Science and Technology
On International Day of Democracy, International Leaders Call for More Open Public Institutions
Published on www.prnewswire.com and provided by NYU Tandon School of Engineering and The Governance Lab. Sept. 13, 2018 — As the United Nations celebrates the International Day of Democracy on September 15 with its theme of “Democracy Under Strain,” The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at… »
Facebook Condemned for Empowering Right-Wing Magazine to “Drive Liberal News Outlets Into the Ground
What do you achieve when you let the Weekly Standard operate as a fact-checker for one of the internet’s most powerful platforms? “You achieve bullshit.” by Jake Johnson, staff writer For Common Dreams When Facebook selected the right-wing, Iraq War-boosting magazine The Weekly Standard as… »
Scientific publishing is a rip-off. We fund the research – it should be free
By George Monbiot for The Guardian Those who take on the global industry that traps research behind paywalls are heroes, not thieves. Never underestimate the power of one determined person. What Carole Cadwalladr has done to Facebook and big data, and Edward Snowden has done… »
AI has already been weaponised – and it shows why we should ban ‘killer robots’
Ingvild Bode, University of Kent for The Conversation A dividing line is emerging in the debate over so-called killer robots. Many countries want to see new international law on autonomous weapon systems that can target and kill people without human intervention. But those countries already developing such weapons… »
The monopolistic firewall against democratic communication in Latin America and the Caribbean
We share with our readers the text of the paper presented by Javier Tolcachier, in the event “Unraveling Digital Social Networks”, held in Quito on August 29, 30 and 31, convened by ALAI, FLACSO and CIESPAL. We have become media beings, we live online, we are connected, we are between… »
Revolution as a way to be fully human
Speech by Vito Correddu from the “Salvatore Puledda” Centre for Humanist Studies at the 14th Philosophy Congress in Beijing on behalf of the World Centre for Humanist Studies. Nowadays talking about revolution is a major reason for criticism. Naivety, obsolescence, and anti-historicity are common attributions from those dismissing idealism… »
Heroism, terrorism and social violence: Notes in political psychology III
The times of Renaissance and Enlightenment were reactions to the agricultural civilization’s system crisis and thus re-claimed the ancient rationalist thinking; this made Europe the leader of the historical evolution. The “grown-up” moral motivations were newly gaining strength together with the critical thinking. True, the humans had not yet learned… »
Heroism, terrorism and social violence: Notes in political psychology II
Akop P. Nazaretyan.- The faith in posthumous life (first that of other individuals and then of one’s own) has accompanied the history of the Homo genus for more than two million years; in an anthropological version, it radically contributed to the early Homo’s viability [8, 9]. Much later, in the… »
Heroism, terrorism and social violence: Notes in political psychology I
Akop P. Nazaretyan.- Behavioral and psychological difference between the terrorists of the 1990 – 2010s and the ones of the 1950 – 1980s reflects a worldwide trend towards increasingly primitive political thinking. The structure and logic of religious motivations and the literal faith in afterlife rewards make terrorists’ activities more… »
The Vatican roulette just got an upgrade, but the app may just be another baby factory
Many years ago (in the BC era, that is, before computers, mobile phones and apps) religious women used to count the days between periods to determine when it was safe to have sex, away from ovulation (which imprecisely happens around the middle of the cycle) in order to avoid pregnancy. »
Milagro Sala
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
