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Ricky Gervais teaches Hollywood what speaking truth to power really means
If you had “host Ricky Gervais becomes a conservative darling” in your office Golden Globes pool, congratulations, because you must have won a bundle. The rest of us will continue our slow, astonished blink as we contemplate the fact that this year’s most talked-about speech slammed not oil companies or gender inequality, but Hollywood hypocrisy: “You say you’re woke,” said Gervais, “but the companies you work for — I mean, unbelievable: Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service, you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you? ... There are certainly famous people who have taken genuinely brave stands for social justice...
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The Montessori Schools Embracing Kid-Tracking Devices
Schools spend billions of dollars on technology with promises of personalized learning and building 21st-century skills. Wildflower Schools, a network of small, teacher-led Montessori schools founded in 2014, has a more radical idea: use sensors to track kids’ every movement—where they go, what they work with, who they interact with, and how long they engage with materials in the classroom. It may sound creepy, and perhaps something that might make Maria Montessori roll over in her grave. But its backers say it’s an effort to make Montessori, an educational philosophy with passionate global backing, even more Montessori. ...
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How to avoid the traps that produce loneliness and isolation
“Hell is other people,” wrote the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1944 play “No Exit.” Sartre was wrong. Hell is the lack of other people, and according to the health-insurance company Cigna, loneliness and social isolation are rampant in the United States today. About half of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone, Cigna found in a 2018 study of more than 20,000 U.S. adults. Barely more than half say they have meaningful daily in-person social interactions. … You might ask why there is a sudden research interest in this topic. The answer: Researchers are discovering that loneliness harms both mental and physical health.
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Consortium of European Research on Emotion
The Consortium of European Research on Emotion (CERE) 2020 Conference in Granada, Spain, will run June 5-6. The deadline for abstract submission has been extended from January 15th to January 31th (23:59 CET). Abstracts can be submitted on the CERE 2020 submissions page.
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Happy People Don’t Ignore The World’s Problems, They Act To Solve Them
A team of psychologists led by Kostadin Kushlev of Georgetown University examined the idea that individual happiness may act as an impediment to solving the world’s problems. “As nations across the globe become more interested in human happiness, some have expressed concerns about the downsides of being happier,” state Kushlev and his team of collaborators. “What if in our rush to make everyone happy, people became complacent about the plight of their local communities, society, and the world?” The data, however, do not support this line of reasoning.
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The Visual Language of Comic Books Can Improve Brain Function
Here’s a tradition that has persisted for generations: Kids huddle outside the doors of their local comic book shops—clutching their weekly allowance, babysitting money, loose change scavenged from between sofa cushions—just itching to get their hands on the latest issue of Superman, The Amazing Spiderman, or Teen Titans. And accompanying this tradition are the unenlightened parents who roll their eyes at the stacks of glossy paperbacks avalanching to the floor, sighing “Well, at least they’re reading something.” ... Traditional text is limited to presenting the same information sequentially.
