Men, Masculinities and Violence. Laurie Taylor talks to Anthony Ellis, lecturer in Criminology and Sociology at the University of Salford, about his ethnographic study conducted with men involved in serious crime and violence over the course of two years in the North of England. How do some men come to value physical violence as a resource? Historian Joanna Bourke joins the discussion. Also, stag parties and consumerism. Daniel Briggs, Professor in Criminology at the Universidad Europea de Madrid, unpicks the commercial and emotional motivations of men taking part in stag 'dos'. Is such stereotypical excessive and deviant behaviour ultimately rooted in commercial ideology?
19 December 2016
Nautilus Magazine: Why Most Planets Will Either Be Lush or Dead
Can a planet be alive? Lynn Margulis, a giant of late 20th-century biology, who had an incandescent intellect that veered toward the unorthodox, thought so. She and chemist James Lovelock together theorized that life must be a planet-altering phenomenon and the distinction between the “living” and “nonliving” parts of Earth is not as clear-cut as we think. Many members of the scientific community derided their theory, called the Gaia hypothesis, as pseudoscience, and questioned their scientific integrity. But now Margulis and Lovelock may have their revenge. Recent scientific discoveries are giving us reason to take this hypothesis more seriously. At its core is an insight about the relationship between planets and life that has changed our understanding of both, and is shaping how we look for life on other worlds.
Studying Earth’s global biosphere together, Margulis and Lovelock realized that it has some of the properties of a life form. It seems to display “homeostasis,” or self‐regulation. Many of Earth’s life‐sustaining qualities exhibit remarkable stability. The temperature range of the climate; the oxygen content of the atmosphere; the pH, chemistry, and salinity of the ocean—all these are biologically mediated. All have, for hundreds of millions of years, stayed within a range where life can thrive. Lovelock and Margulis surmised that the totality of life is interacting with its environments in ways that regulate these global qualities. They recognized that Earth is, in a sense, a living organism. Lovelock named this creature Gaia. [...]
Now, 40 years after Viking landed on Mars, we’ve learned that planets are common, including those similar in size to Earth and at the right distance from their stars to allow oceans of liquid water. Also, Lovelock’s radical idea to pay attention to the atmosphere and look for drastic departures from the expected mixture of gases now forms the cornerstone of our life‐detection strategies. Gaian thinking has crept into our ideas about evolution and the habitability of exoplanets, revising notions of the “habitable zone.” We’re realizing that it is not enough to determine basic physical properties of a planet, its size and distance from a star, in order to determine its habitability. Life itself, once it gets started, can make or keep a planet habitable. Perhaps, in some instances, life can also destroy the habitability of a planet, as it almost did on Earth during the Great Oxygenation Event (sometimes called the oxygen catastrophe) of 2.1 billion years ago. As my colleague Colin Goldblatt, a sharp young climate modeler from the University of Victoria, once said, “The defining characteristic of Earth is planetary scale life. Earth teaches us that habitability and inhabitance are inseparable.”
Nautilus Magazine: It May Not Feel Like Anything To Be an Alien
The world Go, chess, and Jeopardy champions are now all AIs. AI is projected to outmode many human professions within the next few decades. And given the rapid pace of its development, AI may soon advance to artificial general intelligence—intelligence that, like human intelligence, can combine insights from different topic areas and display flexibility and common sense. From there it is a short leap to superintelligent AI, which is smarter than humans in every respect, even those that now seem firmly in the human domain, such as scientific reasoning and social skills. Each of us alive today may be one of the last rungs on the evolutionary ladder that leads from the first living cell to synthetic intelligence.
What we are only beginning to realize is that these two forms of superhuman intelligence—alien and artificial—may not be so distinct. The technological developments we are witnessing today may have all happened before, elsewhere in the universe. The transition from biological to synthetic intelligence may be a general pattern, instantiated over and over, throughout the cosmos. The universe’s greatest intelligences may be postbiological, having grown out of civilizations that were once biological. (This is a view I share with Paul Davies, Steven Dick, Martin Rees, and Seth Shostak, among others.) To judge from the human experience—the only example we have—the transition from biological to postbiological may take only a few hundred years. [...]
In light of this, contact with an alien intelligence may be even more dangerous than we think. Biological aliens might well be hostile, but an extraterrestrial AI could pose an even greater risk. It may have goals that conflict with those of biological life, have at its disposal vastly superior intellectual abilities, and be far more durable than biological life. [...]
The question of whether AIs have an inner life is key to how we value their existence. Consciousness is the philosophical cornerstone of our moral systems, being key to our judgment of whether someone or something is a self or person rather than a mere automaton. And conversely, whether they are conscious may also be key to how they value us. The value an AI places on us may well hinge on whether it has an inner life; using its own subjective experience as a springboard, it could recognize in us the capacity for conscious experience. After all, to the extent we value the lives of other species, we value them because we feel an affinity of consciousness—thus most of us recoil from killing a chimp, but not from munching on an apple.
Jakub Marian: Map of the results of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) in science, reading, and mathematics in Europe
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) organized by the OECD is one of the most reliable wide-scale standardized student assessment studies in the world. In 2015, more than half a million 15-year-old students completed tests in science, reading, and mathematics.
PISA emphasizes the students’ ability to think independently rather than to rely on memorized methods and results, which makes it well suited for comparison of different education systems.
The main focal point of PISA 2015 was science. The study tested the students’ ability to “explain phenomena scientifically, evaluate and design scientific enquiry, and interpret data and evidence scientifically”. The highest-achieving country in science (as well as in all other disciplines) was Singapore, whose students scored 12.7% above the OECD average.
