Group items tagged

"The global trend toward democratization of the last two decades has been accompanied by the resurgence of various politics of "identity/difference." From nationalist and ethnic revivals in the countries of east and central Europe to the former Soviet Union, to the politics of cultural separatism in Canada, and to social movement politics in liberal western-democracies, the negotiation of identity/difference has become a challenge to democracies everywhere. This volume brings together a group of distinguished thinkers who rearticulate and reconsider the foundations of democratic theory and practice in the light of the politics of identity/difference.\nIn Part One Jürgen Habermas, Sheldon S. Wolin, Jane Mansbridge, Seyla Benhabib, Joshua Cohen, and Iris Marion Young write on democratic theory. Part Two--on equality, difference, and public representation--contains essays by Anne Phillips, Will Kymlicka, Carol C. Gould, Jean L. Cohen, and Nancy Fraser; and Part Three--on culture, identity, and democracy--by Chantal Mouffe, Bonnie Honig, Fred Dallmayr, Joan B. Landes, and Carlos A. Forment. In the last section Richard Rorty, Robert A. Dahl, Amy Gutmann, and Benjamin R. Barber write on whether democracy needs philosophical foundations.\nThis is an excellent yext for someone interested in models of the public sphere. While all the authors are proponents of the deliberative model of democracy (as opposed to, for instance, the liberal, interest-based, technocratic, communitarian, or civic-republican) many of them place their arguments in the context of other models. So, the book reads like a symposium of like-minded people, rather than like a rally of true believers.\nAlmost all of the essays are accessible to a generalist, but several really stand out (especially those by Benhabib, Fraser, and Young)."

"TMR Editor's Note: There is perhaps no other internet hoax that is more ludicrous than the Flat Earth Theory. We're talking about the most nonsensical and preposterous, laughable and foolish hoax in history! Yes, it is that zany and loony, wacky and silly."

"It is a common misunderstanding that music is a freeform, random art. This is not the case. Almost without exception the great musical works of our history are bound by special rules that make their beauty more organized and understandable without dimming their brilliance. These rules and techniques are called music theory. Music theory is the product of over a millennium of work and innovation. It is possibly the greatest unsung achievement we have created as a species. "

"Rescher Epistemology an Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge Suny Series in Philosophy"

The founder of Palm, Jeff Hawkins, solves the mystery of Artificial Intelligence and presents his theory at the RSA Conference 2008. He gives a brief tutorial on the neocortex and then explains how the brain stores memory and then describes how to use that knowledge to create artificial intelligence. This lecture is insightful and his theory will revolutionize computer science.

"A book titled "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the Nature of the Universe" contains a notion that life does not end when the body dies, and it can last forever."

[Motivation theory which suggests five interdependent levels of basic human needs (motivators) that must be satisfied in a strict sequence starting with the lowest level. ...]

[The market for open-source software-uncopyrighted, freely reproducible computer programs-is not well understood by economists. A central source of surprise is that innovation can thrive in a market without traditional intellectual property (IP). But as we argued in a 2005 unpublished paper, "Perfectly Competitive Innovation," as a matter of theory there is no reason to believe that monopoly power through IP is needed for innovation. The market for open-source software is the poster child for this perspective.] ...

"This course will use social network analysis, both its theory and computational tools, to make sense of the social and information networks that have been fueled and rendered accessible by the internet."

"For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment.

"Europa va mal. La percepción de muchos ciudadanos es que la Unión Europea no solo no resuelve sus problemas, sino que los agrava. Desde que estalló la crisis financiera en 2007 y la del euro en 2010 los mandatarios europeos han dado prioridad a sus esfuerzos para resolver los problemas de los bancos. La creación de la Unión Bancaria prácticamente ha monopolizado los debates durante los dos últimos años. "

The networked information economy improves the practical capacities of individuals along three dimensions: (1) it improves their capacity to do more for and by themselves; (2) it enhances their capacity to do more in loose commonality with others, without being constrained to organize their relationship through a price system or in traditional hierarchical models of social and economic organization; and (3) it improves the capacity of individuals to do more in formal organizations that operate outside the market sphere. This enhanced autonomy is at the core of all the other improvements I describe. Individuals are using their newly expanded practical freedom to act and cooperate with others in ways that improve the practiced experience of democracy, justice and development, a critical culture, and community. ... [M]y approach heavily emphasizes individual action in nonmarket relations. Much of the discussion revolves around the choice between markets and nonmarket social behavior. In much of it, the state plays no role, or is perceived as playing a primarily negative role, in a way that is alien to the progressive branches of liberal political thought. In this, it seems more of a libertarian or an anarchistic thesis than a liberal one. I do not completely discount the state, as I will explain. But I do suggest that what is special about our moment is the rising efficacy of individuals and loose, nonmarket affiliations as agents of political economy.

"Social butterflies who shine at parties may get their edge from special genes that make them experts at recognizing faces. Scientists have found the strongest evidence to date that genes govern how well we keep track of who's who. The findings suggest that face-recognition and other cognitive skills may be separate from each other, and independent of general intelligence. This could help explain what makes one person good at math but bad at music, or good at spatial navigation but bad at language "People have wondered for a long time what makes one person cognitively different from another person," said cognitive psychologist Nancy Kanwisher of MIT, coauthor of the study published Jan. 7 in Current Biology. "Our study is one tiny piece of the answer to this question." The ability to recognize faces is not just handy for cocktail parties, it's crucial for distinguishing friend from foe and facilitating social interactions. If face recognition increases our ability to fend off predators and find mates, there is an evolutionary drive to encode this ability in our genes. To test this, Kanwisher's team looked at whether the ability to recognize faces runs in the family. They found that identical twins, who share 100 percent of their genes, were more similar in their face-recognition ability than fraternal twins, who share only 50 percent of their genes. This suggests the ability to recognize faces is heritable."

"When I first started working at ByWater Solutions the company was in its infancy, and as such couldn't afford a full time employee, but that didn't stop them from hiring me."