Religions thrived to protect against disease - Telegraph
Prof Richard Dawkins the atheist and sceptic, has condemned religion as a "virus of the mind" but it seems that people became religious for good reason - actually to avoid infection by viruses and other diseases - according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences.
Courage Comes With Practice -- This I Believe
I believe that embracing fear produces courage.
After my brother died in an accident, my mother was inconsolable. I was only four-years old at the time but I still understood the seismic shift in my mom's attitude toward safety. Suddenly everything around us was potentially dangerous. Overnight, the world had gone from a playground to a hazardous zone.
Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - NYTimes.com
Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
As teenagers' scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading -- diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.
But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.
Seven reasons why people hate reason - opinion - 14 July 2008 - New Scientist
From religious fundamentalism to pseudoscience, it seems that forces are attacking the Enlightenment world view - characterised by rational, scientific thinking - from all sides. The debate seems black and white: you're either with reason, or you're against it. But is it so simple? In a series of special essays, our contributors look more carefully at some of the most provocative charges against reason. The results suggest that for all the Enlightenment has achieved, we still have a lot of work to do.
For Marriage, the Honeymoon's Over - ChronicleReview.com
If professional philosophers did their jobs, analyzed concrete philosophical problems, and won media attention for their conclusions, we wouldn't be sentenced to the cable simplicities of right-wing marriage pundits, or the often ahistorical rights-focused arguments of same-sex-marriage champions. We'd be forced to think hard about what marriage has been, is, and should be, before deciding to whom we're willing to sell tickets.
Brain That Changes Itself: into the abyss Telegraph.co.uk
Can a damaged brain change its own structure and learn to replace lost functions? Conventional neuroscience once said no, but pioneers in the field have achieved miraculous transformations. From his investigation of their work, Norman Doidge tells the story of the perpetually falling woman.
Good Mood Gone Bad -- Science News
Schnall hypothesized that positive and negative feelings evolved, in part, to trigger contrasting thinking styles. Happiness signals a sense of personal safety that encourages a relaxed, broad focus on one's immediate situation. Sadness reflects awareness of a difficult problem or situation, prompting caution and a detailed surveillance of one's surroundings.
As we know, Virtue Ethics argues that virtues are developed aspects of one's character. That is, while individuals may have natural predispositions aligned with particular virtues or vices; our characters are developed over time and can best be understood as habits -- Good or Bad.
And, as is plainly clear to everyone, habits are hard to break. This is good news when it comes to habitual virtues; a person who had developed a habit for courage or honesty will behave courageously and honestly most all the time without even thinking about it too much -- this virtue has become part of this person's character. But this is bad news when it comes to vices -- those who develop a habit for dishonestly, disloyalty, or callousness will, very likely, behave in these ways most of the time -- these bad habits have become parts of the person's character -- the person really IS disloyal and callous.
Years ago a NBA player named Charles Barkley (now a sports commentator I think) was being interviewed about his 'negative' behavior on and off the court. The reporter asked Charles about his duty to be a role model to all the young people who idolized him. "I am not a role model" was Barkley's response, kids should be looking up to their parents.
What do you make of this? Aristotle would say, probably, that we don't have the luxury of choosing whether to be a role model or not. We are all role models and some of us, due to our position in society are role models for thousands or millions of people ~ celebrities, actors, sports start, musicians, politicians, teachers...
Does being in the social spotlight put a special moral duty on a person to work hard to be a good role model?
There is a basic problem we need to address concerning self-esteem.
To some extent it seems clear that a person who has good self-esteem (self-respect) and who thinks highly of herself will have the internal motivation to work toward the Good Life. Conversely, a person full of self-loathing, who hates herself and thinks she is a bad person may not think herself worthy of the happiness the Good Life can bring and so she may have no motivation to work toward betterment.
Toward a Type 1 civilization By Michael Shermer -LA Times
Along with energy policy, political and economic systems must also evolve.
Our civilization is fast approaching a tipping point. Humans will need to make the transition from nonrenewable fossil fuels as the primary source of our energy to renewable energy sources that will allow us to flourish into the future. Failure to make that transformation will doom us to the endless political machinations and economic conflicts that have plagued civilization for the last half-millennium.
We need new technologies to be sure, but without evolved political and economic systems, we cannot become what we must. And what is that? A Type 1 civilization. Let me explain.
