Dangerous Instincts

 

         The episode is about dangerous instincts and the author of the book "dangerous instincts" , Marry Elen O Toole expert on psychopathy and criminal behaviour, talks about it. It is not good when people trust their Gut instinct fully as it may be just the opposite especially when you are in danger.We can't measure, imrove it and we even don't know where it is situated. We use it to make life changing decisions and sometimes these decisions are good ones. However that is not because of Gut feelings, other factors play a greater role than just Gut instinct, as people more often make serious decisions not just relying on their sense. Besides we often decide based on the superficial indicators. For example people very often pay attention to the appearance of a person and due to that factor they can go for a walk with that person. There exist some mystical reasons for trusting somebody when you shouldn't do that. The author says that reading her book will be very useful as it is an aid to use some behavioural assessment for knowing and understanding whether the person standing in front of you is safe or not.  It is also very hazardous to walk along the street with our headphones on our ears or without visual attention to the surrounding. This takes place as people trust themselves a lot for the reason that they have never become victims of violent crimes and it seems to them that everything is going to be right. She brings an example of Guarrie Ridgeway, a sexual killer in USA, who was taking his victims by lorry. He has a good way of convincing people and his victims looking at him think that they are very good readers of people and he isn't going to harm them. There are many people, like Guarrie who are very persuasive and by using various convincing tools they can cheat. If the person is too persuasive you should take that into consideration as that may mean that somebody wants to cheat you by this way. Thus after reading this book you shouldn't be suspicious to everybody. It just gives actual tools that you can use to assess behaviour and personality , to read a situation more carefully , to ask the right questions and finally to make right decisions that will keep you safe. Of course I agree with the author that we shouldn't always trust our instinct, but as for me I can say that my instinct has never let me down.  I have made many life changing decisions by instinct which have turned to be right. May be this is just coincidence but the choice to trust your instinct or not is yours. So ask yourself the question '' should I trust my instinct'' and try to find the answer by the help of this book.





                                                                                                         

Christopher W. diCarlo on the New Ethics

   The episode is about a developing New Ethics which involves a synthetic approach to understanding Good and Evil which presents Christopher W. diCarlo, the winner of the 2008 best lecturer competition, on the New Ethics. So he starts his lecture by bringing as an example his book where he asks five most essential questions that human beings can use when they become conscious.

             

           The big five questions

1.  What can I know, what are the limits of my knowledge ?    
2.  Why am I here ? 
3.  Who am I ?   
4.  How should I behave ?    
5. What is to come of me ?  

  Christopher proves that by giving these questions to a person, it is possible to find out what kind of personality she/he has. The way people answer these questions tells a lot about them. These questions are an aid to reveal the type of a person and understand if you can go on with that person in the future or not. They affect the way that people answer a lot of other life questions. He concentrated  on the question four because he was talking about New Ethics. How should we behave towards each other, towards other species and what is the most responsible way of managing human and natural resources?   He differentiates between science and Ethics, by saying that science describes what occurs in the natural world while Ethics talks about how we ought to behave towards each other. Science deals with facts, Ethics deals with values. Ethics studies how and why we value human behaviour or actions. Values are good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair and so on. Comparing morality with ethics he says that morality deals with values within cultural settings, while Ethics is broader as it studies the nature of values throughout all cultures.

People need to understand the constrains through which each of us act. More we understand these constrains, better we can control over our behaviour. So this is the definition which somehow answers the question four. David Hume says '' We have limited freedom within these natural constrains''. He also discusses two  types of people that are cheaters and cooperators and if you think that you're a cooperator, you are not  right. People always cheat, they can cheat on smoking, diet and so on. What is a free will ?  How much control do we have over our lives? Man's attitude and character form from a multiple influences, that's genetic actions, something that is in you and we can't control our actions. In my previous podcast I talked about unhealthy food and it is a good example of this statement. If we realize that hamburgers and sandwiches are dangerous for our health  and we should avoid eating them , but we still eat. I myself eat knowing about that fact. Why? Is that  because of genetic actions since we don't have the will to to refuse something that may kill us or cause a serious illness. May be the enjoyment is something that we can't stand and we are ready to sacrifice everything for it. But if we look at this question from another side, we can see that it is a questionable problem.

 

                                 

Good and evil will become a chance and a luck. This means that unfortunate incidents can become a reason for a person to do evil actions. We don't have the right to judge and blame people unless we know the motive. He brought an example of a man who killed his wife and wasn't sent to jail as he did that without a free will , not wanting to do that. Thus he concluded his lecture by saying that the New Ethics must develop an ambitious model which synthesizes the knowledge of sciences with the analytic rigor of philosophy, honest cook under which all of us act.

How large is the  English Lexicon & how large is your lexicon?

