Monday, March 31, 2014

MR.C.'s TOK Blog- BD Somani International School -Mumbai -Theory of Knowledge: TOK GRADE X1 EXHIBTION WED APRIL 16TH

Sunday, March 30, 2014

PARTICLE FEVER FILM - THE BIG BANG - HIGGS BOSON - AOK PHYSICS

As they seek to unravel the mysteries of the universe, 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries joined forces in pursuit of a single goal: to recreate conditions that existed just moments after the Big Bang and find the Higgs boson, potentially explaining the origin of all matter. But our heroes confront an even bigger challenge: have we reached our limit in understanding why we exist?

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Respect the families, respect your own critical thinking, avoid conspiracy theories on the net - look for evidence

Some of the knowledge issues which explain the difficulty of finding the plane. This is a personal tragedy for hundreds and families and friends who may wait years for closure. Please adhere to your TOK training by looking for evidence to support knowledge claims and counter claims. Look for the authority of sources, who are they, what are their qualifications? Not everyone with a keyboard and an internet device is qualified to offer a theory, you should look at news sources and university sources which have a reputation for accuracy and integrity. Avoid 'conspiracy theories', UFO theories and some offensive nonsense that is already catching many views on youtube.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Introduction to Existentialism

EXISTENTIALISM
It is difficult to pigeonhole existentialism as a singular thought because there are a variety of approaches to the issues relating to self-purpose. The Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy, Robert C. Solomon, suggests that existentialism is an attitude that perceives the existentialist individual as contemplating the "philosophical realization of self-consciousness."⁽¹⁾ In an explicit portrait of the human predicament,

Solomon remarks

that existentialism's attitude recognizes the unresolvable confusion of the human world, yet resists the all-too-human temptation to resolve the confusion by grasping toward whatever appears or can be made to appear firm or familiar - reason, God, nation, authority, history, work, tradition, or the "other- worldly," whether of Plato, Christianity, or utopian fantasy .⁽²⁾
The human predicament evinced by existentialism is the "unresolvable confusion" bathed in a cornucopia of ideas and attempted resolutions. John Dewey would later address this pursuit as the quest for certainty.⁽³⁾ Although existentialism recognizes the futility of solving the question of life's meaning, its endeavor is surely to engross oneself in the search.
There is a second element in the existential pursuit. This element is freedom. Existentialists, especially the notable Jean-Paul Sartre, have enunciated freedom as paramount for decisions of personal decision-making. Concerning the importance of freedom, Robert Solomon writes:

According to many existentialists, every act and every attitude must
be considered a choice. Yet the existential attitude itself is apparently
not chosen. One finds oneself in it.⁽⁴⁾

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Reagan Assassination Attempt

Obama after gun-control amendments failed in S...

Il Postino - The Postman Trailer - Original

FILM; A Postman, a Poet, an Actor's Farewell

By MARIA LAURINO
Published: June 11, 1995

IN "IL POSTINO" ("THE POST-man"), Massimo Troisi, one of Italy's most beloved comic actors, plays a simple postman who steers his bicycle along the sandy terrain of the Italian Mediterranean coast to deliver mail to his sole client, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda.

The film, directed by Michael Radford, is the first work of Troisi's to be distributed in America. And this bittersweet fictional tale has a real-life tragic ending: Troisi, 41, born with congenital heart problems, fell gravely ill during the filming of the movie, enabling him to work for only an hour a day. He died of a heart attack last June, the day after "Il Postino" was finished shooting.

The film, which opens on Friday, was a project so dear to Troisi that he risked his life to make it. Several years ago, after reading the Chilean novel "Burning Patience," the story of a postman's gradual awakening to the poetry of Neruda, the actor approached his English friend Michael Radford about turning the book into a movie.

CLICK FOR FULL NYT ARTICLE

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/11/arts/film-a-postman-a-poet-an-actor-s-farewell.html

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - "Beyond Vietnam" (Excerpt)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Spiritual Death (by Baratunde)

Gladiator Proximo's Quote

Mad World - Gary Jules - 2001 - (Donnie Darko)

Irish University Student Jack Gleeson aka King Joffrey from Game of Thrones

Monday, March 24, 2014

TOK GRADE X1 EXHIBTION WED APRIL 16TH

THERE ARE 5 GRADE X1 TOK CLASSES .