Study: No gender differences in math performance -- Phsyorg.com
We've all heard it. Many of us in fact believe it. Girls just aren't as good at math as boys. But is it true? After sifting through mountains of data - including SAT results and math scores from 7 million students who were tested in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act - a team of scientists says the answer is no. Whether they looked at average performance, the scores of the most gifted children or students' ability to solve complex math problems, girls measured up to boys.
How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results
Why subjective anecdotes often trump objective data
By Michael Shermer -Scientific American
The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition--thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.
...The reason for this cognitive disconnect is that we have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old. So it is that any medical huckster promising that A will cure B has only to advertise a handful of successful anecdotes in the form of testimonials.
Naturally, the common people don't want war ... it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
Losing Sight of Progress
How blind salamanders make nonsense of creationists' claims.
-By Christopher Hitchens -Slate Magazine
It is extremely seldom that one has the opportunity to think a new thought about a familiar subject, let alone an original thought on a contested subject, so when I had a moment of eureka a few nights ago, my very first instinct was to distrust my very first instinct...
Mirrors Don't Lie. Mislead? Oh, Yes. -By Natalie Angier - NYTimes.com
To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions about perception and cognition in humans and other neuronally gifted species, and how the brain interprets and acts upon the great tides of sensory information from the external world. They are using mirrors to study how the brain decides what is self and what is other, how it judges distances and trajectories of objects, and how it reconstructs the richly three-dimensional quality of the outside world from what is essentially a two-dimensional snapshot taken by the retina's flat sheet of receptor cells. They are applying mirrors in medicine, to create reflected images of patients' limbs or other body parts and thus trick the brain into healing itself. Mirror therapy has been successful in treating disorders like phantom limb syndrome, chronic pain and post-stroke paralysis.
Professor Antony Flew reviews The God Delusion
Antony Flew -bethinking.org
On 1st November 2007, Professor Antony Flew's new book There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind was published by HarperOne. Professor Flew has been called 'the world's most influential philosophical atheist', as well as 'one of the most renowned atheists of the 20th Century' (see Peter S. Williams' bethinking.org article "A change of mind for Antony Flew"). In his book, Professor Flew recounts how he has come to believe in a Creator God as a result of the scientific evidence and philosophical argument.
More words from Flew, and Dawkins' response (2-8-08):
Richard Dawkins branded 'secularist bigot' by veteran philosopher
By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent -Telegraph.co.uk
The prominent scientist Richard Dawkins has been denounced as a "secularist bigot" by a philosopher who was himself once renowned for being an atheist.
He is accused by Prof Antony Flew of being more interested in promoting his personal views than finding the truth, in the latest controversy over his best-selling book The God Delusion.
Prof Dawkins, professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, is also said to have "scandalously" selected particular quotes from Einstein to back up his claims that God does not exist and that people who believe in a divine creator despite an abundance of contradictory evidence are delusional.
The Periodic Table of Videos - University of Nottingham
Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century - but this modern version has a short video about each one.
Is online college exam site ethical? - CNN.com
A Web site developed this year that allows students to share old exams online is causing debate among professors about its ethical implications. PostYourTest.com is an educational tool that lets students anonymously upload materials and tests from their previous and current classes, said Demir Oral, creator of the site.
The 411 to avoid boredom- Los Angeles Times
Crackberry. Only a metaphor for our addiction-like urge to check e-mail? Or does the term shed light on a deep biological truth about our hunger for information?
Human-motivation studies traditionally stress well-established needs: food, water, sex, avoidance of pain. In a culture like ours, most of these needs can be satisfied easily. Just open the refrigerator door, or blow on that spoonful of hot soup. (Satisfying the need for sex may require a bit more doing.)
What's been missing from this scientific research is humans' nonstop need for more information.
How a simple mathematic formula is starting to explain the bizarre prevalence of altruism in society-- Physorg.com
This is a question that has puzzled academics for centuries, especially since in evolution the basis for the "survival of the fittest" is, after all, selfishness. But in an article just published in the journal Nature, three Portuguese theoretical physicists develop a mathematical model capable of providing a way out from this conundrum through the introduction of social diversity - a ubiquitous characteristic of modern social networks - and suggesting that that the act of cooperation is dependent on one's social context/ranking.
'Ten Commandments' of race and genetics issued - New Scientist
1. All races are created equal: No genetic data has ever shown that one group of people is inherently superior to another. Equality is a moral value central to the idea of human rights; discrimination against any group should never be tolerated.
