Year: 2017

(FEE) – I just finished listening to Stephen Wolfram’s  three-part podcast titled “The Future of AI and Civilization.” If you have any interest in Artificial Intelligence and are not familiar with Wolfram’s work, you should look into it. Genius polymath, creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language, the author of A New Kind of Science, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, Wolfram is probably the smartest guy I’ve ever met. The Slow Seduction What makes his stream-of-consciousness podcast so fascinating is listening to Wolfram think out loud about where…

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(EAN) – Since it’s that time of year again, readers with (or without) an interest in the Soviet Union could use recommendations for Soviet cartoons to watch over the holidays that are the antithesis of the usual Santa-Claus fare. An outlet for entertainment, propaganda, social commentary and artistic expression, animation was a huge business in the USSR. Arguably, animated films can tell more about the Soviet Union than some history books. Many of them continue to exert vast cultural influence to this day. The list below attempts to look beyond…

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(Garrison) – Ahead of a vote in the United Nations’ General Assembly on a resolution condemning US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,  president Donald Trump and UN ambassador Nikki Haley threatened states voting for the resolution with the loss of US financial aid. “We’re watching those votes” said Trump. “Let them vote against us, we’ll save a lot. We don’t care. But this isn’t like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what…

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(FEE) – What do Albert Einstein, Salvador Dali, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Freddie Mercury have in common? They were all refugees who made extraordinary contributions to their fields. Societies who welcome refugees and migrants benefit from their contributions and the jobs they create. Opening our doors to migrants, rather than detaining them on Manus Island or elsewhere, would make us far wealthier.Detaining Refugees Australia and the West have a troubled history of dealing with refugees, largely because of community concerns about their impact. From the 80,000 refugee visas issued annually…

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Egyptian Activist and Blogger Alaa Abdelfattah. Source: screenshot from Youtube video. (GV) – Egypt’s wide-scale systematic arrests of political dissidents have allowed for full government control over a country of more than 100 million citizens. Orchestrated by Egyptian President Abdelfattah El Sisi, the imprisonment of opposition bloggers and political activists has become daily news, turning justice into a political arena pitting opponents against the regime. The case of Egyptian tech-savvy and political activist Alaa Abdelfattah has recently stirred an outrage because Abdelfattah has been imprisoned since 2013 and yet he now faces new…

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(FPIF) – Viewed one way, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan looks unassailable. He weathered last year’s coup attempt, jailed more than 50,000 opponents, fired more than 100,000 civil servants, beheaded the once powerful Turkish military, eviscerated much of his parliamentary opposition, dismissed almost half of the county’s elected officials, and rammed through a constitutional referendum that will make him an all-powerful executive following the 2019 election. In the meantime, a seemingly never-ending state of emergency allows him to rule by decree. So why is the man running scared? Because the…

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