jonathanturley | While largely ignored by the media, the Clintons have their own
university scandal. Donald Trump has been rightfully criticized and sued
over his defunct Trump University. There is ample support for claiming
that the Trump University was fraudulent in its advertisements and
operations. However, the national media has been accused of again
sidestepping a scandal involving the Clintons that involves the same
type of fraud allegations. The scandal involves a dubious Laureate Education for-profit online college (Walden) and entails many of the common elements with other Clinton scandals: huge sums given to the Clintons and
questions of conflicts with Hillary Clinton during her time as
Secretary of State. There are distinctions to draw between the two
stories, but the virtual radio silence on the Clinton/Laureate story is
surprising. [I have updated the original column with some additional
thoughts, links, and clarifications for readers).
I have long been a critic of many online courses, though I am
increasingly in the minority even on my faculty. However, the rise of
online courses has allowed for an increase in dubious pitches and
practices that prey upon people who cannot afford or attend a
traditional academic institution. I should also reveal a general
opposition to for-profit universities, a view shared by many teachers and experts.
While there are some good for-profit programs from student camps to
specialized training courses, Laureate is a massive, mega-corporation
that is often criticized for its impact on education. As companies
maximize profits, students often become a mere cost of doing business. The rate of default has been higher at such for-profit universities and less than half of students at for-profit schools actually finish such programs accordingly to Brookings. Laureate is often cited as the leader in reducing education to a commodity in a mass for-profit enterprise. The company has made huge profits and is worth over $4 billion.
Laureate Education was sued over its Walden University Online
offering, which some alleged worked like a scam designed to bilk
students of tens of thousands of dollars for degrees. Students
alleged that they were repeatedly delayed and given added costs as they
tried to secure degrees, leaving them deeply in debt. Laureate itself has been criticized for “turbocharging” admissions while allowing standards to fall and shortchanging education.
The respected Inside Higher Education reported
that Laureate Education paid Bill Clinton an obscene $16.5 million
between 2010 and 2014 to serve as an honorary chancellor for Laureate
International Universities. Various news outlets said that neither Clinton nor Laureate were forthcoming on how much he was paid for the controversial association.
Bill Clinton worked as the “honorary chancellor” which sounds a bit
like the group’s pitchman. He gave speeches in various countries and was
heavily touted by the for-profit company to attract students. The size
of this payment (which has been widely reported) raises obvious
concerns as to what the company was seeking to achieve and whether
Laureate received any benefit from the association with the State
Department given its massive international operations.
NYTimes | American corporations are under new scrutiny from federal lawmakers after well-publicized episodes in which the companies laid off American workers and gave the jobs to foreigners on temporary visas.
But while corporate executives have been outspoken in defending their labor practices before Congress and the public, the American workers who lost jobs to global outsourcing companies have been largely silent.
Until recently. Now some of the workers who were displaced are starting to speak out, despite severance agreements prohibiting them from criticizing their former employers.
Marco Peña was among about 150 technology workers who were laid off in April byAbbott Laboratories, a global health care conglomerate with headquarters here. They handed in their badges and computer passwords, and turned over their work to a company based in India. But Mr. Peña, who had worked at Abbott for 12 years, said he had decided not to sign the agreement that was given to all departing employees, which included a nondisparagement clause.
Mr. Peña said his choice cost him at least $10,000 in severance pay. But on an April evening after he walked out of Abbott’s tree-lined campus here for the last time, he spent a few hours in a local bar at a gathering organized by technology worker advocates, speaking his mind about a job he had loved and lost.
“I just didn’t feel right about signing,” Mr. Peña said. “The clauses were pretty blanket. I felt like they were eroding my rights.”
Leading members of Congress from both major parties have questioned the nondisparagement agreements, which are commonly used by corporations but can prohibit ousted workers from raising complaints about what they see as a misuse of temporary visas. Lawmakers, including Richard Durbin of Illinois, the second-highest-ranking Senate Democrat, and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the Republican chairman of theSenate JudiciarySubcommittee on Immigration, have proposed revisions to visa laws to include measures allowing former employees to contest their layoffs.
“I have heard from workers who are fearful of retaliation,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. “They are told they can say whatever they want, except they can’t say anything negative about being fired.”
RT | The banks behind politicians in the western world “have allowed
the poor to rot,” and now the elites in those countries, especially the
US, are facing a revolt, journalist and author Tariq Ali told RT
America’s Chris Hedges in an exclusive interview.
