About the universe and other things

My favourite comic book, aka PHD COMICS (go figure ;P) released a film about, well, the expanse of our knowledge about the universe, which if presented in the form of a pie chart looks roughly like that: there's this 5% that we know, 20% which is the dark matter (that we don't know much about anyway), and then there's this 75% that we have no clue about...And they went from there.

I hope you'll enjoy it :)

Dark Matters from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

Are we in danger?

There's a lot of interest recently in the potential dangers of social media. With the growing popularity of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg and other, the question that the world specialists in social studies, neuroscience and psychology has been asking themselves is: are we in a danger of loosing our connection to the "real world" and immerse entirely in the virtual reality, where everyone seems more attractive, more interesting, more social.

In his article for the Business Week, Vivek Wadhma, compares this flood of new technology with the popularisation of books at the turn of 18th century. Irrelevant? Or is it perhaps that every change in the society, in the way we live and interact with the outside world automatically makes us suspicious and distrustful? True, with the advent of social networking we spend considerably more time e-mailing, twitting, texting, fb-ing rather than talking to each other face-to-face. But isn't it like that with every new toy that after a period of initial excitement our interest declines rather rapidly? How many of you after trying 30 new applications on Facebook retreated in the end to using only a few really basic tools like Wall and Events section? And isn't it also true that the more we scrutinize and demonize the more interest it creates, hence that period of fascination and the number of people trying the "forbidden fruit" grows exponentially?

I'll leave it at that.

I hope you are enjoying the sun and don't forget - there's a whole wide world out there...

Miss B.

Why More is Less?

A question which might baffle some of you: why if we have more we have less in the same time? Doesn't it defy the logic of things? And more and less of what exactly?

Above question is a rising issue in the field of social and behavioural studies, looking at the psychology of a current society and how does it respond to the changes and opportunities it is given. I believe that it is especially interesting to observe such a phenomenon in the countries which experienced a drastic socio-political change, where the dawn of capitalism has been observed and celebrated not so far ago.

Below animation gives an interesting insight into the mechanics of changes that capitalism brought to these societies and what its driving force is. The latter being applicable to most if not all of the. so called, "modern" countries.

I hope you'll enjoy it.

A.

PS. Thank you Sole :)