Showing posts with label Anthropology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anthropology. Show all posts

Thursday, July 11, 2019

8 Days: To the Moon and Back



BBC

"Eight days, three hours, 18 minutes, 35 seconds. That is the total duration of the most important and celebrated space mission ever flown - Apollo 11 - when humans first set foot on the moon. It was a journey that changed the way we think about our place in the universe. But we only saw a fraction of what happened - a handful of iconic stills and a few precious hours of movie footage. Now it is time to discover the full story."


Back to the Moon


PBS, July 10, 2019

Back to the Moon

"On the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing, NOVA looks ahead to the hoped-for dawn of a new age in lunar exploration. This time, governments and private industry are working together to reach our nearest celestial neighbor. But why go back? The Moon can serve as a platform for basic astronomical research; as an abundant source of rare metals and hydrogen fuel; and ultimately as a stepping stone for human missions to Mars and beyond. Join the next generation of engineers that aim to take us to the Moon, and discover how our legacy of lunar exploration won't be confined to the history books for long."

Chasing the Moon



Chasing the Moon

PBS July 8-10, 6 hours

IT TOOK MILLIONS OF STEPS TO MAKE ONE GIANT LEAP.

Film Description

“Chasing the Moon,” a film by Robert Stone, reimagines the race to the moon for a new generation, upending much of the conventional mythology surrounding the effort. The series recasts the Space Age as a fascinating stew of scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama..."

Friday, February 01, 2019

Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds (2012)


Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds is a documentary film created by Canadian film maker and meditation teacher Daniel Schmidt. The film was released in 2012.

"The true crisis in our world is not social, political, or economic, our crisis is the crisis of consciousness: an inability to directly experience our true nature, an inability to recognize this nature in everyone and in all things."

Mandelbrot Equation (a.k.a. The Thumbprint of God)






Sunday, November 11, 2018

Quark Science


I found this documentary series quite fascinating and totally trans formative views of our world through the eyes of science.  I like how they include the mathematical equations that lead to the conclusions the the theories are based on and ultimately proven. Then leading to the next. Now one of my favorite science documentary series next to Cosmos and NOVA's 'Great Math Mystery', 'Life's Rocky Start'. All totally interrelate. 

Amazon Prime:

'Quark Science is a collection of episodes that answer some of humankind's most complicated questions: Where did we come from? What is the smallest particle? What actually drives the universe? Team up with the world's leading scientists to uncover the answers to these complex yet fascinating questions.'

Episode 1: The Amazing World of Gravity
Episode 2: Everything and Nothing
Episode 3: Order and Disorder
Episode 4: The Secret Life of Chaos (my favorite)

Friday, October 12, 2018

Do You Trust This Computer?


IMDB: 

"Science fiction has long anticipated the rise of machine intelligence. Today, a new generation of self-learning computers is reshaping every aspect of our lives. Incomprehensible amounts of data are being collected, interpreted, and fed back to us in a tsunami of apps, smart devices, and targeted advertisements. Virtually every industry on earth is feeling this transformation, from job automation to medical diagnostics, from elections to battlefield weapons. Do You Trust This Computer? explores the promises and perils of this developing era. Will A.I. usher in an age of unprecedented potential, or prove to be our final invention?"


Wednesday, September 05, 2018

Mankind - The Story of All of Us


Mankind: The Story of All of Us tells how humans have evolved and survived over thousands of years. While climate has played a role in determining where people set up civilisations, people have developed tools and technology to overcome the obstacles that nature has presented. The story of human existence is complex, but it turns out all humans have a connection based on shared ancestry and the inner will to continue surviving.

Forces of nature have shaped the foods people eat. Physical forces have presented limitations to the movement of humans, but the shared desire of all humans to grow and expand has led to populations sprouting all over the globe. Civilisations have risen from the collective efforts of every living being that has ever existed. People that are born now are forever linked to those who came before them and those who have yet to be born.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

NOVA: Eclipse Over America


Program Description: (pbs.org)

On August 21, 2017, millions of Americans witnessed the first total solar eclipse to cross the continental United States in 99 years. As in all total solar eclipses, the moon blocked the sun and revealed its ethereal outer atmosphere – its corona – in a wondrous celestial spectacle. While hordes of citizens flocked to the eclipse’s path of totality, scientists, too, staked out spots for a very different reason: to investigate the secrets of the sun’s elusive atmosphere. During the eclipse’s precious seconds of darkness, they gathered new clues on how our sun works,

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Race and Racism in the Age of Trump


The 2017 Hutchins Forum will be live from Martha's Vineyard at 5pm ET on August 17. The forum is hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and moderated by Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Panelists include Charles Blow, Alan Dershowitz, Asma Khalid, Leah Wright Rigueur, April Ryan and Armstrong Williams.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

The Blockchain and Cryptocurrency


A blockchain is a distributed database that is used to maintain a continuously growing list of records, called blocks. Each block contains a timestamp and a link to a previous block. A blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and a collusion of the network majority. Functionally, a blockchain can serve as "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically.



Thursday, July 13, 2017

History.com: America's War On Drugs


America’s War on Drugs
http://www.history.com/shows/americas-war-on-drugs/about:

“America’s War on Drugs” is an immersive trip through the last five decades, uncovering how the CIA, obsessed with keeping America safe in the fight against communism, allied itself with the mafia and foreign drug traffickers. In exchange for support against foreign enemies, the groups were allowed to grow their drug trade in the United States. The series explores the unintended consequences of when gangsters, war lords, spies, outlaw entrepreneurs, street gangs and politicians vie for power and control of the global black market for narcotics – all told through the firsthand accounts of former CIA and DEA officers, major drug traffickers, gang members, noted experts and insiders.

