Politics Philosophy · 2 November 2011 ·
Popper: Irrefutable Marxism has been refuted?
It’s been an in-joke amongst Popper’s critics like Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos that in the subject index of Popper’s Open Society and it’s Enemies lists Marxism as “—irrefutable” and “—refuted” at the same time (Lakatos & Feyerabend, 2010).
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Politics Psychology · 14 October 2011 ·
When did you decide to become heterosexual?
The best way to present and argument isn’t always confrontational. Sometimes (or should I say often) it’s better to ask the right questions, so that they can work it out themselves. “When did you decide to become heterosexual?” is one of them. It’s not offensive, direct—and gets people thinking.
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Politics Tech-stuff · 9 October 2011 ·
Chaos Computer Club dissects German police interception software
The hacker group Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has reverse-engineered the German state trojan software that is being used to intercept suspects’ online communication. You can read the full summary of their findings on their website. It is not my aim to reiterate the technical details of how the this remote forensic software works, rather I want to discuss some of the implications that arise from the use of evidence gathered through it.
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Politics Science · 15 June 2011 ·
The impact of external funding: Deutsche Bank and the Quantitative Products Laboratory
Both, the German daily TAZ and the weekly Der Spiegel report that the Deutsche Bank has financed lectureships and research projects at Berlin universities, and supported the foundation of the Quantitative Products Laboratory, a research institute in applied financial mathematics. This raises questions about the independence of the research carried out at the institute, and the role of external funding in science.
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German Politics · 16 May 2011 ·
Die Ökodiktatur: Ein Gespenst geht um Deutschland
Immer wieder taucht es auf, das Gespenst der Ökodiktatur, die die wehrlosen Bürger unterjocht und zur bewussten Lebensführung zwingt: Bald gibt es keine Wurststulle mehr, das Auto ist in Zukunft elektrisch und statt des Atomkraftwerks im Nachbarkreis steht wird bald ein Windrad im Garten stehen.
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Psychology Politics · 8 March 2011 ·
How can this be...?
A man and his son were away for a trip. They were driving along the highway when they had a terrible accident. The man was killed outright but the son was alive, although badly injured. The son was rushed to the hospital and was to have an emergency operation. On entering the operating theatre, the surgeon looked at the boy, and said, “I can’t do this operation. This boy is my son.” How can this be?
(Source: Sanford, A. J. (1985). Cognition and cognitive psychology. London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson.)
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Politics · 10 February 2011 ·
Democracy
The great danger in any democratic republic is the danger that people think democracy is an automaton—that is to say, an engine that goes of itself without any effort and that like the battery in the advertisement, it just keeps going and going and going. But, in fact, democracy doesn’t keep going and going and going. It requires the fuel of active citizenship. — Benjamin Barber
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Politics · 28 November 2010 ·
Something worth protesting for?
Much of this is a response to Michael Goldfarb’s article Political Marching: What’s at risk? which contemplates on the rise of protesting in the UK that coincides with a loss of impact of protesting as a means to express discontent.
Probably all protests were considered as a public temper tantrum and/or doomed to fail at their time. Only in retrospective some become justified and historically meaningful. We cannot judge their success yet. The current protests against the cuts may not succeed in overturning the decisions of the government but future decisions might be affected.
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Politics Psychology · 22 June 2010 ·
Jeremy Rifkin - The Empathic Civilisation
This is a really cool way to illustrate lecture content. This particular talk is by Jeremy Rifkin on the evolution of empathy. You can finde more videos like that on the RSA’s Youtube channel.
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Politics · 20 June 2010 ·
Fnording the BP oil spill
German blogger and fnording specialist Fefe has digged out a couple interesting facts related to BP’s oil desaster. Thus BP’s CEO Tony Hayward has sold BP shares worth £1.4 million weeks before the catastrophe to finish off his mortgage for his house. This alone would not be newsworthy, if BP hadn’t been aware of problems with the Deepwater Horizon already in February. Make of that what you will, although personally I tend to believe in coincidence…