What Makes People Tick?

Reading a newspaper article about an iceberg four times the size of Manhattan that recently broke off the Petermann Glacier in Northern Greenland, the phrase “It’s been a summer of near Biblical climatic havoc” jumped off the page at me. The recent forest fires in Russia and the flooding in Asia are cited as examples. What I find interesting about that phrase is that it could refer to several different things. My first thought was that it referred to the Book of Revelation (the final book of the Christian New Testament) in which the end of the world is described. Thinking on it some more, I realised it could also refer to the Flood or perhaps even the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (both from the Book of Genesis ). Interesting how an article from a New Zealand newspaper referring to something being “biblical” straight away makes me think that it refers to the New Testament. The article continues and mentions climate change and global warming, and how the breaking off of this i...

I saw this photo on the page of a Facebook group I visited. The group is called World Without HATE , and from the quick browse of their page it looks like an interesting group. The caption is: Underneath every skin that you hate, there might be a big heart hidden... Discover it by tearing the hate.

According to USA Today, novelist Anne Rice, famous for her books on vampires ( Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned ), creator of the ever-interesting Lestat and sister of noted novelist Alice Borchardt, is rejecting Christianity while sticking with Christ. On her Facebook page, the author said the following: For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. - Anne Rice's Facebook page Anne Rice grew up a Catholic, married Stan Rice (an atheist) in 1961 and started writing her vampire books while living in San Francisco after the death of her daughter Michele to leukemia i...

UNESCO is the "United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation". It was established in 1945 with the stated purpose of "contribut[ing] to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, the rule of law and the human rights, along with fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the UN charter." UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information. Projects sponsored by UNESCO include literacy, technical, and teacher-training programmes; international science programmes; the promotion of independent media and freedom of the press; regional and cultural history projects; the promotion of cultural diversity; international cooperation agreements to secure the world cultural and natural heritage (World Heritage Sites) and to preserve human rights, and att...

Global Warming. Climate Change. Greenhouse Gases. Terms we hear on an almost daily basis and should be familiar with. A quick explanation follow below. Please note that these are, as stated below the quotations, NOT MY OWN WORDS and I am merely copy/pasting small sections of text while giving credit where it's due. Scientists have spent decades figuring out what is causing global warming. They've looked at the natural cycles and events that are known to influence climate. But the amount and pattern of warming that's been measured can't be explained by these factors alone. The only way to explain the pattern is to include the effect of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted by humans. To bring all this information together, the United Nations formed a group of scientists called the International Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. The IPCC meets every few years to review the latest scientific findings and write a report summarizing all that is known about global warming. Eac...

Hydropower. A word that I hear more and more on the news yet covers a concept that baffles me slightly. Hydro = water (from the Greek) and power, well that's self-explanatory. So power from or through water. I'm guessing this works in a similar way to a watermill which is powered by a water wheel however that's as far as my knowledge goes. Thankfully I've got internet access! "Hydropower is electricity generated using the energy of moving water. Rain or melted snow, usually originating in hills and mountains, create streams and rivers that eventually run to the ocean. The energy of that moving water can be substantial, as anyone who has been whitewater rafting knows. This energy has been exploited for centuries. Farmers since the ancient Greeks have used water wheels to grind wheat into flour. Placed in a river, a water wheel picks up flowing water in buckets located around the wheel. The kinetic energy of the flowing river turns the wheel and is converted int...

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917 - 2005) was a Russian American psychologist and professor known for developing the Ecological Systems Theory. He was generally regarded as one of the world's leading scholars in the field of developmental psychology. I learned about theorists such as Bronfenbrenner while studying towards my B.Ed. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory views the person as developing within a multi-layered system of relationships. Using the example of a child, the systems are: The Microsystem - One's family, classroom The Mesosystem - Two micro-systems in interaction (i.e. family and classroom) The Exosystem - External environments which indirectly influence development The Macrosystem - The larger socio-cultural context. Added later: The Chronosystem - The evolution of the external systems over time. Each system contains roles, norms and rules that can powerfully shape development. (Source: Wikipedia ) The Microsystem: The setting in which the indi...

I've been interested in "what makes people tick" for as long as I can remember. The way I see it, what makes people tick - what makes them think and act as they do, is a combination of two factors - Nature and Nurture. Nature being genetics and Nurture being our upbringing and environment. According to Wikipedia , "The nature versus nurture debates concern the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature", i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences ("nurture", i.e. empiricism or behaviorism) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits." I'm no genetic scientist or evolutionary biologist or any other person with a fancy title like that, so will leave discussion of the Nature side of this debate to those qualified to do so. While I'd be very interested in finding out exactly how much like our parents, grandparents et al we all are, I'm very happy to let...

Welcome to my newest blog! I'll use this space to write down all my thoughts and ideas to do with such diverse topics as society, psychology, sociology, human development, religion, spirituality, and everything else that helps shape people and contributes to what makes them tick. This blog will hopefully grow to include a lot of information sourced from other websites, links to online articles, information about and from books, pictures and diagrams, posts by yours truly, and who knows what else. The point of this Blog is to collect information that interests me all together in one place, which means that sometimes I'll share my personal opinions, sometimes I'll write in an essay-like fashion, and sometimes a Blog entry will consist mostly of a lot of text, copy/pasted from another website. Having learnt about the importance of APA referencing and avoiding plagiarism, I will always link to or cite my sources. It is not my intention to pass other's har...