Following his excellent contribution to the Demos seminar for Black Sky Thinking Sir Martin Rees has been doing a lot of interviews publicising his book Our Final Century. This one on Edge.org is one of the more in depth that I've seen. His position can be summed up in the quote, "I am concerned about the threats and opportunities posed by 21st century science, and how to react to them. There are some intractable risks stemming from science, which we have to accept as the downside fo...
Last week saw the publication of the Conservative Party's "Green Paper" on the future of the voluntary and community sectors. Given the party's lack of manpower (especially of the female and ethnic minority kind), they've hit upon the brilliant idea of recruiting every single person in Britain (or those with passports anyway) to deliver their policies for them, hence the title, Sixty Million Citizens (although interestingly the buzz word of the moment 'co-production&...
Thanks to Jack Dalton for pointing us in the direction of William Gibson's site. Gibson, the grand-daddy of cyberpunk literature and author of the Neuromancer series, also publishes a blog and an entry for May 14th currently includes the harsh but fair point that 'Any culture that can produce a woman actually called "Baroness Strange" has got to be said to seriously have it going on'.Gibson clearly finds it funny that an institution as venerable as the House of Lords sho...
One of the most startling insights to be discussed by the group of relatives of the imprisoned drivers, who all maintain their innocence, and the spokesmen for the Road Haulage Association and Trucknet UK - an internet group that provides networked support and information for international road hauliers - was the inability for drivers to inspect their load due to health and safety and insurance requirements, while having to accept full or partial responsiblity under European law when they rea...
As President Bush tries to give billions of dollars back to some very rich people through his tax cut plan, Prof Robert Shiller, writing in the New York Times, calls for a radically new approach to tax policy:"Tax law should be based on a principle that might be called inequality insurance: the taxes would be collected in such a way as to insure that the level of inequality, after taxes and transfers, does not exceed the levels present when the law was enacted. If such indexing were put ...
Isn't it funny that teachers spend all day, every day in a learning establishment, but get very little time to learn themselves? This article (registration required - but easy!) argues that "we cannot expect teachers to create a vigorous community of learners among students if they have no parallel community to nourish themselves". The authors describe learning schemes that enable teachers to learn more about pedagogy as well as their subject areas.
The UK government is currently investigating claims that British colonial officials were responsible for a series of atrocities during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. Click here to read full article.I think this raises a variety of questions not only in regards to the way that former colonial powers deal with their past, but also about historical injustice and whether it can be redressed.
Fireflies do funny things when you get a load of them together. If you've ever seen the spectacular scenes along tropical riverbanks, where thousands upon thousands of fireflies in the trees all light up and go off simultaneously, you might have wondered why. The answer according to mathematician Steven Strogatz is that fireflies are self-organizing. As he says in this interview on Edge.org, "They manage to get in step every night of the year and flash in perfect time for hours upon ...
In breathless anticipation of The Matrix: Reloaded, the NY Times has a great article on the philosophical and artistic roots of the Matrix, and how they have contributed to its success.The first books to explore this question have also now emerged, including Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix and Exploring the Matrix: Visions of the Cyber Future. The studio itself has got in on the act, offering a collection of essays by leading thinkers in philosophy and cogn...
Very interesting story from the New York Times. It seems a hot shot young reporter, who recently resigned, had been fabricating large sections of his stories - including reports on such high-profile events as the Washington sniper killings. Apparently he would file his stories from New York whilst purporting to be at the scene elsewhere.The Times is now desperately trying to recover its credibility, with an intensive investigation to uncover the credibility of all his stories. Whether or not ...