Month: June 2012
Exit
UncategorizedThe transit of Venus seen from space, in HD and pure awesomeness
spaceYup, NASA, you take better pictures than me.
Does being bilingual make you resistant to bullshit?
scienceDo I think differently in English and French? Absolutely. This article sheds some lights on the reasons behind the differences and their effects. Apparently, being bilingual provides a notable increase in resistance to bullshit. Fascinating.
Words in a foreign language simply don’t set off emotional resonances as they do in a native tongue because the associative links are fewer and weaker (and perhaps connected to the more cerebral classroom settings in which they were first learned)—meaning that we quite literally feel less when using a second language. We become a bit like the cool, unemotional Spock from Star Trek. Our mother tongue, on the other hand, incites us to Captain Kirk-like bouts of impulsive passion.
Read more (in English only, oh the irony) on Does Speaking in a Second Language Make You Think More, or Feel Less? | Discover Magazine
Transit of Venus
photography, space
The transit of Venus from my front porch. Projected from century-old binoculars onto a poster. Bit blurry but you can see Venus very clearly as well as some Sun spots.
[edit] adjusted image for proper orientation – forgot it was projected upside-down in the rush! facepalm