via http://sydney.edu.au/stuserv/documents/learning_centre/critical.pdf
Critical Thinking Skills (pdf)
via http://sydney.edu.au/stuserv/documents/learning_centre/critical.pdf
Critical Thinking Skills (pdf)
Critical thinking introduction (pdf)
A good resource for referencing what we mean by critical thinking.
From www.dilbert.com of course…
By Michael Shermer | July 25, 2008 | 27
The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition—thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not. Continue reading
Check your [philosophical]Tension Quotient!
To take the philosophical health check (PHC), go through the statements below, selecting for each one ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’. If not sure, select the response which is closest to your opinion. When you have answered all the questions, click the ‘submit’ button and the results of your check will be generated.
The new research has both raised hopes and provoked skepticism. Psychologists such as Sonja Lyubomirsky have developed a new genre of self-help books, purporting to replace the intuitions and anecdotes of traditional advisors with scientific programs for making people happy. At the same time, there are serious methodological challenges, questioning, for example, the use of individuals’ self-reports of how happy they are and the effort to objectify and even quantify so subjective and elusive a quality as happiness. Continue reading
Download Universal intelligence (pdf)
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-meaningfulness-of-lives/
Who among us has not asked whether his or her life is a meaningful one? Who has not wondered — on a sleepless night, during a long stretch of dull or taxing work, or when a troubled child seems a greater burden than one can bear — whether in the end it all adds up to anything? On this day, too, when many are steeped in painful reminders of personal loss, it is natural to wonder about the answers.
The Meaningfulness of Lives – NYTimes (pdf version)
Seeing your life pass before you and the light at the end of the tunnel, can be explained by new research on abnormal functioning of dopamine and oxygen flow
By Charles Q. Choi Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=peace-of-mind-near-death
Near-death experiences are often thought of as mystical phenomena, but research is now revealing scientific explanations for virtually all of their common features. The details of what happens in near-death experiences are now known widely—a sense of being dead, a feeling that one’s “soul” has left the body, a voyage toward a bright light, and a departure to another reality where love and bliss are all-encompassing. Continue reading
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/09/09/homeopathic-leak-threatens-catastrophe/
An accidental release of highly dilute homeopathic waste from a research institute in Swindon has led to calls for the centre to be shut down. Plant operators have admitted responsibility for massive safety blunders after a spilled drop of an enormously dilute test product was cleaned by a caretaker, and in complete disregard of all safety procedures, allowed to enter the water system after he emptied his mop bucket down the drain. Continue reading
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3310650.htm
TONY EASTLEY: It’s taken 40 years but from almost the ashes of extinction, an Aboriginal language has been saved and is again being spoken on Palm Island in North Queensland. The last living speaker of the Worrongo language is a Japanese professor who created a dictionary after learning it from one of the last native speakers in the early 1970s. Continue reading
AN F-16 pilot scrambled on 9/11 to prevent another attack on the US capital says she was prepared to ram her plane into a hijacked aircraft, as there was no time to arm her plane with missiles. Continue reading