“The elites who have
run the United States and western Europe have proven incapable of
offering even the smallest palliatives to their populations. They have
allowed the poor to rot ‒ regardless of skin color ‒ and grow,” Ali said. “And
so what we have is a protest against this center elite, which I call
the extreme center because whether it’s social democratic or
conservative, they unite to crush.”
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has become a perfect
example of this protest against the extreme center, he tells Hedges.
“They’ve
found in Trump someone who airs their most crazed fantasies at the same
time who attacks the banks, at the same time attacks these new treaties
which are being carried through and promises some palliatives to the
poorest section of the white working class,” Ali said.
The
right and the far right are growing around the world, while the left has
been weak. That is part of the reason that Democratic presidential
candidate Bernie Sanders wasn’t able to succeed, even though he also
offers an independent voice to the working class.
“I don’t
think that there’s anything on the radical left at the moment ‒ of
course, these things are volatile, things can happen,” he said.
cbc | Pat Kelly vividly remembers when he first knew he was a "thought leader":
"In 2005, I met another 'thought leader' and I asked him how he
became a 'thought leader' and he said 'I don't know.' It was then that I
knew I could be one too."
Kelly proved his skill at leading thoughts on the This Is That Talks
stage this past April in Whistler, BC. As you can see in the video of
his talk, Kelly confidently made grand statements, spoke with his hands,
and had slides - all hallmarks of a true "thought leader" or
"influencer."
"My talk was a big success: I said things and the audience nodded their heads."
Based on the success of his talk, Kelly hopes to appear on a number of podcasts about "big ideas."
telegraph | Our animal ancestors, and most of their
descendants, laughed simply because they were enjoying themselves,
according to a new study.
But over millions of years humans have perfected how to use the sound to wound as well.
Great apes which roamed the earth 16 million years ago are thought to be the first who developed the ability to laugh.
Modern-day Orangutans, the only species of Asian great ape, laugh when
they are having fun, while African great apes, which include gorillas
and chimpanzees, have learned that the sound can be used to influence
others, but still only use laughter while playing.
However, human have gone much further, using laughter for a range of negative emotions, including to ridicule or sneer.
Haaretz | "Religion ain’t bad; it’s people who are bad," he said. "You know the entire power structure is Zionist. They control America; they control the world. They are really against the Islam religion. So whenever a Muslim does something wrong, they blame the religion.”
Despite his frequent jabs at the Jewish community and Israel, Ali couldn't seem to alienate some of his most fervent Jewish admirers, among them Hollywood star Billy Crystal.
Crystal's 1977 impression of the boxing legend deciding to convert to Judaism and change his name to Izzy Yiskowitz became legendary on its own right. Fifteen years later, Ali had the pleasure of having Crystal perform at his 50th birthday party.
Sportscaster Howard Cosell, born Howard Cohen, was perhaps Ali's biggest defender. Unlike many others, Cosell immediately called Ali by his new, Islamic name after he changed it from Cassius Clay, and also stood up for his right to resist the draft. The Jewish journalist and the Muslim champion had a rapport that was evident in post-fight interviews, where they exchanged barbs and bantered, drawing in enchanted viewers.
WaPo | The furor over Trump’s assaults on the impartiality of a Latino judge had just begun to subside when he lobbed two tweets Friday morning responding to Warren, who had lambasted him as a “thin-skinned, racist bully” in a speech the previous evening.
“Pocahontas is at it again!” Trumpwrote in one. “Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one of the least productive U.S. Senators, has a nasty mouth.”
“No, seriously — Delete your account,” Warren tweeted back. One of the senator’s supporters secured Pocahontas.com and redirected it to Warren’s campaign site.
The real estate developer has repeatedly invoked the 17th-century Native American figure to refer to Warren, an allusion to controversy about her heritage. The senatorhas saidshe grew up amid family stories about her Cherokee lineage, but that account has not been proved.
Trump began going after Warren’s claimed ancestry earlier this year, responding to the senator’s repeated slams of him as a “loser” and a bully. “Who’s that, the Indian?” hesaidat a March news conference when asked about Warren. “You mean the Indian?”
abcnews | Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a majorClinton Foundationdonor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff.
The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later.
Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political groupCitizens United, which obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act after more the two years of litigation with the government.
A prolific fundraiser for Democratic candidates and contributor to the Clinton Foundation, who later traveled with Bill Clinton on a trip to Africa, Rajiv K. Fernando’s only known qualification for a seat on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) was his technological know-how. The Chicago securities trader, who specialized in electronic investing, sat alongside an august collection of nuclear scientists, former cabinet secretaries and members of Congress to advise Hillary Clinton on the use of tactical nuclear weapons and on other crucial arms control issues.
bostonglobe | “I’m ready,” Warren said in an interview with The Globe. “I’m ready to jump in this fight and make sure that Hillary Clinton is the next president of the United States and be sure that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the White House.”
