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Anthropocene
Digitally Addictive Storytelling
I ran across this video on Saturday morning and it occurred to me that in some ways it pulls together a bunch of what we have covered this year. It deals with journalistic thinking, it talks about the cognitive biases and psychology of the human brain, it talks about our desire for narrative. It attempts to give some answers but also raises as many questions as answers. It is a long video and will require you to give it attention even though it is also about digital distractions.
Medical Careers
If you are interested in a medical career, Cox Health has a program called Medical Explorers that is aimed at HS students. It looks pretty interesting.
http://www.coxhealth.com/body.cfm?id=902
or their Facebook page
5 Minute Dream Vacation
Congratulations you are the winner of a $10,000 vacation package. To collect your prize you need to plan out your vacation. But plan carefully because you can’t go over $10,000. Find your plane (or train or automobile or donkey) fare, your hotels (or hostels or tents), what things you are going to do, who you are bringing with you, how long you will be gone.
A/B Testing
You might want to get used to data driven decision making.
5 Minute Write, sort of
‘Sort of’ is such a harmless thing to say… sort of. It’s just a filler. Sort of… it doesn’t really mean anything. But after certain things, sort of means everything. Like… after “I love you”… or “You’re going to live”… or “It’s a boy!”
-Demetri Martin
Come up with 5 more sentences where adding a disclaimer like, ‘sort of’ really changes everything.
Future Me
Can you identify the cognitive bias that inspired this comic?
De-Stress reading assignment
Read this article from Harvard called 10 Simple Steps to Help De-stress in preparation for today’s guest speaker.
How to be Happy
In a study appropriately titled ‘Very Happy People,’ researchers sought out the characteristics of the happiest 10 percent among us. Do they all live in warm climates? Are they all wealthy? Are they all physically fit? Turns out, there was one—and only one—characteristic that distinguished the happiest 10 percent from everybody else: the strength of their social relationships.