Videography & co

[Alex]

I know that Google had a major outage today and even though all of you wanted to find the movies I mentioned, you couldn't search for them. Fortunately, I have direct links :-)

• Nice guys finish first
• The blind watchmaker

And here are some highlights from The 7th Avenue project

• the pilot of a B2 bomber
• the role of music in evolution, history and transfer of knowledge: 
• http://7thavenueproject.com/post/1463329414/daniel-levitin-world-in-six-songs
• http://7thavenueproject.com/post/452946222/daniel-levitin-your-brain-on-music
• altruism and cooperation as an emergent feature present in babies as well as other primates (it seems to be a feature hardcoded into the base class ;-)
  
  Now, you should take a few minutes and have a look at these experimental videos. They illustrate altruism in action. Keep in mind that the children involved are not exposed to education (school, kindergarten), they're not given any reward for this either; cooperation just happens.
• the role of a face, interviews with disfigured people
• interview with a guy who chose not to speak for 17 years; he didn't use motorized vehicles either. Throughout this time he graduated the uni, got a Phd, taught(!) and walked the USA from coast to coast.
• human perception of computer generated music
• applying game theory to model the behaviour of lizards
• extreme physics

This is really interesting material, you should expose yourselves to this kind of stuff and think about what you want to do in the future. Do you want to sit in a cubicle and implement the product of someone else's intellect? Do you want to create new things from scratch? Do you want to create new branches of science?

[Alex Railean]

It is no secret that if the environment is user-friendly, studying is
much more interesting. FCIM is not the best place on Earth, but it
doesn't mean we can't do anything to improve it.



Hypothetically, if we somehow managed to get hold of a sofa, some
armchairs, some desks and coffee tables and lamps - would there be a
place where we could keep these things?


Do you think there are risks that these items will be vandalized by
wild non-faf species that inhabit the university? :-)



The universities in the USA are much more comfortable, in terms of
furniture, availability of whiteboards, or places where you can hang
out with your colleagues and discuss a topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfJOvhtb3oE


It would be great if we could move in that direction and change FCIM a
little bit. We could buy some reasonably cheap furniture from sites
like 999.md or bring stuff from home - this way we wouldn't have to
wait for the administration to make any investments.



If you have any ideas about it - let me know, and we'll try to figure
something out.