She added: “I’m supporting Hillary Clinton because she’s a fighter, a fighter with guts.”
Asked whether Clinton should release the transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs, Warren said: “That’s for her to decide — there will be a whole lot of issues to talk about over the next several months.”
Sanders frequently calls on Clinton to release them.
She praised Sanders, saying that he has run an “incredible campaign.”
Warren, a champion of the left who passed up a presidential bid of her own, despite the urging of legions of followers, is uniquely positioned to serve as a bridge between the establishment candidacy of Clinton and Sanders supporters, who are being forced to come to terms with the Vermont senator’s loss.
Democrats view the freshman Massachusetts senator as a path of sorts to party unity, which helps explain an upsurge in buzz about Warren as a potential vice presidential pick. Senators and top staff say talking up Warren for vice president is a way to show Sanders and his millions of followers that the party establishment heard them loud and clear.
Warren and Clinton haven’t always been close — Warren called out Clinton in her book “The Two Income Trap” for switching her vote on legislation to overhaul bankruptcy laws when Clinton was in the Senate.
“Hillary Clinton could not afford such a principled position. Campaigns cost money, and that money wasn’t coming from families in financial trouble,” Warren wrote in a biting critique of the episode in which Clinton sided with the financial services sector and helped pass an industry-friendly overhaul of the bankruptcy laws.
Warren did not directly address the issue when asked about it Thursday. Instead, Warren told the Globe, “She’s someone who has had to take on a lot, and she’s going to fight back.”
counterpunch |JF: I notice you made no mention of public speaking. You used to do quite a lot of it, as I recall. Do you still?
WC: Nowhere near as much as I was doing prior to 2005. That, in part,
is because I’ve been administratively blacklisted on campuses
nationwide. There’ve been a fair number of instances in which I’ve been
lined up by faculty and/or students to deliver a lecture and college or
university presidents have directly intervened to prevent the event from
happening. In a few cases, the organizers took such abridgments of
their own intellectual rights seriously enough to force the issue and
staged the events anyway, but usually not. The meekness with which
tenured faculty members have typically submitted to administrative
dictates in situations like this has been quite enlightening, and speaks
volumes to the state of “academic freedom” in the contemporary U.S.
Both politically and psychologically, it’s of course been necessary
that the folks I’ve just described, especially those claiming a liberal
pedigree, advance some other, more palatable explanation of their
behavior and its implications. Most often, this has taken the form of
their citing some supposed defect in my scholarship and/or my “abrasive
style,” either or both of which were ostensibly pointed out to them
after their invitation was extended, causing them to rethink the
propriety of offering me a forum in a campus setting imbued with such
lofty standards of scholarship and collegiality as their own. In the
name of something like “quality control,” then, preserving the “academic
integrity” of their institutions leaves them no alternative but to
concur—always with the utmost reluctance, of course—and only in this
particular instance, mind you—with the administration’s preemption of
students’ right to hear and assess whatever I might have to say and
customary faculty prerogatives in the bargain.
The upshot is that not only has a decided majority of the liberal
professoriate exposed itself as being guilty of the most craven sort of
capitulation vis-à-vis the principles they espouse and are purportedly
prepared to defend, but the manner in which they’ve sought to
rationalize the capitulation has served to lend a completely unwarranted
appearance of “left wing” validation to the welter of falsehoods
promoted on the right for purposes of discrediting both me, personally,
and, more importantly, the kind of work I’ve been doing over the past
several decades. All of that nonsense about my having perpetrated
“scholarly fraud” and the like has been long since and repeatedly
disproven, both in court and elsewhere—that’s a matter of record, easily
accessible to anyone who cares to look—but they simply ignore such
facts in favor of the convenience embodied in regurgitating the same old
lies as a pretext.
None of this is breaking news, of course, or at least it shouldn’t
be. It’s how blacklisting has always worked. Which means, among other
things, that being blacklisted is in no sense an experience unique to
me, either currently or historically. A lot of people have been
blacklisted for one reason or another and to a greater or lesser extent
over the years, and, as is readily evidenced by the examples of Norman
Finkelstein and a number of others, that’s still true. It just happens
that among the recent cases, mine has been especially high-profile, and
is thus rather useful for illustrative purposes. So I’ve run down this
aspect of it mainly to demonstrate to anyone entertaining doubts on the
matter that not much has really changed in these respects since, say,
1955.
politico |Elizabeth Warrenhas pushed back hard on questions about a Harvard Crimson piece in 1996 that described heras Native American, saying she had no idea the school where she taught law was billing her that way and saying it never came up during her hiring a year earlier, which others have backed up.
