How Tim Pool used Google Glass to cover Istanbul protests

Is free will a scientific problem?

By Neil Levy, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health

An American neuroscientist claims to have solved the problem of free will. Peter Tse, who works at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, says that the key to free will lies in how neurons can rewire each other. But I would argue the problem of free will is a conceptual problem, not a scientific one.

In an article he recently published in New Scientist, and at much greater length in his book The Neural Basis of Free Will, Tse sets out his theory according to which neurons rewire each other. They can form temporary circuits, and alter the criteria to which they respond in the future.

Explainer: what is geoblocking?

By Karl Schaffarczyk, University of Canberra

So you sit down in front of your computer to catch the latest episode of Doctor Who directly from BBC’s iPlayer, and you are greeted by an error message informing you that the program will play only in the UK.

So why are you blocked? How does the BBC website know you are not in the UK?

Geoblocking is the system used to limit your access to the internet, based on your geographic location.

Epictetus: The First Self-Help Philosopher?

A Greek philosopher of 1st and early 2nd centuries C.E., and an exponent of Stoic ethics notable for the consistency and power of his ethical thought and for effective methods of teaching. Epictetus' chief concerns are with integrity, self-management, and personal freedom, which he advocates by demanding of his students a thorough examination of two central ideas, the capacity he terms ‘volition’ (prohairesis) and the correct use of impressions (chrēsis tōn phantasiōn). Heartfelt and satirical by turns, Epictetus has had significant influence on the popular moralistic tradition, but he is more than a moraliser; his lucid resystematization and challenging application of Stoic ethics qualify him as an important philosopher in his own right.

The G4S debacle in London is a wake-up call on outsourcing security

By Greg Barton, Monash University

Stuff happens. When organising something as big as the Olympic Games some things are bound to go wrong.

Sometimes the failures are simply funny. Just one day after its public unveiling in Trafalgar Square, the official 500 day Countdown Clock stopped counting down. It was a real-egg-on-face moment for LOCOG but harmless black comedy for everyone else.

Complementary vs western medicine – both have a role in universities

Universities should be protected as sites where unpopular ideas and theories can be examined. uonottingham

By Paul Komesaroff, Monash University

Medicine has long been the subject of vigorous debate about the control of social resources. The formation of modern medicine in the mid-19th century was itself the result of a century long fight for legitimacy among many contending groups. At that time, those who won out – the physicians, the surgeons and those who prepared and sold medicines – had no more evidence to support them than those they defeated. They succeeded on the basis of politics, not of evidence.

Why is Telstra Next G serving your data to Netsweeper in America?

By Mark Gregory, RMIT University

Telstra representatives have this week admitted to collecting data for a new internet filtering product and sending this data to the USA office of Netsweeper Inc.

Netsweeper Inc, based near Toronto, Canada, provides web content filtering and web threat management solutions. Web threat management solutions are designed to reduce email and web based threats such as phishing, viruses, malware and include the capability to do content filtering.

What happens to your Facebook account when you die?

It’s a simple question without a simple answer, unless you’re willing to accept “it depends” as a simple answer. The result depends upon what you friends and family decide to request and perhaps even what instructions you leave behind. Let’s go through Facebook’s policy and explore all of the options:

Earthquakes and mining - how humans create seismic activity

By Christian Klose, Northwest Research Associates

This week’s 5.3 magnitude earthquake that struck near Moe in Victoria’s brown-coal mining region of the La Trobe Valley brings to mind the 5.6 magnitude quake of 1989 in another coal-mining heartland: NSW’s Hunter Valley.

Mining cannot be blamed for the Moe quake in the La Trobe Valley’s coalfields. However, it can be argued that mining played a large part in the destruction wrought in 1989 upon Newcastle, with its proximity to underground black-coal mining.

Alfred Hitchock's - Marnie

Marnie is one of the most fascinating failures of Alfred Hitchcock. The film was a critical and popular dissapointment when it premiered in 1964. Many critics were turned off by the film's eclectic blend of mystery, crime, sexual dysfunction, and psychoanalytical elements. But the film has come into its own to be widely acknowledged as one of Hitchcock's most interesting and misunderstood films.

The Transit of Venus

A transit of Venus occurs when Venus is observed to move across the face of the Sun. The first transit since 1882 occurred on 8 June 2004. The next transit will occur on 6 June 2012, and be visible in Sydney from beginning to end, starting at 8.16am (1st contact) and ending at 2.44pm (last contact). The following transit of Venus won’t occur until 2117.