Deutsche Welle: Poland: Racism on the rise
Elsewhere, a Nigerian doctoral candidate at the University of Warsaw suffered injuries after he was attacked in the street. Over the summer, a Polish professor and a visiting German researcher were verbally and physically assaulted while conversing on a Warsaw tram in German. The attack made headlines, but there was no condemnation made by public officials. The attacker was released after three months.
Anna Tatar keeps track of racist attacks around Poland in her "brown book" for the foundation, which is called "Never Again". She recorded 400 cases in 2009-2010 and 600 two years later. The count rose to 850 in 2013, according to Police statistics, and it doubled by 2015.
"We have observed a further rise since summer 2015, higher than the official numbers suggest," she told DW. The racially charged atmosphere stems from the refugee debate during the parliamentary election campaign in fall 2015, she said. Poland has not taken in any refugees, but the numbers entering Europe overall has incensed many Poles, causing it to become a major campaign issue. [...]
A government council on combating discrimination was established in 2013 to analyze racially motivated attacks and regularly publish its findings, but it was abolished in 2016. So far, nothing has taken its place and a concrete strategy to counter the rise of xenophobia remains to be seen.
The Guardian: Tragedy or triumph? Russians agonise over how to mark 1917 revolutions
“There is no officially approved narrative of 1917; it’s too difficult and complicated,” said Mikhail Zygar, the journalist who is running the reconstruction project. “But it’s a very important period to help understand what’s happening in Russia now, and very important for the national consciousness.” [...]
During his long years in power, Putin has used history to help create a sense of national destiny and unity in Russia, most notably elevating victory in the second world war to something close to a national cult. More recently, figures from the distant past have also been co-opted into the narrative, including Vladimir the Great, the prince of Kiev who adopted Orthodox Christianity in 988, whose monument was erected outside the Kremlin last month. A monument has even been unveiled to Ivan the Terrible, a ruthless ruler who killed his own son, on the basis that he doubled Russia’s territory.Under Putin, Russians are encouraged to see history as a long list of achievements, with darker elements such as Stalin’s purges and the Gulag brushed to one side.
In this context, 1917 is problematic. On the one hand, the Soviet state that came from the revolution was the one that won the war and whose military and scientific achievements Putin thinks should be venerated. But on the other hand Putin has elevated “stability” to being one of the key tenets of his rule, and as such celebrating a revolution goes against the very grain of his political philosophy.
The Guardian: Happy birthday, Pope Francis – for God’s sake don’t retire
Francis is not the liberal the secular media sometimes paint him. He takes the traditional Catholic line on abortion, contraception, gay marriage and women priests. And yet his positions can be more nuanced than the right can tolerate. Gay people have felt welcomed by his famous “who am I to judge?” remark. He has invited transgender people into the Vatican and physically embraced them. He has opened the path to fuller inclusion of divorced and remarried Catholics with the church. He has set up a commission to investigate the possibility of women deacons, which many see as the first step to female priests. And, at the recent 500th anniversary of the Reformation, he acknowledged that Martin Luther had a point about spiritual corruption within the Catholic church.
All this – together with his sweeping reforms of Vatican finances, his work to remodel the bureaucracy known as the Curia, and his moves to empower the wider church and rid the papacy of its monarchical status – have gone down badly with traditionalists.
Some of the men who became bishops during the previous 35-year conservative ascendancy have reacted with sullen silence, in what one Vatican veteran described as “passive-aggressive non-compliance”. But others have been publicly hostile or disdainful – and some are now openly resisting him. Just a month ago, four ultra-traditionalist cardinals issued a public challenge to the pope. They said that his ruling that, in certain circumstances, remarried Catholics might take communion could require a “formal act of correction” from the College of Cardinals. They published five dubia – doubts – virtually accusing the sitting pope of heresy: something without precedent in recent Catholic history. Those who rely on the internet for their information might be forgiven for supposing a civil war is raging inside the Catholic church. That is certainly what the “culture warriors” in the US – which is where many of the most ideological hardliners are to be found – want the world to believe.
Deutsche Welle: Protesters stop lawmakers leaving Poland's parliament
The government's new media restrictions will ban journalists from shooting still pictures or video in parliament, in particular when MPs break the rules, for example by voting for an absent colleague.
Reporters will also be moved to a media centre located in another building, limiting their access to politicians.
Although banned from the main assembly room, at present journalists can mingle freely in the parliament building and grab politicians for interviews in the halls.
Several Warsaw-based journalists tweeted as more than 20 Polish media outlets refused to cover parliament on Friday, under the hashtag #DzieńBezPolitykow (Day without politicians). They included newspapers "Gazeta Wyborcza" and "Rzeczpospolita." [...]
Analysts described Friday's events as the most serious crisis in Poland's parliament in many years.
The Guardian: Killings by US police logged at twice the previous rate under new federal program
Controversy over the government’s lack of official data on killings by police was set off by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. The death of Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, led to protests and riots in the town and across the US.
The FBI’s annual count of homicides by police, which depends on chiefs voluntarily submitting their numbers, was discredited after it became clear that the method was recording less than half of all killings nationwide. [...]
The Death in Custody Reporting Act, which was reauthorized by Congress in 2014, requires states receiving federal funding for law enforcement to report all killings by police officers on a quarterly basis. Many states have, however, continued to ignore the law without being penalized. [...]
If the rate of homicides recorded by the justice department was consistent, a total of 1,080 would have been logged for all of 2015. The Guardian’s count, which uses slightly different criteria, ended at 1,146 last year. So far in 2016, it has recorded 1,025 deaths.
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