EACH CLASS WILL WORK IN TEAMS ON SEPARATE TOPICS

1. Ms Meenakshy’s Class - HISTORY AS AOK AND LANGUAGE/EMOTION AS WOK – MR GARDNER AS MENTOR

2. MR DECLAN’S CLASS – HUMAN SCIENCES – GEOGRAPHY/SUSTAINABILITY and Ethics

3. Aneesh – Team A Human Sciences –Economics/ TEAM B CAS and TOK stand with Ms Anjana

4. Mr Navroz TEAM A Maths and Reason TEAM B Mr Team B – Natural Sciences – Mentor – MS MOU

5. Mr Andrew C - The Arts and Sense Perception

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Optimistic book about the future of society - Abundance - read more here

Schumpeter -Now for some good news -Two books argue that the future is brighter than we think

http://www.economist.com/node/21548937

Friday, March 21, 2014

Phil Hansen: The art of the imperfect

Another video recommended by Adiva Shah - watch, enjoy and reflect!

TEDxSanDiego 2011 - Kurt Gray - Mind Perception

My thanks to Adiva Shah who sent me this to share with everyone :)

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Child Asks Obama:"Why Do People Hate You?"

In the early years of news on American television, 1950s and 1960s, legendary journalists Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite reported the news with dignity and accuracy. There was some interpretation (Murrow's opposition to McCarthy's withchunt) but generally it was left to the viewer to make up their minds about the issues of the day. Since the advent of "TALK RADIO" and Fox News, the political discourse in the United States has become more polarised and even toxic.

Why is it not possible to disagree with someone's views but not demonise the individual and their character? From his first days President Obama was a transformational figure but he was walled in by the hatred of extreme rightwing commentators on Fox News, the far-right gun lobby, the NRA and plain old fashioned bigots and racists.

This media of hate spread rumors that he was not born in the USA, that he was a sleeper agent for enemies of America, that he could not be trusted to defend the USA. When the Navy Seals located and killed Osama Bin Laden, Fox News and other right wing commentators praised the Navy Seals while ignoring the fact that it was President Obama who gave the order and deserved some of the credit for the successful military operation (though I personally wish they had arrested the terrorist and put him on trial for his crimes).

I watch some programmes on CNN, never Fox News and I love the BBC's "HardTalk" and "Talking Books".

Mumbai born Fareed Zakaria Commencement Speech Harvard University

Stanford Professor Andrei Linde celebrates physics breakthrough 'BIG BANG'

Official Coca-Cola "Big Game" Commercial 2014 - America Is Beautiful

Do you agree this is a good advert for people accepting everyone from different cultures and religions?

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Art, China and Censorship According to Ai Weiwei

Maths as an Area of Knowledge - Can you find one of the ‘lost’ primes?

A challenge to find the lost primes

http://www.primechallenge.org/

Can you find one of the ‘lost’ primes?

The biggest prime number ever discovered is 17 million decimal digits long. Its predecessor, discovered in 2008 was 12 million digits long. Those are huge numbers, but there is also a huge gap between them.

In order to be efficient, the algorithms that have been developed to discover large primes will often leave large areas of unexplored territory in the number-space behind them: the “lost primes”.

We’re challenging you to use cloud computing to find one of those lost primes, and help to increase mathematical knowledge

STEVEN PINKER LANGUAGE AS A WAY OF KNOWING - NEGOTIATING REQUESTS AND RELATIONSHIPS

http://stevenpinker.com/biocv

Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. Currently Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Pinker has also taught at Stanford and MIT. His research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the American Psychological Association. He has also received seven honorary doctorates, several teaching awards at MIT and Harvard, and numerous prizes for his books The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Blank Slate. He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and often writes for The New York Times, Time, and The New Republic. He has been named Humanist of the Year, Prospect magazine’s “The World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals,”Foreign Policy’s “100 Global Thinkers,” and Time magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today.”