The Impassive Bystander -- Washington Post
"This is a clear indication of what we have become when you see a man laying in the street, hit by a car, and people drive around him and walk by him," Hartford Police Chief Daryl K. Roberts will tell a news conference. "At the end of the day, we have to look at ourselves and understand that our moral values have now changed. We have no regard for each other."
Are you really as good as you think you are? Deep down inside, is there a hero waiting there or an apathetic little soul soaked in indifference?
Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom: Scientific American
Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male.
Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports. Gramzay found an egg from another pair of penguins that was having difficulty hatching it and slipped it into Roy and Silo's nest. Roy and Silo took turns warming the egg with their blubbery underbellies until, after 34 days, a female chick pecked her way into the world. Roy and Silo kept the gray, fuzzy chick warm and regurgitated food into her tiny black beak.
Like most animal species, penguins tend to pair with the opposite sex, for the obvious reason. But researchers are finding that same-sex couplings are surprisingly widespread in the animal kingdom. Roy and Silo belong to one of as many as 1,500 species of wild and captive animals that have been observed engaging in homosexual activity. Researchers have seen such same-sex goings-on in both male and female, old and young, and social and solitary creatures and on branches of the evolutionary tree ranging from insects to mammals.
The Evolution of Economic Rationality: Do Monkeys Understand Money? | Psychology Today Blogs
Money is a powerful force in human life and affairs. Its very power gives pause to those who look to evolution for full explanations of human behavior, because money has not existed long enough to have influenced evolution. By some estimates, money only goes back a couple thousand years, which is too short even to have influenced human evolution.
Still, one can get some clues as to how evolution prepared us for money from the burgeoning research that seeks to present animals with economic choices. To gain perspective on human financial decisions, one may ask, what would monkeys do?
Utilitarianism argues that there is only one moral absolute, that one should always serve the greater good -- but otherwise things are circumstantial. Lying is usually wrong since it usually produces more harm than good, but lying is not wrong in an absolute way -- in cases where lies produce more good than bad, lies are morally good. The same goes for stealing, killing innocent people, and everything else. Killing innocent people intentionally is, in the vast majority of cases, morally wrong since it produces more harm than good when the interests of all people are considered equally. But, killing innocent people is not wrong in an inherent way -- it is wrong because of its likely consequences to the greater good.
Years ago when my wife was in her first year of graduate school, she was taking a creative writing workshop. This class of about a dozen new graduate students was focused on writing short stories and spending lots of time critiquing the work of your classmates.
One night Jill asked my advice. She told me the story she'd just read by one of her classmates was really terrible and she wasn't sure what she could say about it in class that wouldn't seem really mean to the author -- it was that bad. I read the story myself and had to ask Jill if it might be some sort of joke. This was the sort of story that an 7th grade boy might write -- I remember the line, "My name is Terry, but most people call me The Snake!" This story was, really, terrible -- very funny but not in ways the author intended.
Corporate media colludes with democracy's demise.
by: Bill Moyers, In These Times | truthout.org
I heard this story a long time ago, growing up in Choctaw County in Oklahoma before my family moved to Texas. A tribal elder was telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging within himself. He said, "It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."
The boy took this in for a few minutes and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf won?"
The old Cherokee replied simply, "The one I feed."
Democracy is that way. The wolf that wins is the one we feed. And in our society, media provides the fodder.
Our media institutions, deeply embedded in the power structures of society, are not providing the information that we need to make our democracy work. To put it another way, corporate media consolidation is a corrosive social force. It robs people of their voice in public affairs and pollutes the political culture. And it turns the debates about profound issues into a shouting match of polarized views promulgated by partisan apologists who trivialize democracy while refusing to speak the truth about how our country is being plundered.
---
This article was adapted from Bill Moyers' keynote address at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis on June 7. [pdf]
When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans - NYTimes.com
If you caught your son burning ants with a magnifying glass, would it bother you less than if you found him torturing a mouse with a soldering iron? How about a snake? How about his sister
When Empathy Moves Us to Action - By Daniel Goleman -- SharpBrains
Cognitive empathy alone is not enough. We also need what Ekman calls "emotional empathy"--when you physically feel what other people feel, as though their emotions were contagious. This emotional contagion depends in large part on cells in the brain called mirror neurons, which fire when we sense another's emotional state, creating an echo of that state inside our own minds. Emotional empathy attunes us to another person's inner emotional world, a plus for a wide range of professions, from sales to nursing--not to mention for any parent or lover.
