ranging from mathematics to economics, and from science to philosophy, attempt to construct theorems, theories, or scenarios, that have at least a fighting chance of being correct. Since in many cases one of the chief guides is logical reasoning, the ability to spot fallacies is an essential skill. In this piece I will briefly discuss a few such potential traps, and I hope to describe a few more in a future blog entry. One fairly common fallacy is known as the “post-hoc” (Latin for “after this”) fallacy. This is the notion that because one event happened to follow another, cause and effect are implied. This type of faulty reasoning has helped to make many “healers” and “psychics” very rich. Figure 1. Another known fallacy is that of the “false dilemma.” Studies show that one of the most frequently occurring fallacies involves logic flowing in the wrong direction. Figure 2. This Blogger’s Books and Other Items from...
On shared false memories: what lies behind the Mandela effect | Aeon Ideas Would you trust a memory that felt as real as all your other memories, and if other people confirmed that they remembered it too? What if the memory turned out to be false? This scenario was named the ‘Mandela effect’ by the self-described ‘paranormal consultant’ Fiona Broome after she discovered that other people shared her (false) memory of the South African civil rights leader Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s. Is a shared false memory really due to a so-called ‘glitch in the matrix’, or is there some other explanation for what’s happening? Broome attributes the disparity to the many-worlds or ‘multiverse’ interpretation of quantum mechanics. It’s important to keep in mind that the many-worlds interpretation was developed to explain the results of physics experiments and not the Mandela effect. Get Aeon straight to your inbox Regardless of what really happened, there’s no denying that shared false memories exist. There are several reasons for this.