Monday, December 27, 2010

Videos to catch


In the absence of anything to watch on TV over the holidays, I've been watching videos from the internet. Here are three that I've found particularly interesting:

'Why we have too few women leaders' by Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook (approx 15 min). While she acknowledges that changes in business practices are necessary, for example, flexible hours, in this talk she focuses on what individuals can do. Her three points are:
  • ‘Sit at the table’ – Women tend to underestimate their own abilities, they don't negotiate higher salaries and while men attribute success their abilities women tend cite external factors. One of the issues is that while successful men are perceived as likeable successful women are not.
  • ‘Make your partner a real partner’ – sharing the chores is good for your marriage.
  • ‘Don't leave before you leave’ – Don’t turn down that promotion or that new project because you are planning on having a child, especially not if you don’t even currently have a boyfriend.

Women need to watch this video. So do managers.
 
Margaret Wertheim on the beautiful math of coral in which Margaret Wertheim reveals the link between crochet, coral and hyperbolic geometry (approx 15min). She makes an interesting point about our tendency to value symbolic knowledge, marks on paper or on a computer screen, over embodied knowledge, things we can touch and feel.
 
The truth about denial by Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. This is a video of a talk given in 2007. The first part covers the history of  the science of global warming from Tyndall to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC. The second part addresses the question, why, if the science is uncontroversial, do so many Americans think it is still doubtful? In 1992  US President George H. W. Bush signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Why in 2007 were we still arguing about whether global warming was even happening? (approx 1 hour)

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