Study Finds left-wing Brain, Right-wing BrainBy Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times
In a simple experiment reported todayin the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.
Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.
Children are naturally prone to be empathic and moral, University of Chicago study shows | The University of Chicago
Children between the ages of seven and 12 appear to be naturally inclined to feel empathy for others in pain, according to researchers who used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans to study responses in children.
The responses on the scans were similar to those found in studies of adults. Researchers found that children, like adults, show responses to seeing someone in pain in the same areas of their brains. The research also found additional areas of the brain, those connected with moral reasoning, were activated when youngsters saw another person intentionally hurt by another individual.
English wiki browser by chainofthoughts.com
Type in a subject you would like to research and this generates a list (you choose its length) of related keywords and topics. You can visit a Wikipedia page at any time or continue navigating through the related keywords until you find what you want. It is a very cool way of diversifying a research effort.
If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural - washingtonpost.com
"You gotta see this!" Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.
As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists stared at each other. Grafman was thinking, "Whoa -- wait a minute!"
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Remarks of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold...
..."Mr. President, I sit on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and I am one of the few members of this body who has been fully briefed on the warrantless wiretapping program. And, based on what I know, I can promise that if more information is declassified about the program in the future, as is likely to happen either due to the Inspector General report, the election of a new President, or simply the passage of time, members of this body will regret that we passed this legislation. I am also familiar with the collection activities that have been conducted under the Protect America Act and will continue under this bill. I invite any of my colleagues who wish to know more about those activities to come speak to me in a classified setting. Publicly, all I can say is that I have serious concerns about how those activities may have impacted the civil liberties of Americans. If we grant these new powers to the government and the effects become known to the American people, we will realize what a mistake it was, of that I am sure.
So I hope my colleagues will think long and hard about their votes on this bill, and consider how they, and their constituents, will feel about this vote five, ten or twenty years from now. I am confident that history will not judge this Senate kindly if it endorses this tragic retreat from the principles that have governed government conduct in this sensitive area for 30 years. I urge my colleagues to stand up for the rule of law and defeat this bill. "
The world is becoming a happier place | COSMOS magazine
The world is becoming a significantly happier place, a major study published in this month's Perspectives of Psychological Science suggests.
Data from national surveys conducted between 1981 and 2006, which were collated by researchers at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research in the U.S., showed that happiness was on the rise in 40 out of 52 countries.
Why We're All Moral Hypocrites | LiveScience
Why do we choose to judge ourselves so leniently?
We have a lot wrapped up in preserving a positive self-image, said Valdesolo, and thus are loathe to admit, even to ourselves, that we sometimes behave immorally.
A flattering self-image is correlated with rewards, such as emotional stability, increased motivation and perseverance. "It is a very functional part of our psychology ... but it is not always a desirable one," explained Valdesolo.
Free speech is thorny online - CNN.com
Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative. Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.
Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.
CAUTION: Childen at Play - The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games
Thanks to the current media frenzy and barrage of lawsuits surrounding violent video games, I can't tell people what I do for a living without getting a lecture on the current plague of youth violence and the scourge that is Grand Theft Auto. I decided it was time for a rebuttal more effective than shrugging and saying, "Well, I think you're wrong."
So I sat down to write this article, and started doing some research. What I discovered startled me. I'm not sure I have the ability to write a totally serious piece - it is not in my nature to be serious, nor the nature of GR - but the issues are very serious indeed and the evidence is very real.
I am even going to use charts. With words on 'em. We spare no expense.
First off, I have absolute proof that video games are not the cause of this epidemic of youth violence in America. No, really, I do. Ready?
There is no epidemic of youth violence in America.
Brain Dead: Why Are There No Mandatory Helmet Laws? - Wheels - Autos - New York Times
LOS ANGELES -- In 1992, three surgeons at a major hospital here that specializes in organ transplants met in the hospital's cafeteria to informally discuss the California Legislature's effort to enact a mandatory motorcycle helmet law.
"This looks like it might pass," one doctor said. The others nodded. "This could have serious consequences for the hospital."
Origin of the Novel Species Noodleous doubleous: Evidence for Intelligent Design
Thomas D. Schneider, Ph.D.
Frederick, MD
Abstract
Penne Rigate will spontaneously insert itself into Rigatoni (order pasta) under liquid to gas transition conditions of H2O to create the previously unobserved species Noodleous doubleous. The estimated probability of this spontaneous generation event is too low to be explained by thermodynamics and therefore apparently represents intelligent design.