Episode 1: Acid, Spies & Secret Experiments
Episode 2: Cocaine, Cartels, & Crack Downs
Episode 3: Gangs Prisons, and Meth Queens
Episode 4: Heroin, Terrorists, and Kings of Pain

Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Before The Dawn


(repost for a friend)

Talk of the Nation, Science Friday
'Before the Dawn' Author Nicholas Wade
April 26, 2006

Review - Monstersandcritics.com

Amazon.com
- From Publishers Weekly

"Scientists are using DNA analysis to understand our prehistory: the evolution of humans; their relation to the Neanderthals, who populated Europe and the Near East; and Homo erectus, who roamed the steppes of Asia. Most importantly, geneticists can trace the movements of a little band of human ancestors, numbering perhaps no more than 150, who crossed the Red Sea from east Africa about 50,000 years ago. Within a few thousand years, their descendents, Homo sapiens, became masters of all they surveyed, the other humanoid species having become extinct.

Monday, February 27, 2017

Africa's Great Civilizations


In his new six-hour series, Africa's Great Civilizations, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes a new look at the history of Africa, from the birth of humankind to the dawn of the 20th century. This is a breathtaking and personal journey through two hundred thousand years of history, from the origins, on the African continent, of art, writing and civilization itself, through the millennia in which Africa and Africans shaped not only their own rich civilizations, but also the wider world.





Thursday, September 15, 2016

TED Radio Hour - Big Data Revolution


Once invisible details of our lives can now be tracked and turned into data. Will this make life easier or more complicated?

Kenneth Cukier: How Will Big Data Change The Way We Live?

Riccardo Sabatini: Can New Technology Decode The Biggest Data Set Of All?

Susan Etlinger: How Do We Approach Big Data With A Critical Eye?

Andrew Connolly: What Data Will Be Discovered By The World's Most Powerful Telescope?

Friday, September 11, 2015

NOVA: Dawn of Humanity


Program Description
PBS.org

NOVA and National Geographic present exclusive access to a unique discovery of ancient remains. Located in an almost inaccessible chamber deep in a South African cave, the site required recruiting a special team of experts slender enough to wriggle down a vertical, pitch-dark, seven-inch-wide passage. Most fossil discoveries of human relatives consist of just a handful of bones. But down in this hidden chamber, the team uncovered an unprecedented trove—so far, over 1,500 bones—with the potential to rewrite the story of our origins. They may help fill in a crucial gap in the fossil record and tell us how Homo, the first member of the human family, emerged from ape-like ancestors like the famous Lucy. But how did hundreds of bones end up in the remote chamber? The experts are considering every mind-boggling possibility. Join NOVA on the treacherous descent into this cave of spectacular and enigmatic finds, and discover their startling implications for the saga of what made us human.

Monday, August 31, 2015

The Faith Instinct - Nicolas Wade


The Faith Instinct by Nicolas Wade

NPR book summary: "Draws on a broad range of scientific evidence to theorize an evolutionary basis for religion, considering how religion may have served as an essential component of early society survival and that the brain may be inherently inclined toward religious behavior."

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Yokohama History Museum


Yokohama History Museum
Tsuzuki-Ku, Yokohama City

The museum has relics from pre-historical Jomon, Yayoi and Sekijidai leading up to current times. Adjacent to the museum and opened as the external grounds is an actual Yayoi archaeological dig along with the building rebuilt on the same spots where ancient ones from 2000 years ago once stood. The Yayoi period (弥生時代, Yayoi jidai) is the Iron Age era of early Japan.



Thursday, January 15, 2015

This American Life #544: Batman


This American Life
544: Batman
January 9, 2015

"Can other people's expectations of you alter what you can do physically? Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller of NPR's new radio show and podcast Invisibilia investigate that question – specifically, they look into something that sounds impossible: if people’s expectations can change whether a blind man can see."

I found this show extremely fascinating. I believe people's expectations affect those with sight too. I couldn't help think of how common expectations and people treat each other might affect how well they cope with life, whether that be family, romance, or discrimination in general. Listen to this and it may be true for us all, treat people in a way that leads them in the direction of self confidence, not false dependency.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

TED Radio Hour - How It All Began


NPR - TED Radio Hour

How It All Began
by NPR/TED STAFF
October 24, 2014

In this hour, TED speakers explore our origins as a species - who we are, where we come from, where we're headed - and how we're connected to everything that came before us.

Are All Human Beings Related?

Geneticist Spencer Wells describes how he uses DNA samples to trace our individual origins going back 2,000 generations



What Are The Origins Of The Universe?

David Christian explains the history of the universe from the big bang, and how humans occupy little more than a millisecond on that cosmic timeline.



Why Do We Continue To Care About Dinosaurs?

Paleontologist Jack Horner explains what dinosaurs tell us about our own origins and what we can learn by attempting to revive a piece of the past.



Where Did Human Beings Originate?

Louise Leakey describes her family's long search for early human remains in Africa, and how unlocking that mystery is the key to understanding our past and our future.



Why Did Humans Migrate Out Of Africa?

Geneticist Spencer Wells tells the story of early humans, and our eventual migration from Africa.



Are We Evolving Into A Different Species?

Juan Enriquez argues that human evolution is far from over - Homo sapiens are becoming a new species right before our eyes.