Pay attention to Palestinian Peace ("Budrus")

David Hudson (Mubi.com)

(TEDtalksDirector) TED.com In 2003 the Palestinian village of Budrus mounted a 10-month-long nonviolent protest to stop a barrier being built across their olive tree groves. Did you hear about it? Didn't think so. Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha asks why we only pay attention to the violence the Israelis want focused on -- and not to the nonviolent leaders who may one day bring peace.

Conversations this International Day of Peace will this year undoubtedly be focused on Palestinians' bid for UN membership, the latest development in the decades-old Israel-Palestine conflict. Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha (BUDRUS) has spent years in the Middle East and, as she notes at the top of her recent TED Talk, one of the most common questions she's asked is, "Where are the Palestinian Ghandis?" More

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Breaking the Spell of Religion (audio)

Exploration with Dr. Michio Kaku (Saturday, July 16, KPFK.org)
Breaking the Spell (skeptic.com)

Can science explain religion as a natural phenomenon -- or set of phenomena useful to human beings in spite of the absence of a "God" as conceived of in human cultures?

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Dr. Dennett, an atheist and liberal, takes a serious look at the possibility that religions may serve an important and beneficial evolutionary purpose. He is interviewed by theoretical physicist, cofounder of string field theory, and peace activist Dr. Kaku, City College of New York (CUNY). This is followed by a discussion with Steven Pinker, author of The Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature.

In The Blank Slate, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings.

With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Steven Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits -- a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century -- denies our common humanity.

It also denies our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.

Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.

Skeptic Society's Michael Shermer speaks on "strange beliefs" at TED