Random Educational Videos

MIT Lecture on How Cancer Begins – video online

A very informative lecture by Dr. Robert Weinberg for explaining to general audiences on how cancer begins and what causes it. This lecture is presented by MITWorld and you can see the full hour-long lecture from their site.

WATCH VIDEO on MitWorld »

Brain At Work and Mindfulness

David Rock explains how the brain works and a bit about mindfulness in this Google Talk video …

In the talk, he mentions that in order to be successful, one has to have good emotional control.

He wrote the article “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness” which explains that we have two modes of thinking: (1) the default narrative thinking, and (2) direct experience.

When you switch into the direct experience, the narrative dampens. This is in essences mindfulness.

Daniel Gilbert talks about brain and happiness

WATCH on Google Video »

Daniel Gilbert, author of the book Stumbling on Happiness, claims that the “impact bais” causes people to over-estimate the amount that events will affect people’s happiness. Gilbert is a psychology professor at Harvard University. He suggests that “synthetic happiness” is just as good as “authentic happiness”.

Scientists Unearth Gigantic Ant Colony

Watch an excerpt from the documentary “Ants! Natures Sceret Power” as scientists excavate an ant colony. This was done by pouring concrete into an abandoned ant colony and then excavating away the earth. This reveals an incredible an efficient structure that has highways and sideroads. The ants had to remove 40 tons of dirt in order to build this structure.

WATCH VIDEO on YouTube »

In another different ant colony that was not abandoned, scientists measure the air coming into and out of the ant tunnels and determined that it is analogous to an air-conditioned system where there are different shafts for incoming fresh air and outgoing carbon dioxide air.

Carbon and Global Warming Cartoon Video

Watch this video by Robert Krulwich that explains why the atom carbon is central to understanding the global warming process. It got some nice humorous cartoons to make the learning fun. It is in five parts; so make sure you scroll down and play the episodes in order.

Matthieu Ricard Talks about the Inner Conditions for Authentic Happiness

Here is a video of Ricard giving a lecture at Google on the subject about our inner state that affects our happiness.

He is the author of the book, See Happiness: A Guide to Life’s Most Important Skill.

Learn with Videos at this Educational Website

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How Our Monetary System Really Works

Most people have the traditional view that people deposit money into banks and then bank lend those money out to other people. Banks make money because it charges higher interest on lending money out than it gives back in depositor’s interest.  This is true to a certain extent.  But it is not a complete big picture of how the monetary system works in modern times (such as in the United States).

Think about all the big mortgages and large car loans that many people have taken out currently.  The banks have lend them all these money.  Do you think depositors have deposited that same amount of money into the banks?  Considering that the savings rate is around 1% and 2% in the United States around the years 2006, it doesn’t seem likely.

Perhaps the banks have all this money to lend out because the wealthy has deposited a lot of money into banks.  With saving interests rates often below inflation rate, do you think the wealthy really save all their money in a bank savings account?   More likely, their money is in investments such as stocks, bonds, and assets.

So where do banks get all this money to lend out to people?

The truth is that banks are lending out money that they don’t have.  They are lending out more money than what people are depositing into the banks.  If banks are lending out more money than deposits are putting in, where is that money coming from?   Banks are creating money. Money just appears whenever someone sign their signature for a loan.  In essence, money is debt.

You can learn more in the 2006 video “Money As Debt” by Paul Grignon

WATCH VIDEO on Google Video »

And this is legal?

Yes, in the United States it is legal.  It is known as the partial reserve system.

In 2009, Paul Grignon created its sequel “Money As Debt II”.  The movie is appear to be in part a response to the economic financial crisis that the United States is in at the time.

WATCH VIDEO on Vimeo»

You can learn more on their website at moneyasdebt.net which have a references to quotations and transcripts.

Douglas Adams Humorous Talk about Conservation

Science function writer and satirist Douglas Adams gave this humorous talk…

But it has a serious message about conservation of our planet. He talks about his adventures tracking down exotic animals and what he learned from them.

Video Lecture on Time Travel

The Vega Science Trust video collection has a video linked here of Professor Paul Davies giving a scientific talk on wormholes and the possibility of time travel. The lecture is targeted to the general audience so you do not need to be a physicist to understand it. In fact, Davies showed only two equations and one of them is the famous “e equals m c squared”.

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There are very interesting ideas and some time travel paradoxes presented. Another article explains some paradoxes of time travel.

He made reference to singularity, anti-gravity, relativity, black hole, world line, and space time diagrams. The idea to get out of this lecture is that physics does not preclude the possibility of time travel. And in fact time travel into the future is possible and the effects can be measured. It is time travel into the past that is tougher. It is not that the laws of physics prevent it, but that to achieve it would be so great of an undertaking that practicality precludes it. There were some bits of humor in the lecture and Davies concluded with a great ending.

There was a small question and answer session at the end where Davies made a point that if in fact a time machine can be invented, it can never bring a person back to a time before the machine’s invention.

Whether time travel is possible or not is a question that physicists are still debating. They may not come up with a definitive answer until the quantum mechanics and general relativity have been unified under the grand unified theory (of which they are still working on).