Wine-tasting “experts” seem to have no expertise

This blog post about wine-tasting is filled with ‘earthy’ language (in other words, obscenity and profanity) but it does suggest some interesting TOK questions.

http://io9.com/wine-tasting-is-bullshit-heres-why-496098276

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“The Nightmare of the West Memphis Three”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/04/nightmare-west-memphis-three/?pagination=false

From the New York Review of Books, a real-life situation filled with TOK issues and juicy quotations.

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The Social Creature

I think we live in a paradoxical society in which on the one hand, we have the tendency to conform to the majority, whilst on the other hand, we have progressed through the ages because of change, not conformity. I watched a video recently about a psychologist or neuroscientist of some sort doing a [...]

Interesting TedTalks: How People View The World :D

These were a couple of TedTalks I found quite interesting:

1. Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

In a world where social interactiion and extrovert qualities are valued more than introverted ones, we come to a point where we basically ignore the fact that about half the population of the world are introverts. In fact [...]

The Problem of Induction

Induction seems to be a key part of our human nature.  If we did not rely on induction it seems that there would be no constants in our life – we simply need to in order to avoid insanity.  In actual fact, we can never fully rely on induction.  While we may have lived [...]

Induction & Deduction

I was browsing youtube for videos about Inductive and Decuctive reasoning, and from the video with the clearest explanations…

Deductive Reasoning involves making a conclusion based on previously known facts.

We can see how this works in Science experiments. Our observations from the investigations that we do are our premises that back up our [...]

The Selfish Gene: Evolution Through Natural Selection

The name Richard Dawkins sounded really familiar. I confirmed much later that he was the author of one of the books that I really liked: “The Selfish Gene”. The book talks about the controversial topics of evolution, and explains why all organisms, from a simple amoeba in the water to a complex multicellular human, [...]

Steve vs Statistics – Are All Men Really Equal?

One Man or One Million? Tragedy vs Statistic?

I came across this a couple of times in several sites. It appears that Steve Job’s death has attracted huge amounts of attention, to the extent that some used his name and his importance to compare public reactions to different kinds of people. The interesting [...]

5 Famous Events That Never Happened

This piece from Daily Writing Tips makes clear the hazards of repeating ‘what everybody knows’.

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Truman Show Post 2

We probably take everything in our own reality for granted. That includes the things we see every day to the very “facts” that are given to us, through media, books etc. This is because we encounter these “facts” and we take in the same things with our senses all the time, so our body [...]

#13 ToK Class

Ji Won, Sylvia, and Joshua Tan presented.

I found the presentations quite entertaining and not at all boring, particularly Sylvia’s. This was probably because she took the time to provide examples of how her topic (denial) can be linked to the different ways of knowing. This, for me, stood out from the other presentations, [...]

#10 ToK Class

This lesson, we spent the class planning on possible topic we could present in our individual oral presentation.

It was suggested that we just look up random news articles on the internet, and then our topic will usually come to us as we read it (as a form of inspiration?).

That’s exactly what I [...]

#4 ToK Class

Yet another short, simple post.

Logic. Hmmm. Can be categorized in deductive and inductive. We spent some time discussing deductive logic and reasoning.

SO.

As Socrates puts it:

1. Virtue is good. 2. All that is good is a part of knowledge. 3. Therefore, virtue is a part of knowledge.

From earlier discussions: and [...]

#3 ToK Class

I’m gonna try and keep this as simple and straightforward as possible.

Our discussion involving Socrates (Mr. MacKnight) teaching the slave boy (Aaron) geometry ended. It then moved on to whether or not the slave boy already knew about geometry stored somewhere inside his psyche (soul/mind). The idea was that the knowledge, inside the [...]

Real-life situations

The TOK oral presentation requires that students focus on a ‘real-life situation’ that raises one or more ‘knowledge issues’ and then analyze how those questions might be considered, with explicit reference to appropriate Areas of Knowledge and  Ways of Knowing.

Here are a few ideas for ‘real-life situations’ that raise knowledge issues. Suggest additions [...]

Plagiarism? or “mixing”?

Another possible topic for an oral presentation: a teenaged author, accused of plagiarism, says she’s part of a new culture that’s all about ‘authenticity’, not ‘originality’.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/europe/12germany.html

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Stealing music

There may be an interesting oral presentation somewhere in here:

David Bowie predicted that because of internet and piracy, copyright is going to be dead in ten years. You agree? No. If copyright dies, if patents die, if the protection of intellectual property is eroded, then people will stop investing. That hurts everyone. People [...]

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