IB TOK and Language and Literature

Should you kill one person in order to save five? Whatever your opinion, your judgment shouldn't be swayed by whether the question is posed in your native language or in a foreign language you have mastered.

I finally watched the movie Her , directed and written by Spike Jonze (aka Adam Spiegel). The screenplay deservedly got an Oscar earlier this year. The movie explores the human-machine interface, exposing our emotional fragility in a deeply moving and lyrical story.

New research from Allen Downey, a computer scientist at Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, shows a startling correlation between the rise of the Internet and the decline of religious affiliation in the United States. According to MIT Technology Review, back in 1990 only eight percent of the U.S.

Seventy years ago, in 1940, a popular science magazine published a short article that set in motion one of the trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th century. At first glance, there seemed little about the article to augur its subsequent celebrity. Neither the title, "Science and Linguistics," nor the magazine, M.I.T.'s Technology Review, was most people's idea of glamour.

Lera Boroditsky once did a simple experiment: She asked people to close their eyes and point southeast. A room of distinguished professors in the U.S. pointed in almost every possible direction, whereas 5-year-old Australian aboriginal girls always got it right. She says the difference lies in language.

Did you know that thinking in Korean makes you process life differently than thinking in English? At least that's the case according to the undying theory that each language shapes thought in its own ways. It has hung around for eight decades now, and keeps popping up in the darndest places.

Debate.org is a dynamic social community where you can voice your opinion on today's hottest issues.

Talk of media revolution is so ubiquitous that we sometimes become inured to the force of what we say. We nod our head in agreement that change is everywhere, but we fail to think through the consequences of change.

Once upon a time, an animation studio known as the Walt Disney Company cast a magical spell, allowing it to seize control of the fairy tale kingdom and grow into a multinational mass media corporation to dwarf Jack's beanstalk.