Posts in category: Video/Talk

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TED Talk: How to beat stage fright

29.05.2023

Phobias: A Plague or Mutations of the Basic Instinct?

Phobia is Greek and means to be afraid of something. In the non-Greek world, it is mainly used in psychological terms, signifying severe fear as in: terrified and: neurotic and: in need of professional treatment. Those in the grip of a veritable phobia are panic-stricken and paralyzed when it comes to tackling certain situations. Phobias are relics of our evolutionary past and were quite useful back then. Should a ferocious sabre-toothed tiger – teeth bared – spring up inadvertently from the undergrowth with an intimidating roar, the primitive brain would switch to red-alert and reliably signal to the short-legged homo erectus: RUN as fast as you can! It was a matter of survival, and the same basic instinct takes control over us in perilous situations until this day.

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The Doppler Effect: Mysterious wavelengths

17.11.2022

Zzzzzzzzzzp! Flash! There you go! A spiteful and cowardly camouflaged radar trap has lashed out at you once again, and another costly and questionably handsome snapshot is on its way into your post box. Fuming traffic offenders are said to have clandestinely returned to the place of crime to take revenge – fortified by a bunch of best-friends’ hercules’s and in order to punish the wicked contraption out of its wits. Ignoring, that there’s sure to be another invincible clone around the next corner. Instead of adding up on the offence front, avoiding speeding and/or respecting red traffic lights may actually do the trick fairly well and entail far less trouble: It allows short tempers to lie dormant just a little longer and lends bank statements a so much more encouraging appearance. Similar to police records …

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Common Sense vs. Decadence

11.04.2022

 

The 25 most expensive Dishes and Drinks compiled by Ignitespot

As is widely known, there are many sappy fruitcakes on the face of this earth, some even make it to the top of politics. But no, what we are talking about here is genuine food, albeit of a nature that again gives reason to doubt reason. Spending a fortune on a humble slice of Japanese Miyazaki Wagyu beef – the Kobe superlative – may still be somewhat comprehensible given the fact that body and soul of an Asian cow need to be pampered into beef so artfully marbled and tender that effort and price are warranted and the cow is a happy one until death do them part, bovine and farmer. If you are a good Miyazaki-Wagyu-beef producer you might even win the Japanese Culinary Olympics Beef Competition held in Nagasaki every five years. And so it happens that a slice of Lancashire Wagyu & Mushroom Pie served in England may cost you a handsome 1,781 US-$.

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TED Talk. Elora Hardy: Magical houses, made of bamboo

3.04.2021

Imagine you were the fortunate citizen of a lush tropical island, say Bali, and financially privileged enough to afford an extraordinary home built according to your most daring desires. Ideally, renewable materials would be used almost exclusively so that your new residence became a sustainable and thus environmentally friendly affair. Bamboo is one of these resources – abundantly available locally, easily cultivated and growing back rapidly. It is light yet sturdy, albeit a little stubborn when it comes to delivering reliably straight rods: No two poles are alike and creative thinking is required on a permanent basis in order to come up with a feasible design. In Elora’s case, her enigmatically shaped edifices are the surprising result of these given twists and curves. Bamboo structures can now last a lifetime. Whereas formerly they used to get eaten away by insatiable termites and bugs, this building material receives treatment with a boron solution, a natural salt despised by hungry insects.

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