But a 1997 Fordham Law Review piece described her as Harvard Law School's "first woman of color," based, according to the notes at the bottom of the story, on a "telephone interview with Michael Chmura, News Director, Harvard Law (Aug. 6, 1996)."
The mention was in the middle of a lengthy and heavily-annotated Fordham piece on diversity and affirmative action and women. The title of the piece, by Laura Padilla, was "Intersectionality and positionality: Situating women of color in the affirmative action dialogue."
"There are few women of color who hold important positions in the academy, Fortune 500 companies, or other prominent fields or industries," the piece says. "This is not inconsequential. Diversifying these arenas, in part by adding qualified women of color to their ranks, remains important for many reaons. For one, there are scant women of color as role models. In my three years at Stanford Law School, there were no professors who were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995."
Padilla, now at California Western School of Law, told POLITICO in an email that she doesn't remember the details of the conversation with Chmura, who is now at Babson College and didn't respond to a request for comment. It is unclear whether it was Padilla's language or Chmura's.
medialens | One of the essential functions of the corporate media is to
marginalise or silence acknowledgement of the history – and continuation
– of Western imperial aggression. The coverage of the recent sentencing
in Senegal of Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad, for crimes
against humanity, provides a useful case study.
The verdict could well have presented the opportunity for the media
to examine in detail the complicity of the US, UK, France and their
major allies in the Middle East and North Africa in the appalling
genocide Habré inflicted on Chad during his rule – from 1982 to 1990.
After all, Habré had seized power via a CIA-backed coup. As William Blum
commented in Rogue State (2002: 152):
'With US support, Habré went on to rule for eight years during which
his secret police reportedly killed tens of thousands, tortured as many
of 200,000 and disappeared an undetermined number.'
Indeed, while coverage of Chad has been largely missing from the
British corporate media, so too was the massive, secret war waged over
these eight years by the United States, France and Britain from bases in
Chad against Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar Gaddafi. (See Targeting Gaddafi: Secret Warfare and the Media, by Richard Lance Keeble, in Mirage in the Desert? Reporting the 'Arab Spring', edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble, Abramis, Bury St Edmunds, 2011, pp 281-296.)
By 1990, with the crisis in the Persian Gulf developing, the French
government had tired of Habré's genocidal policies while George Bush
senior's administration decided not to frustrate France in exchange for
co-operation in its attack on Iraq. And so Habré was secretly toppled
and in his place Idriss Déby was installed as the new President of Chad.
Yet the secret Chad coups can only be understood as part of the
United States' global imperial strategy. For since 1945, the US has
intervened in more than 70 countries – in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia. Britain, too, has engaged militarily
across the globe in virtually every year since 1914. Most of these
conflicts are conducted far away from the gaze of the corporate media.
physorg | Individuals tend to
group others based on their perceived morality, often employing
stereotypes to describe individuals or groups of people beliveved to
have different morals or values. According to Fiske et al.,
stereotypes are well described using two dimensions: warmth and
competence. Warmth (or lack of it) refers to the perceived
positive/negative intent of another person, while competence refers to
the other person's capacity to achieve their intent. Using this
terminology, the ingroup, or the group that you belong to, is both warm
and competent, and thus trustworthy. Stereotypes with high perceived
competence and low perceived warmth, including stereotypically wealthy
individuals, are often not trusted because perceived intent is either
unknown or negative. Similarly, scientists have unclear intent due to
their perceived amorality, and they are not trusted.
I believe that in order to incur more trust from the public, scientists must cultivate more warmth from the public.
I propose two ways to achieve this goal. First scientists need to make their intentions clear. Social psychologist Todd Pittinsky,
mentioned in the introduction, has some terrific ideas on how to
clarify intentions. One strategy is open access to data and methods,
which is readily achieved through open access publishing. Scientists
also need to treat misconduct by other scientists more seriously so that
people don't, for example, deem that all vaccine science is fraud due
to one case of misconduct.
Finally, we need to treat science denial without disdain and
acknowledge uncertainty properly when describing scientific results.
Second, scientists need to move into the ingroup sphere by imitating
those already in the ingroup. Kahan et al. point out that an
individual's established ideology greatly influences how they process
new information. I would suggest scientists frame their findings in a
way that fits with the audience's ideology, thus promoting "warmth". For
example, the Pew report
that reveals 37% of the public thinks that GMOs are not safe, which
violates the individual foundations. Highlighting how certain crops can
be genetically engineered for health (e.g. rice that is genetically engineered to produce beta carotene)
shows how GMOs can be compatible with individual foundations. Behaving
like an ingroup can then move scientists into the ingroup sphere.