Socratic Skepticism -- Skeptic Magazine by Priscilla Sakezles
It is frequently claimed that Socrates said, "All I know is that I know nothing." For instance, Skeptic magazine makes this claim in its self-defining article in the front matter of the magazine, "What is a Skeptic?" It uses this quote to justify a long historical tradition for skepticism, but it then castigates Socrates for making this claim, saying: "this pure position is sterile and unproductive and held by virtually no one. If you are skeptical about everything, you would have to be skeptical of your own skepticism." This is a misquote that I would like to correct the record for the readers of Skeptic magazine.
'The Dumbest Generation' by Mark Bauerlein - Los Angeles Times
In the four minutes it probably takes to read this review, you will have logged exactly half the time the average 15- to 24-year-old now spends reading each day. That is, if you even bother to finish. If you are perusing this on the Internet, the big block of text below probably seems daunting, maybe even boring. Who has the time? Besides, one of your Facebook friends might have just posted a status update!
We the People of Faith -By Howard Fineman
You wouldn't think religion would matter much in this presidential election. There would seem to be so many more pressing issues: oppressive gasoline and food prices; a president widely regarded as a failure; a foreign policy that has us adrift in the world and mired in an unpopular war. Why would faith be an issue?
----------
Strong words, of course, but hardly unprecedented in our history. Whatever Thomas Jefferson's beliefs, they weren't traditional enough to satisfy his Federalist critics. In the tumultuous election of 1800, he was branded an atheist or worse, and one Federalist newspaper asked the question: Did its readers want "GOD--AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT; OR JEFFERSON--AND NO GOD!!"
We got Jefferson, and we still have God.
Ever wonder where your donations go when you give to charity by mail or over the phone? On average, commercial fundraisers deliver just 46 cents of each donated dollar to the charity. Some charities enjoy much better success, but in other cases ineffective fundraisers can take all the money that's raised.
To see how your favorite charities or causes did from 1997-2006, search our database. You can look up individual causes like St. Jude's Hospital and The Heritage Foundation, browse by charity types like animal welfare and disaster relief, or just page through the whole list.
The program that questions everything ...except your intelligence.
Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We? | Democracy and Elections | AlterNet
Ask the political scientists and you will be told that there is damning, hard evidence pointing incontrovertibly to the conclusion that millions are embarrassingly ill-informed and that they do not care that they are. There is enough evidence that one could almost conclude -- though admittedly this is a stretch -- that we are living in an Age of Ignorance.
Surprised? My guess is most people would be. The general impression seems to be that we are living in an age in which people are particularly knowledgeable. Many students tell me that they are the most well-informed generation in history.
Why are we so deluded?
Believe Me, It's Torture: Politics & Power: Christopher Hitchens ~ vanityfair.com
Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, "waterboarding" was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.
Study: World Gets Happier | LiveScience
Despite the anxieties of these times, happiness has been on the rise around the world in recent years, a new survey finds.
The upbeat outlook is attributed to economic growth in previously poor countries, democratization of others, and rising social tolerance for women and minority groups.
"It's a surprising finding," said University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who headed up the survey. "It's widely believed that it's almost impossible to raise an entire country's happiness level."
"What is Life?" Evolution of Robots is Causing Scientists to Question
"We're all machines," says Rodney Brooks author of "Flesh and Machines," and former director of M.I.T.'s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, "Robots are made of different sorts of components than we are -- we are made of biomaterials; they are silicon and steel -- but in principle, even human emotions are mechanistic."
Years Later, Stanley Milgram's Shock Experiments Still Provide Insight - NYTimes.com
Some of psychology's most famous experiments are those that expose the skull beneath the skin, the apparent cowardice or depravity pooling in almost every heart. The findings force a question. Would I really do that? Could I betray my own eyes, my judgment, even my humanity, just to complete some experiment?
The answer, if it's an honest one, often gives rise to observations about the cruelties of the day, whether suicide bombing, torture or gang atrocities. And so a psych experiment -- a mock exercise, testing individual behavior -- can become something else, a changing prism through which people view the larger culture, for better and for worse.
Textbook Piracy Grows Online, Prompting a Counterattack From Publishers - Chronicle.com
College students are increasingly downloading illegal copies of textbooks online, employing the same file-trading technologies used to steal music and movies. Feeling threatened, book publishers are stepping up efforts to stop the online piracy.
