I have learned

So the day started with a quick reading, Book by Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at our best and worst.  He states that we don't hate violence; we fear and hate the wrong kind of violence, the violence in the wrong context. When it's the " right " type of aggression, we love it. (A few days ago, at the Oscars,  Will Smith slapped a comedian, Chris Rock, for a joke about Will's wife. So people think Will did the right thing. I guess some people thought it was the right kind of violence.) Avoiding categorical thinking. The boundaries between categories are arbitrary; if you pay lots of attention to where boundaries are, you pay less attention to complete pictures. Words: Altruism- is the behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense. Egghead- an intellectual, very studious, and academic person,(informal and slightly insulting) Primatologist - someone who studies monkeys and apes. Wreak havoc - to cause great damage Determined This b...

  Retinal implant -  Twittersphere Leaf-cutter ants - they are farmers, some ants find fresh vegetation, they chew off large pieces that they humpback to the nest. However, they don't eat these leaves. Smaller workers ants chew them into smaller pieces and use them as fertilizer to grow fungus in large underground "gardens." Using this successful farming strategy, ants build enormous nests underground. Although the colony is like a superorganism that accomplishes extraordinary feats, each ant individually behaves very simplistically. It just follows local rules. When enough ants come together, a superorganism emerges- with collective properties that are more sophisticated than its basic parts. This phenomenon, known as "emergence," is what happens when simple units interact in the right ways and something larger arises. The key is the interaction between the ants. And it goes with the brain. A neuron is simply a specialized cell, just like other cells in your bo...

  Today's learning was mostly about slavery and gardening Slavery Recap the very first president, George Washington, was one of the largest slaveholders in the nation. he had 317 slaves. G.W sold, bought, inherited, at one point even helping to manage a lottery in which slave children were "prizes." One of the highest honors a country can bestow is to commemorate an individual on its currency. All there of the largest slaveholding presidents are commemorated on the U.S. currency, despite their records of whipping, chaining, and selling slaves: George Washington(Quarter and $1 Bill), Thomas Jefferson(Nickel and $2 Bill), and Andrew Jackson( $20 Bill).  Andrew Jackson: was both a slave trader and a slaveholder was a White supremacist. He referred to Whites as "a superior race," and he described American Indians as lacking "the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits,[and] the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their cond...