20120313

injustice, groupthink and spatial proprioception

1. Equal Justice Initiative founder, Bryan Stevenson, addresses the power of identity and injustices related to mass incarceration, in his inspiring presentation. Highlight excerpts:
We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.
. . .
[I]n another ten years the level of disenfranchisement will be as high as it has been since prior to the passage of the voting rights act. And there is this stunning silence.
. . .
When I teach my students about African American history, I tell them about slavery; I tell them about terrorism the era that began at the end of reconstruction and went on until the end of World War II. We don't really know very much about it, but for African Americans in this country that was an era defined by terror. . . . People had to worry about being lynched, they had to worry about being bombed. It was the threat of terrorism that shaped their lives. 
But, by all means, watch "We need to talk about an injustice" yourself:




2. In "The power of introverts" Susan Cain (no relation, but even if they had brushed past each other at some family reunion, Herman Cain would not recall whether he remembered her, should he try) presents the introvert/extravert spectrum, and offers some insight into the tyranny of the extravert cultural hegemony, and some things it may be overlooking or denying itself when it discounts introverts and their potential input. Ms. Cain recently researched and published Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking. Also see Jonathan Rauch's classic 2003 essay from the Atlantic, "Caring for Your Introvert."




3. Whatever you may think of the premise and its substantive points, Sir Ken Robinson's "Schools kill creativity" is hilarious:




4. Finally, in his fascinating talk, "How your brain tells you where you are," cognitive neuroscience researcher Neil Burgess presents some findings about the activiation of certain sets of spatially significant neurons: