Thanks Ned for posting the Story of Stuff. I think that it is largely preaching to the choir (with emphasis on “preach”) on this blog but still it is good to know that there are people out there fighting the good fight. I’ve been thinking about these issues over the last few days. I hope to post a more robust response later this week.

So since I took twenty minutes of my time I ask you to take twenty minutes of your time to review this TED talk on A Brief History of Violence by Harvard linguist, Steven Pinker. Shotts if you are looking for an “popularized” science book, you can’t go wrong with anything by Pinker though I have only read The Language Instinct.

Anyway, this is sort of an evidenced based “feel good” story about how the chances of human being killed by another human have consistently dropped throughout history. Pinker talks about why we may believe that the opposite is true and what we may have done right in the last 400 years or so to make this possible. Please take time to view this. I think it’s really important.

pinkertalk