University alerts students to danger of leftwing essay | Education An essay by a prominent leftwing academic that examines the ethics of socialist revolution has been targeted by a leading university using the government’s counter-terrorism strategy. Students at the University of Reading have been told to take care when reading an essay by the late Professor Norman Geras, in order to avoid falling foul of Prevent. Third-year politics undergraduates have been warned not to access it on personal devices, to read it only in a secure setting, and not to leave it lying around where it might be spotted “inadvertently or otherwise, by those who are not prepared to view it”. The essay, listed as “essential” reading for the university’s Justice and Injustice politics module last year, is titled Our Morals: The Ethics of Revolution. Waqas Tufail, a senior lecturer in criminology at Leeds Beckett University,, who wrote a report about Prevent last year,, described the case at Reading as “hugely concerning”. … we have a small favour to ask.
Amy Chua – Think Again - a Big Think Podcast #137 – U.S. and Them Subscribe on Google Play, Stitcher, or iTunes Come talk to us on Twitter: @bigthinkagain I don’t know about you, but for me, middle school was horrible. My guest today is Yale Law professor Amy Chua, who shook the Internet up a few years back with her book BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER. In her powerful new book POLITICAL TRIBES: GROUP INSTINCT AND THE FATE OF NATIONS, Amy points out that long past high school, group instinct is much stronger than Americans generally like to admit. Surprise conversation-starter clips in this episode: Michael Norton on the link between money and happiness, Derek Thompson on “coolness” About Think Again - A Big Think Podcast: Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from creative and curious minds. You've got 10 minutes with Einstein.
How scientists fool themselves – and how they can stop Illustration by Dale Edwin Murray In 2013, five years after he co-authored a paper showing that Democratic candidates in the United States could get more votes by moving slightly to the right on economic policy1, Andrew Gelman, a statistician at Columbia University in New York City, was chagrined to learn of an error in the data analysis. In trying to replicate the work, an undergraduate student named Yang Yang Hu had discovered that Gelman had got the sign wrong on one of the variables. Gelman immediately published a three-sentence correction, declaring that everything in the paper's crucial section should be considered wrong until proved otherwise. Reflecting today on how it happened, Gelman traces his error back to the natural fallibility of the human brain: “The results seemed perfectly reasonable,” he says. This is the big problem in science that no one is talking about: even an honest person is a master of self-deception. The problem Hypothesis myopia The Texas sharpshooter
Alarm over talks to implant UK employees with microchips Britain’s biggest employer organisation and main trade union body have sounded the alarm over the prospect of British companies implanting staff with microchips to improve security. UK firm BioTeq, which offers the implants to businesses and individuals, has already fitted 150 implants in the UK. The tiny chips, implanted in the flesh between the thumb and forefinger, are similar to those for pets. They enable people to open their front door, access their office or start their car with a wave of their hand, and can also store medical data. Another company, Biohax of Sweden, also provides human chip implants the size of a grain of rice. It told the Sunday Telegraph (£) that it is in discussions with several British legal and financial firms about fitting their employees with microchips, including one major company with hundreds of thousands of employees. The CBI, which represents 190,000 UK businesses, voiced concerns about the prospect. They cost between £70 and £260 per person.
Margaret Heffernan: Forget the pecking order at work | TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript This Is How Fox News Brainwashes Its Viewers: Our In-Depth Investigation of the Propaganda Cycle 2016 presidential primary season is in full swing, which means, among other things, that Fox News’ ratings are skyrocketing. Fox News has been the most watched cable news network in the country for 12 straight years, regularly pulling in more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined. During the first Republican primary debate of this season, Fox clocked its most-ever (24 million) viewers, making the two-hour show the highest-rated non-sports cable telecast of all time. Over the last ten years, everyone I know has lost a friend or family member or mentor to Fox News. What these people so dear to us fail to understand is that Fox News is not only uninterested in being fair and balanced; it is also uninterested in being a reliable source of news. Consider Trayvon Martin. When a grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown, Sean Hannity proved Boehlert’s claim. The Fox News Propaganda Cycle Isolate Viewers False Dichotomies Ad Nauseam Create Enemy Projection/Flipping
UK intelligence and police using child spies in covert operations | UK news British police and intelligence agencies are using children as spies in covert operations against terrorists, gangs and drug dealers. A committee of the House of Lords revealed the practice while raising the alarm over government plans to give law enforcement bodies more freedom over their use of children. Some of the child spies are aged under 16, the committee says, adding that it was worried about proposals to extend from one month to four the period of time between each occasion that child spies go through a re-registration process. “We are concerned that enabling a young person to participate in covert activity associated with serious crime for an extended period of time may increase the risks to their mental and physical welfare,” said the committee, chaired by Lord Trefgarne, a former Tory government minister. The House of Lords secondary legislation scrutiny committee raised concerns over the orders in a report published last Thursday. … we have a small favour to ask.
BBC Radio 4 - The Tyranny of Story, Episode 1 Top Ten Ads of the Year 2015 | Creative Review It’s been a complicated year in advertising. We’ve seen marketing campaigns masquerading as products, sculptures and even entire shops, but the traditional worlds of TV and film (and occasionally even print and poster) have flourished too. Here, in reverse order, are our favourites this year. 10. Volvo, LifePaint, Grey London Anyone who follows the CR website regularly will know that including Volvo LifePaint in this list is controversial. 9. Diesel launched a new brand language this year, which emphasised its irreverent heritage and was used across posters, print and also in unexpected media such as Tinder and Shazam. 8. To gain chatter around its new drama series Humans, Channel 4 created an elaborate campaign featuring a fictional company titled Persona Synthetics which purported to sell cyborgs to help us around the home. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. John Lewis is king of the Christmas ads in the UK, and with this year’s spot it once again proved why. 2. 1.
I survived the Warsaw ghetto. Here are the lessons I’d like to pass on | Stanisław Aronson Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel stated this summer that “when the generation that survived the war is no longer here, we’ll find out whether we have learned from history”. As a Polish Jew born in 1925, who survived the Warsaw ghetto, lost my family in the Holocaust, served in a special operations unit of the Polish underground, the Home Army, and fought in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, I know what it means to be at the sharp end of European history – and I fear that the battle to draw the right lessons from that time is in danger of being lost. Now 93 years old and living in Tel Aviv, I have watched from afar in recent years as armchair patriots in my native Poland have sought to exploit and manipulate the memories and experiences of my generation. But this is not just a Polish phenomenon: it is happening in many parts of Europe, and our experiences hold lessons for the whole continent. The same applies to those who failed in their moral obligations during that time.
BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Tracey Thorn Tracey Thorn, musician and writer, is interviewed by Lauren Laverne. Tracey Thorn, musician and writer, is best known as one half of the duo Everything but the Girl. Brought up in Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire, she bought her first guitar, a black Les Paul copy, when she was 16 and her first band was called the Stern Bobs. At 35 she left the pop world to look after her twin girls, who were followed by her son Blake. This year Tracey was presented with the outstanding contribution to music prize, at the AIM independent music awards. Presenter: Lauren LaverneProducer: Cathy Drysdale Donald Trump 2016: The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter If I asked you what most defines Donald Trump supporters, what would you say? They’re white? They’re poor? You’d be wrong. Story Continued Below In fact, I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism. That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations. My finding is the result of a national poll I conducted in the last five days of December under the auspices of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, sampling 1,800 registered voters across the country and the political spectrum. Authoritarianism is not a new, untested concept in the American electorate. Not all authoritarians are Republicans by any means; in national surveys since 1992, many authoritarians have also self-identified as independents and Democrats. So what does this mean for the election?