There are two big dictionaries that possess half a million lexemes. One is Webster's Third New International, which claimed over 450,000 words in 1961. The other is Oxford English Dictionary which claimed over 500,000 entries in 1992. Of course the real number is actually more. When we compare these two dictionaries, we see that they lack headword lists significantly. These two dicitionaries differ from each other by their editorial emphases. The Oxford includes more historical references and British dialect items, while Webster involves regional American items. However none of them covers completely the vocabulary of the ' New Englishes' (part 5) in India, Singapore and Nigeria, where many new lexemes have been coming into the language. Even when we limit the edition to standard vocabulary, we can see that many items of the lexicon that could be involved in a dictionary are not discovered there. My previous post was about the differences between American and British English generally. As this post is about the English lexicon, here I will mention the differences of vocabulary  by saying that probably the major differences between American and British English lie in the choice of vocabulary. The same word or phrase is used for two different concepts. For instance mean: (AmE- angry,bad humored, BrE-not generous, tight fisted ), rubber: (AmE- condom, BrE-tool used to erase pencil markings).

What concerns to the size of the English speaker's wordstock, it is known that it is connected with a person's hobbies and educational background.  People who are fond of reading and read various books, containing rich vocabulary, they will obtain a large wordstock compared with those who don't read and instead prefer to do something else. I think that reading not only enlarges your vocabulary, but  it also helps to have an imaginataion and knowledge about everything that surrounds you. Moreover you can get acquainted with other people's culture by this way.

                                                                  

                                                  

Eating Unhealthy  Food

     
    The episode is a conversation between Helen and Gate. During their dialogue they are talking about some unhealthy food. Gate was going to prepare mean sandwhiches for lunch, but she didn't like that idea because he was going to prepare them with cold cuts, which are processed meats , include a lot of  attetives and sodium, something that will harm the health greatly. 
Then he suggested to prepare salads and this time she encouraged to make salads  if they were organic, since those greens are full of chemicals and pesticides. What concerns to preparing healthy smoothies she said that she would agree only in case of fresh fruits, as bottle juices contain high fructos corn -syrop. Finally the man offered Helen to choose a restaraunt, where they could go and had a tasty and healthy lunch. So  instead of putting himself into trouble, he suggested to go to a restaraunt, as he   found nothing that didn't look like junk food for Helen. I think, coming out of my own experience, that  illnesses are mostly connected with eating junk food. Eating is also a great art and each of us should more or less try to follow eating rules in order to save our lives. We should keep in mind that we eat to live and we don't live for eating. We all know that junk food and fast food are not so far from each other, but still many people enjoy it not paying attention to that fact. Why  can't people give up this dangerous habit? Why are they ready to put their health in danger just for a few minute pleasure?

   Thus I would like to reveal the words, used during the conversation, to make them more evident, as they are the words that the second language learner may have some difficulties to understand. 

a mean sandwhich - "mean''  here means excellent, great and it is the informal use. When it is used formally, it has the meaning  of unkind and not nice.        

it doesn't sound like much-  to appear to be unimportant, not significant


cold cuts- These are thin pieces of processed meat, (roast bief, ham, turkey are cold cuts) used for sandwhiches.

organic- something that is grown without any artificial chemicals

greens- lettice, spinage used in salads 

pesticide- a chemical used to kill insects, bugs that could damage vegetables or food such as crops

smoothie- is a thick cold drink made with fruit, ice , usually milk, sometimes ice-cream, fruit juice, frozen yoghurt

high fructos corn -syrop- it is a sweet liquid made from corn used instead of sugar in processed various food

to put oneself into trouble- to create problems 

American and British English

American and British English vary significantly. However there are two main reasons for having no precise estimates to show the quantity of differences. Firstly it  has become obvious during recent decades that they  have had a great impact on each other, particularly American on British. US films and television have impacted on British vocabulary and as a result British people, particularly teenagers, have begun to use some words from American vocabulary.However British films and various TV programmes are enough in the USA, for UK vocabulary not to be disregarded. Studies of both countries’ local dialects have shown that there are many lexical differentiations. Not all of these forms are involved in general dictionaries as having a wide use. Nevertheless they do possess a vital role in the local areas. Taking into consideration local festivals, abbreviations, institutional differences, everyday slang and etc., regional differences seem to be considerably large. What is the difference of being American and being English? American identity is more connected with home origins. When two Americans meet abroad, they will likely put the stress on their home states or colleges, while the same can’t be said about two Britons. The main difference between American and British English is the spelling. For instance BrE-re, AmE-er (centre/ center), BrE-our, AmE-or (colour /color) and BrE- ogue, AmE-og (catalogue/ catalog). There is a list of many words, which differ by their spelling(e.g. aeroplane- BrE, airplane- AmE), of course many words are common in both areas, such as aesthetics, chili, grey, jail and so on.

Lexical differences of two regions are classified into three distinctions: a stock of words which we can see only in AmE, some words are used only in BrE and some words are known worldwide as a  part of Standard English (WSE). It is also essential to know that some words are used in both countries , but can be met more frequently in one of them. For instance flat and apartement are common in both, but the first one is often used in BrE and the latter in AmE. So there is a list of vocabulary revealing  that there are many words in BrE and AmE that are not the same. For instance the American will use candy instead of sweets(BrE). There is a huge amount of such words. The video intoduced below, which is a dialogue provides such word examples and it is an aid for understandig differences between British and American English.

                            

                            

What concerns to their grammatical differences, they aren’t so frequent between educated BrE and AmE. These distinctions mainly occur in morphology and syntax (e.g. irregular verbs) and few deviations in syntactic constructions. AmE prefers have to have got. AmE gives preference to collective nouns in the singular (the government is), while BrE also permits plural(the government are) and so on.