Four More Years . . .
Today we learnt that Barack Obama will be the President of the USA for another term. Much of the debate preceding Obama’s election victory focused on how each presidential candidate planned to resuscitate the American economy. Time will te…
Read MoreNotice: server back up
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Read MoreCould there be a Third Way for Criminal Psychopaths?
Last week, Steven Farrow was convicted of murdering a grandmother and a vicar. 77 year old Betty Yates was stabbed in the face. He had planned to crucify the vicar but had left behind his hammer an nails, instead covering his dead body in p…
Read MorePersonalised weapons of mass destruction: governments and strategic emerging technologies
Andrew Hessel, Marc Goodman and Steven Kotler sketches in an article in The Atlantic a not-too-far future when the combination of cheap bioengineering, synthetic biology and crowdsourcing of problem solving allows not just personalised medi…
Read MoreThe Fable of Speeding and Prance Legstrong
Imagine that the Teetotaler party came to power. They stood for family, safety and old fashioned values. Their first target was the car and the speeding culture. They wanted driving to be as safe as possible. Indeed, they would have preferr…
Read MoreWhen the science of sexuality meets the politics of gay rights
By Brian Earp See Brian’s most recent previous post by clicking here. See all of Brian’s previous posts by clicking here. Follow Brian on Twitter by clicking here. Gay genes and gay rights: On the science and politics of sexuality If…
Read MoreSingularity Summit: How we’re predicting AI
When will we have proper AI? The literature is full of answers to this question, as confident as they are contradictory. In a talk given at the Singularity Institute in San Francisco, I analyse these prediction from a theoretical standpoint…
Read MoreToo much too young?
There has been outrage this week over a new sex education website aimed at young teenagers. Funded by an NHS West Midlands research fund, Respect Yourself has been developed by Warwickshire County Council in collaboration with NHS Warwicksh…
Read MoreNine to five philosophers
Owen Barfield was lunching in C.S. Lewis’s rooms. Lewis, who was then a philosophy tutor, referred to philosophy as ‘a subject’. ‘”It wasn’t a subject to Plato”, said Barfield, “It was a way.”’1 It would be dangerous for a modern professio…
Read MorePatient L’s Autonomy
‘Patient L’ is a man in a vegetative state, under the care of Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust. The Trust has placed a Do Not Rescuscitate order in his notes, yet his family claim that he himself would want to be revived if his condition deter…
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