I bought the book “A man called Ove” from a big super market. It was an easy buy because I have already read “Anxious people” and I liked the story, the unfolding of the characters and the nice rhythm the dialogs had between the protagonists.

“A man called Ove” is about an old, grumpy man and his life. There are many flashbacks in the book that cause you nostalgia and leave you with a bitter-sweet taste. The characters don’t seem very real though, and at times you feel that they don’t make any sense. Αnother protagonist of the book is love. Ove had a rough life, until he met Sonia. The writer says that Sonia was the color of his life or something like this. I like love stories, but I’m not a big fan of mellow phrases, and there are many in this book.

Είμαι σίγουρη πώς δεν χωράει, ήμουν σίγουρη απ’ τη στιγμή που αποφάσισα να αγοράσω το βιβλίο. Ο τίτλος όμως catchy σε κάνει να σκέφτεσαι, μήπως όντως χωράει; Το βιβλίο είναι ένας διάλογος μεταξύ ενός αρχαιολόγου (εγώ τον λέω Αρθούρο) και έναν… δεν έχουμε ιδέα τι ήταν ο άλλος άνθρωπος, στις 280 σελίδες του βιβλίου δεν φαίνεται να απασχολεί τον αρχαιολόγο. Ο Αρθρούρος και ο Μπάμπης, που δεν συστήθηκαν ποτέ, κλείστηκαν σε ένα ασανσέρ και ο Αρθούρος αποφάσισε να του μάθει 2-3 πράγματα για τον αρχαίο κόσμο. Το ύφος του Αρθούρου μπλαζέ και του Μπάμπη το IQ, χαρτοπετσέτας. Ας παραθέσω τώρα τα θετικά του βιβλίου: σ’ αυτές τις 280 σελίδες ο συγγραφέας κατάφερε να διηγηθεί την προϊστορία (από την παλαιολιθική εποχή) και ιστορία έως το 324μΧ. Κατάφερε επίσης να γράψει με τέτοιον τρόπο, ώστε να φτιάξω μια νοερή χρονογραμμή και να τοποθετήσω μία - μία τις πληροφορίες που διάβασα σε αυτήν. Τέλος, με παρακίνησε να φτιάξω μια υπαρκτή, χειρόγραφη χρονογραμμή την οποία εμπλούτισα με ιστορικά ορόσημα από άλλα βιβλία. Σε επόμενο άρθρο θα κοινοποιήσω τη χρονογραμμή, η οποία ίσως λειτουργήσει βοηθητικά για αυτό και άλλα βιβλία ιστορίας.

I recently discovered a channel on youtube that contains conversations between a student and his professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Dr Hans-Georg Moeller.

I will cite some notes and quotes (as I heard them by Dr Hans-Georg Moeller, removing the interjections and the repeating words) from the video regarding morality and religion, so as to facilitate the process of the things you will hear.

Notes:

About philosopher Wittgenstein: “there are two different ways in which we use the terms good or right either we use them in a relative sense or in a trivial sense”, “it’s good or right relative to a certain perspective to a certain activity, “what he means with relative, that it is relative to a specific criterion”.

The term executive function refers to some important, mental skills that allow us to set and achieve goals. The main areas of executive function are: working memory, attention shifting and inhibitory control that we all use as we plan things or solve problems.

I found two tests that measure executive function in young children: dimensional change card sort and the marshmallow test. In the first task kids switch from sorting cards one way (e.g. by shape) to sorting them differently (e.g. by colour). In the marshmallow test the experimenter offers two choices to the kid; one marshmallow or two marshmallows and asks which it prefers. The kid obviously prefers the two marshmallows. So, the experimenter says to the kid that he/she has some work to do and if the kid can wait until the researcher comes back, then it can eat both the marshmallows. Otherwise, the kid rings the bell (yes, there is also a bell on the table and of course a table) and eats only one marshmallow. In other words, the child has to choose between immediate award or a larger reward later.

Hello guys, it’s been a while. This article is not so much of an article, is more like a game that I am thinking since the first lockdown.

I am always so confused about what happens first in history. We learn so many historical facts in school, but we don’t learn how to put them in order. Is it important though to put history in order? I think that it is. We can relate things this way, we can assume or come to a conclusion about how areas, strategies and people interact with each other.

“Μικρή φιλοσοφία του έρωτα”

Γιατί μικρή φιλοσοφία του έρωτα και όχι μικρή φιλοσοφία του πάθους ή της αγάπης; Ανάλογα με τη θέση στην οποία βρίσκεσαι, νοηματοδοτείς και ορίζεις τον έρωτα διαφορετικά, σε σημείο που είναι λάθος να χρησιμοποιησώ την λέξη “έρωτας” για να προσδώσω κάποιο συγκεκριμένο νόημα (θα έλεγε ο Allain de Botton). Στα αγγλικά το βιβλίο λέγεται “essays in love” γεγονός που με κάνει να αναρωτιέμαι τι θα γράψω στην αγγλική έκδοση του review (και δευτερευόντως γιατί ο ελληνικός τίτλος είναι βαρυσήμαντος;) Επίσης, το βιβλίο μου άρεσε: αστείο, σοβαρό με ωραία χρήση της γλώσσας.

People with ADHD have difficulties organizing their behavior so as to achieve personally desired aims. Here are five strategies that may be helpful to adults or children with ADHD.

• Externalizing information

Talking to yourself, - that is also a recommended strategy for therapeutic writing -help you identify, comprehend and organize your thoughts. This way, instead of thinking what needs to be done, you saying it! The fact that you saying it, it may decrease the emotional discomfort that is related to the task.

