January 21, 2004

» In the streets of Londonistan

LRB | John Upton : In the Streets of Londonistan

The regulations set down by the Bill contain an awesomely wide range of activities which it would be in the state's power to control. By Clause 21, a government may 'provide for or enable' the requisition or destruction of property (with or without compensation); the prohibition or requirement of movement to or from a specified place; the prohibition of assemblies of specified kinds at specified places or at specified times; the prohibition of travel at specified times; and last but not least, the prohibition of 'other specified activities'.

In other words, under these regulations a government can, at a stroke, isolate whole cities, control media outlets, close down telecommunications and email and prevent travel. It could ban protest demonstrations and add at will to the list of activities to be prohibited. Failure to comply with any of the provisions or with a direction or order given under the regulations will be a criminal offence

» Robots may make scientists redundant. Well, grad students anyway

Economist.com | A robot scientist

The robot scientist developed by Ross King of the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, and his colleagues, does everything a flesh-and-blood scientist does - or, rather, it does what philosophers of science say that scientists ought to do. That is, it formulates hypotheses from observations, conducts experiments to test them, and then formulates new hypotheses from the results.

» The origin of cooties

Economist.com | The evolution of disgust

These last results confirmed Dr Curtis's suspicion that disgust is not, as many disgustologists believe, just a way of avoiding eating disease-bearing materials. Rather, it extends to threats that might be contagious - in other words might be, or carry, what children refer to as "cooties", as has been suggested by Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University.