The Shock Doctrine and Disaster Capitalism

It’s All a Grand Capitalist Conspiracy

When Milton Friedman died in 2006, the acclaim for his work was nearly universal. Even his ideological opponents, like Paul Krugman and Lawrence Summers, treated this Nobel Prize-winning economist — who taught for decades at the University of Chicago — with respect.

Naomi Klein will have none of it. In her new book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” she essentially accuses Friedman of being the godfather of a Mafia-like gang, the Chicago Boys, who have exploited the public disorientation associated with catastrophes and political crises to impose an unwanted free-market ideology on much of the world.

Lessons in Secular Criticism, Thinking Out Loud 2012

“Secular criticism” is a term invented by Edward Said to combat the desire of much of modern thinking to reach for the transcendental, the very space philosophy wrested away from religion in the name of modernity. Stathis Gourgouris reinvokes the term “secular criticism” as a compass for addressing the necessity to reconceptualise the political space against religious tendencies of all kinds. Gourgouris will focus specifically on those parameters needed for societies to create new forms of collective reflection, interrogation, and action, which alter not only the current terrain of dominant politics but the very self-conceptualisation of what it means to be human. The most important dimension of the secular imagination is not the battle against religion per se, but the creation of radical conditions of social autonomy. Gourgouris will address these issues with the following series of lectures.                            

The Nature of Time

The Persistence of Time, Salvador Dali (1931)

When we normally talk about time, we can mean different things. There is, of course, the conventional time measured by physical clocks. When we ask someone “what time is it?” it is this physical time we typically mean. But there is also a more psychological kind of time, as when we say “time flew by” or “that seemed like forever”. Such expressions show us that the subjective passage of time is sometimes faster or slower than the objective passage of time that clocks measure. It seems, then, that these two types of time are distinct, at least as far as the rate of passage of time is concerned. Our inquiry into time does not presuppose that objective time is more real than subjective time, or vice versa. Rather, our approach is to acknowledge both these aspects of time, and then to see what inquiry reveals about them.

Scientism - Is science folly?

Most of us were raised with the idea that reality is the material cosmos. We were all taught that there is a real external world "out there" containing rocks, atoms, cells, animals, plants, etc., and that this material world is all there is. As Carl Sagan tells us in his opening lines of the popular Cosmos television series, "The cosmos is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be."

Serendipity

  

One day in 1945, a man named Percy Spencer was touring one of the laboratories he managed at Raytheon in Waltham, Massachusetts, a supplier of radar technology to the Allied forces. He was standing by a magnetron, a vacuum tube which generates microwaves, to boost the sensitivity of radar, when he felt a strange sensation. Checking his pocket, he found his chocolate bar had melted. Surprised and intrigued, he sent for a bag of popcorn, and held it up to the magnetron. The popcorn popped. Within a year, Raytheon made a patent application for a microwave oven.

Xenophobia - Is Breivik mad, bad and a psychopath?

Psychiatrists in Norway who examined him say he’s as sane as you or me. But that verdict was immediately questioned by two eminent figures as Breivik went on trial for the murder of 77 people: the psychiatrists Dr Raj Persaud and Dr Ramon Spaaij, an expert on so-called “lone wolf” killers.



The Singularity

Human history has been characterized by an accelerating rate of technological progress. It is caused by a positive feedback loop. A new technology, such as agriculture, allows an increase in population. A larger population has more brains at work, so the next technology is developed or discovered more quickly.  In more recent times, larger numbers of people are liberated from peasant-level agriculture into professions that entail more education. So not only are there more brains to think, but those brains have more knowledge to work with, and more time to spend on coming up with new ideas.

A Tale of Two Easters

Why one faith and two celebrations?

Easter is not only a movable holiday but a multiple one: in most years Western Christian churches and Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate Easter on different dates. In 2012, for example, Easter will be celebrated on April 8 by Western churches and April 15 by Orthodox churches. But in 2011, the two celebrations occured on the same date, April 24.

Superstition

Christian Northeast/New York Times

Pick up any dictionary, and look up the work superstitious and you'll find a definition that goes something like this: 

excessively credulous belief in and reverence for supernatural beings.

or

a widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event, or a practice based on such a belief.

The questions is, are those beliefs incredulous and/or unjustified?