Ethical robots in our future? Source: Meddygarnet/Flickr/CC By Dr. Benjamin Kuipers Professor of Computer Science and Engineering University of Michigan As robots become integrated into society more widely, we need to be sure they’ll behave well among us. In 1942, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov attempted to lay out a philosophical and moral framework for[…]
Photo by Å. Berg-Tesdal By Chris Kolbu The Norwegian turkaffe, literally hiking coffee, is one of the oldest coffee traditions we have. Normally prepared outside over an open fire or gas burner, it is an almost ritualized part of any hiking experience. While the act of physically preparing a cup of black coffee is becoming increasingly[…]
By Dan Wilhelm / 06.02.2016 Like a lot of people, I read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in college, which is probably the worst damned time I could have done so. It was Freshman year, and like everybody else, I was still caught up in the high of being (what we called) free for the first[…]
Credit: NASA 06.02.2016 For a few seconds early Thursday, night turned into day as an extremely bright fireball lit the pre-dawn sky over much of Arizona, blinding all-sky meteor cameras as far away as western New Mexico. Based on numerous eyewitness accounts, a small asteroid estimated at 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter – with[…]
Photo by Louis Cahill By Brian Jeganathan / 05.28.2016 In January last year, I visited Mullaitivu. Since it was after dusk, I decided to find lodging just for one night. During the day, I had the opportunity of listening to the horror stories of local Tamils who were caught in the final onslaught on Mullivaikkal[…]
Corals north of Cairns have been hit hardest by the recent bleaching. AAP Image/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Kerry By Dr. Mia Hoogenboom Senior Lecturer, Marine Biology and Aquaculture James Cook University The problems caused by mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef have continued to deepen, with the latest estimates based[…]
With Wait But Why, Tim Urban demonstrates that complex and long-form writing can stand out in an online wilderness choked with listicles and clickbait. Tim Urban Blogger Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn’t make sense, but he’s never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done. In[…]
Frontispiece to Jan Baptista van Helmont’s The Origin of Medicine (1648), showing the younger Van Helmont partially obscured by the elder — Source: Wellcome Library, London Largely forgotten today in the shadow of his more famous father, the 17th-century Flemish alchemist Francis van Helmont influenced and was friends with the likes of Locke, Boyle, and[…]
Why do campuses have “free speech zones”? John By David L. Hudson, Jr. / 05.31.2016 First Amendment Expert, Adjunct Professor of Law Vanderbilt University Colleges and universities are supposed to be places where freedom of expression flourishes. Sadly, that is not the case. At a recent debate on the Yale University campus, 66 percent of[…]
Photo by Fanghong / Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Andrea Pia Research Fellow in the Anthropology of China London School of Economics and Political Science “You have already been incredibly faithful towards the man. And you have been following all the relevant rules for establishing a co-operative. Now, what you need to do is to try to[…]
From Lara Rebello at International Business Times / 06.01.2016: The Indus Valley civilization is considered one of the oldest in the world and now archaeologists believe that it might be even older than earlier estimated. According to new research, the Bronze-Age civilization which spreads across parts of Pakistan and India, may be 8000 years old[…]
Palestinian Loss of Land, 1947 to Present – Click Image to Enlarge The writer goes around the main reason why Israeli occupation demolishes Palestinian homes and finds that it is in order to grab as much land as possible in case of a permanent solution was achieved. By Richard Hardigan According to the Israeli Committee[…]