Artificial Intelligence and Human Decision-making. Recent developments in artificial intelligence are allowing an increasing number of decisions to be passed from human to machine. Most of these to date are operational decisions – such as algorithms on the financial markets deciding what trades to make and how. However, the range of such decisions that can […] … learn more→

Humans, and perhaps their prehuman ancestors, have engaged in murder and mayhem, as individuals and in groups, for hundreds of thousands of years. And, at least since the advent of recorded history, violence and politics have been intimately related. Nation-states use violence against internal and external foes. Dissidents engage in violence against states. Competing political […] … learn more→

As part of an English writing course, my Chinese university students recently prepared a group project on being young in China in 2013. They looked at things as varied as job prospects, dating rituals, and social responsibility and, in the end, found themselves perched uneasily at a time of vast change in their country. \”We […] … learn more→

The Energy-Water Collision Our power sector is built for a water-rich world. Conventional fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants require water to cool the steam they generate to make electricity. At some power plants, a lot of the water they withdraw gets evaporated in the cooling process; at others, much of the water is discharged back […] … learn more→

In several earlier posts (see the links below), I have chronicled the ridiculous pronouncements of Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert and “rock legend” and NRA spokesman Ted Nugent. At the risk of giving these two bozos much more attention that they deserve, I think that it is important to chronicle the asinine things that they keep […] … learn more→

The Internet Watch Foundation, an organisation that aims to eliminate access to indecent images of children online, says it has received 227 reports in the past six weeks of business websites being compromised, confronting users with images of extreme child sexual abuse. These images are categorised as the most severe according to the Sentencing Guidelines […] … learn more→

From one perspective, the American Historical Association’s call to allow the “embargo” of dissertations by new Ph.D.’s for up to six years makes eminent sense. No one seems to know for sure whether having digital copies of a dissertation immediately and openly available on a university Web site will actually make publishing houses less likely […] … learn more→

I’m going to take a moment out of my busy study schedule to interrupt yours by telling you about my experiences with PhD Lifestyle Guilt. This is, as the name might suggest, the perennial guilt about having the sort of life where ‘work’ involves sitting around on the couch reading interesting stuff, and getting grants […] … learn more→

Thinking only of your career prospects now, is it better to be sexy or unsexy? This person was said to be too sexy and lost her job. But at Abercrombie & Fitch the allegation is that you can’t get a job unless you’re good looking. The A&F image of glamour has helped the company make […] … learn more→

Former major-leaguer Doug Glanville long ago shifted from glove to pen, and quite successfully. Today, for The New York Times, he writes about Alex Rodriguez, discussing how the quest for numbers misses the real point and beauty of baseball. Two paragraphs stopped me: Now major league baseball is in overdrive, stalking the players who inflated […] … learn more→