Programming sounds cool and is a very nice addition to the educational curriculum, but if you don’t know anything about programming, like me, or your kids don’t know anything about it, start from the basics.

Remember the joke that I posted some weeks ago?

A programmer is going to the supermarket and is told: “Buy a pint of milk, and if there are eggs, buy a dozen.” The programmer goes to the supermarket, buys everything, and drives back to his house. Upon arrival, he is angrily asked “Why did you get 12 pints of milk?” The programmer says, “Because they had eggs!”

| “If we knew nothing about where we’ d end up, what sort of a society would it feel safe to enter?” –John Rawls |

Matters of injustice arise everyday in informal frameworks and mainly in relation to our own life. Day – to – day it can be hard to take unfairness seriously. I mean to really imagine how life would be If you weren’t you. We work hard and we have ambitions. That’s why we are in this privileged position. We deserve what we obtain. Is that so?

Do you ask yourself things like am I a good person? When are we free as human beings? Which is a moral worthy action? Or are there specific moral lows that can apply to everybody? So did Immanuel Kant. And he gave us some good answers.

If you studied religion, you concluded that it attempted, among other things, to help us follow moral lows. Kant tried to replace religious authority with the authority of reason. Basically, he tried to ground morality in logic. So what you ought to do to become moral?

I am a beginner blogger and I want to share some things I learned this week. I built my blog with Hugo. To be honest I didn’t do this all by myself. Hugo, as its site says, “is one of the most popular open-source static site generators”. Although, popular doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. You must be a little tech-savvy.

So if you pick Hugo you have to write your posts in Markdown language. I recommend it: is easy, clear, gives you this feeling of controlling your text. The route I follow, so far, is this: I write my text in a text editor. I learned some basic markdown online such as how to write the title or put bullets in my text. After saving your text, you open a terminal (I have Linux and I try lately to use terminal to save some time and because it’s fun) in the content directory, which is the place where my posts are. Then, this is optional, I give the command “git diff” to see all the changes that I made. If you also want to check your blog before going online you can give an extra command “hugo server” in order to publish your blog in your laptop. If everything is ok, you give the command “git add”. This step, as far as I understand, is where you choose the files that you want to save to the history (history change). After that, you write “git commit -m” and a description of your changes (eg. add a quote or erase nature category). The final step is where you send your files for publishing by writing: “git push”. And that’s it. I’m sure that are more things to learn, but the basic route you follow is the above.

It is quite common to use a computer in classroom nowadays, even in Kindergarten. Young kids often know the basics, how to move the mouse, open the computer, play a game etc. But we could go beyond this by adding programming in our educational programs.

Why? There are a lot of reasons. Kids are already consumers of tech and it is at least pleasant to be an active producer. Moreover, through programming children develop computation thinking skills, such as logical thinking, expressing a task in a clear, precise way, breaking down a problem into components and tackling them one at a time, resilience through spotting and fixing problems and collaboration skills.

Πώς βιώνεις τη καραντίνα; Τι ρόλο παίζει η προσωπικότητα σου; Υπάρχουν προσωπικότητες που ανταποκρίνονται καλύτερα στην καραντίνα;

Η ανθρώπινη προσωπικότητα είναι μοναδική και πολύπλευρη με χαρακτηριστικά πρότυπα σκέψης, συναισθήματος και συμπεριφοράς. Είναι ενας συνδυασμός ενδογγενών και περιβαλλοντικών παραγόντων, καθώς και εμπειριών. Η προσωπικότητα κάποιου μπορεί να αλλάξει, αλλά τα βασικά χαρακτηριστικά του παραμένουν σταθερά στη διάρκεια της ζωής του.

Οι ψυχολόγοι έχουν καταλήξει σε ένα μοντέλο ταξινόμησης των προσωπικοτήτων, το λεγόμενο “Big 5”. Το μοντέλο αυτό αποτελείται από τις εξής κατηγορίες:

Theory should explain something, provide evidence and make predictions. That doesn’t mean that a theory is indisputable. A theory can be proved wrong or added upon.

So let’s see reliability and validity of Gardner’s theory. Maybe you assume that the theory became popular based on supportive study results. The truth is that the first study to test the theory was published 23 years after the theory was made public. The study did not support Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.

Does somebody need to know their IQ? Is IQ important? Is Intelligence important?

What is IQ: a measure of intelligence, G factor.
Popular IQ tests: Wais (works well toward normal distribution) & Stanford-binet (works well toward extreme and low distribution).

• Average IQ for somebody who graduates high school: 105
• Average IQ for somebody who graduates college: 115

The concept of IQ doesn’t seem to linked to close to personality.
Openness to experience/Intellectual curiosity correlates moderately to intelligence and IQ.
BUT IQ not connected to personality.
Afrer 130 points Wais test starts to lose a lot of accuracy.

A useful guide to the alarming behaviors of children that are at risk for Psychopathy. Additionally, it contains a brief explanation of the 2 types of psychopathy.

Pay attention to the 9th sign, for it contains a hot tip about the utility of punishment.

The last sentence can be also a good guidance for educational intervention programs: “They learn that they can get more of what they want by following the law as opposed to breaking the law”.

Αffirmative action is a controversial issue among teachers.

If you want to watch a dialogue about affirmative action that contains some well laid out thoughts, jokes and even to discover, for the first time in your life, the teleological thinking of Winnie the Pooh click the link below:

Justice: What’s the right thing to do? Arguing affirmative action