“For those (cities) which were great once are small today; and those that used to be small are great in my own time. Knowing, therefore, that human prosperity never abides long in the same place, I shall pay attention to both alike.” - Herodotus Read more »
In A History of the World in 100 Objects, Neil McGregor offers a fascinating and inspiring sense of the progress of man and the sweep of history told through the individual stories of 100 objects from the British Museum (I saw many of the individual exhibits myself in two visits to the UK last year). Although the scope of the series was vast, starting with a stone chopping tool from the Rift Valley in Tanzania, dated at around 2 million years old and finishing with a credit card and solar powered lamp and charger from today, it’s power lies in the unfolding of the individual stories of each object, placing them in their appropriate context and vividly capturing a moment in time. I would strongly recommend anyone to listen to the podcasts which are still available at the BBC website (link in the first line) or to read the book. Read more »
“All action is of the mind and the mirror of the mind is the face, its index the eyes.” – Cicero
“The knowledge of good and evil is nothing else by the emotions of pleasure or pain, in so far as we are conscious thereof.” – Baruch Spinoza
The importance of face
In Lie to Me, the central protagonist Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) uses facial expressions and body language to uncover the truth behind what other people are saying. The character is informed by the psychologist Paul Ekman, who has spent decades researching the universality of human emotions and developed the Facial Action Coding System which is the basis of Lightman’s investigations using facial ‘microexpressions’ (as well as body language and voice) to unmask the reality behind each situation. Read more »
“The easiest thing of all is to deceive one’s self, for what a man wishes he generally believes to be true.” – Demosthenes
“Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.” – Jean Jacques Rousseau
‘I would never have missed something like that!’
How many times have we all missed something important (hopefully with no serious consequences)? Too often I hear, ‘Did you see what just happened?’ when I am unaware that anything interesting happened at all! The Invisible Gorilla explains my inattentional blindness as we have written about before, and also explains five other ways in which we all deceive ourselves, with illusions of attention, memory, knowledge, cause and potential. Read more »
