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.

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:

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 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.

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.

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?

Ideas4Greece

We are all aware of the challenging times Greece is presently facing. That is why we developed the Ideas4Greece campaign. We believe this is the best way to initiate a global discussion and bring awareness to the issues of a country we all cherish so much.  We call you and all members of the Greek diaspora from all corners of the world to share your idea on how to help Greece by answering this question: “if you had the power to change something in the country what would it be?”. Upload your video (up to 2 minutes) stating your idea, via twitter, Facebook or by leaving a comment on this page. Greece needs us so lets be there for her. 

Show your support and share you thoughts on how Greece can thrive again. Let your voice be heard and inspire others to speak up for a good cause.

Zombie Madness!

Zombies are everywhere! Not just on game consoles or your local movie screens, they've  take over television with Frank Darabont’s adaptation of The Walking Dead comics on Foxtel. Though zombies have been a part of popular culture for almost half a century, there’s simply no doubt that they are currently a prevalent topic of entertainment and media coverage these days. It’s as if a virus was released into the media back in the 1960′s that is spreading and taking hold of more creative properties every year.