In breathless anticipation of The Matrix: Reloaded, the NY Times has a great article on the philosophical and artistic roots of the Matrix, and how they have contributed to its success.The first books to explore this question have also now emerged, including Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix and Exploring the Matrix: Visions of the Cyber Future. The studio itself has got in on the act, offering a collection of essays by leading thinkers in philosophy and cogn...
Very interesting story from the New York Times. It seems a hot shot young reporter, who recently resigned, had been fabricating large sections of his stories - including reports on such high-profile events as the Washington sniper killings. Apparently he would file his stories from New York whilst purporting to be at the scene elsewhere.The Times is now desperately trying to recover its credibility, with an intensive investigation to uncover the credibility of all his stories. Whether or not ...
From Silicon.com's excellent weekly round-up comes this news:"If you're still sprightly enough to attend any of this summer's music festivals, watch out for Microsoft's web-enabled toilet. If queues for the fetid pits of stink and stain which grace such events weren't bad enough already, MSN will be installing its 'iLoo' at various festivals in the coming months, including Glastonbury. It'll enable penny spenders to spend some time online. A spokesman for ...
Those of you who think that Wales is the last bastion of masculine dominance (think Rugby, male voice choirs, err...) may be surprised to learn that the Welsh Assembly has become the first legislative body in the world to be made up of equal numbers of men and women.All the more extraordinary when you consider that before 1997, Wales had only ever had 4 female MPs in its entire parliamentary political history.So is Wales the true (green green grass of) home of progressive politics? To read m...
The Olympic TruceThe Olympic Games were originally formed as a movement for peace in the year 776 B.C. Representatives from the warring Peloponnese region contacted the oracle of Delphi to ask his advice on how to end the cycle of violence thatcharacterised the region. His answer was an athletic event in celebration ofpeace during which all hostilities should cease, naming it ekecheira, itsmodern translation; the Olympics, literally meaning the holding of hands.Throughout ancient and modern t...
Journalists covering the recent war on Iraq have often been critical of the use of military euphemisms - collateral damage, friendly fire, 'decapitation', and so on. However, they have been more than happy to pick up another feature of American military language: nicknames.It seems a little disturbing to me that members of the Iraqi regime have suddenly acquired names that sound more than a little like super-villains from comic books. First we had 'Chemical Ali'; now, we have ...
The first thing to note is that any site on the web is, on average, only 19 clicks from any other site. This little quirk of network theory means that one of the best ways to find interesting things is just follow links and then follow them some more. The BBC news site, for instance, has a little section of �external links� on the right hand side of all the stories with links to any sites or organisations that are mentioned � if you follow these links for a while youA...
A friend of mine has been reading the Victoria Climbie report, and remarked on its hard hitting tone and the way in which it is written to elicit an emotional response in the reader by using narrative and pathos. Quite unlike your bog standard policy document, but then entirely fitting given the subject matter. This got me thinking. Is there room for taking a more literary and imaginative approach in the production of official documents in the future? Could government departments hire 'wr...
The Hawthorn Effect is where the participants or subjects in research projects, instead of acting naturally, try to please the researcher by giving her the results she is looking for. It is named after The GE corporation in Hawthorn, Ohio. It is also known as subject or response biasSingle blind control - is where the researcher or the participant does not know the purpose of the experiment. When the researcher is 'blind' this controls for the Rosenthal Effect or researcher bias; i...
How do you conduct your research? Here is a useful guide to a wide range of qualititative reserach methods...AQR Glossary