Battling misinformation is definitely an uphill climb, but it is a
climb scientists must endeavor to make. Climate change denial and the
anti-vaccination movement threatens the future of scientific progress,
and while the danger cannot be ignored, we should not belittle
non-scientific ideas. Scientists can build goodwill through increased
transparency and communicating the significance of their findings to the
public. By taking other worldviews into account, we can find common
ground and create open dialogue and perhaps find solutions to benefit
everyone.
theantimedia | As someone who wants to give the appearance of knowing the hardships of common people, Hillary loves to bring up the topic of income inequality. In April, while giving avictory speechfor her win in the New York primary, Hillary brought up that very subject — and then attempted to boast about her support among average Americans.
“I know how important it is that we get the campaign’s resources from people just like you, who go in and chip in $5, $25. I am grateful to every one of you.
And she said every word of itwhile wearinga Giorgio Armani tweed jacket that cost a hefty $12,495.
At leastlieto me Hillary — don’t pretend to be a champion against inequality while wearing an article of clothing that literallycosts more than a new car. You lie about everything else, so rather than flouting your riches while championing the poor (and letting your riches show through the cracks), you might as well put on a cheap suit and give this ‘populist’ deception the effort you give your other ones.
theintercept |Last night, the Associated Press — on a day when nobody voted — surprised everyone by abruptly declaring
the Democratic Party primary over and Hillary Clinton the victor. The
decree, issued the night before the California primary in which polls
show Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a very close race, was based on the
media organization’s survey of “superdelegates”: the Democratic Party’s
720 insiders, corporate donors, and officials whose votes for the
presidential nominee count the same as the actually elected delegates.
AP claims that superdelegates who had not previously announced their
intentions privately told AP reporters that they intend to vote for
Clinton, bringing her over the threshold. AP is concealing the identity
of the decisive superdelegates who said this.
Although the Sanders campaign rejected the validity
of AP’s declaration — on the ground that the superdelegates do not vote
until the convention and he intends to try to persuade them to vote for
him — most major media outlets followed the projection and declared Clinton the winner.
This is the perfect symbolic ending to the Democratic Party primary: The
nomination is consecrated by a media organization, on a day when nobody
voted, based on secret discussions with anonymous establishment
insiders and donors whose identities the media organization — incredibly
— conceals. The decisive edifice of superdelegates is itself
anti-democratic and inherently corrupt: designed to prevent actual
voters from making choices that the party establishment dislikes. But
for a party run by insiders and funded by corporate interests, it’s only
fitting that its nomination process ends with such an ignominious,
awkward, and undemocratic sputter.
theintercept |One of thegreatest free speech threats in the West is the growing, multi-nation campaign literally to outlaw advocacy of boycotting Israel. People get arrested in Paris —
the site of the 2015 “free speech” (for Muslim critics) rally — for
wearing pro-boycott T-shirts. Pro-boycott students on U.S. campuses —
where the 1980s boycott of apartheid South Africa flourished — are routinely sanctioned for violating anti-discrimination policies. Canadian officials have threatened to criminally prosecute boycott advocates. British government bodies have legally barred certain types of boycott advocacy. Israel itself has outright criminalized
advocacy of such boycotts. Notably, all of this has been undertaken
with barely a peep from those who styled themselves free speech
crusaders when it came time to defend anti-Muslim cartoons.
But now, New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo (above, in the 2016
Celebrate Israel Parade) has significantly escalated this free speech
attack on U.S. soil, aimed at U.S. citizens. The prince of the New York
political dynasty yesterday issued an executive order directing all agencies
under his control to terminate any and all business with companies or
organizations that support a boycott of Israel. It ensures that citizens
who hold and express a particular view are punished through the denial
of benefits that other citizens enjoy: a classic free speech violation
(imagine if Cuomo issued an order stating that “anyone who expresses
conservative viewpoints shall have all state benefits immediately
terminated”).
Even more disturbing, Cuomo’s executive order requires
that one of his commissioners compile “a list of institutions and
companies” that — “either directly or through a parent or subsidiary” —
support a boycott. That government list is then posted publicly, and the
burden falls on them to prove to the state that they do not, in fact,
support such a boycott. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New
York Civil Liberties Union, told The Intercept: “Whenever the
government creates a blacklist based on political views it raises
serious First Amendment concerns and this is no exception.” Reason’s Robby Soave denounced it today as “brazenly autocratic.”
To read the relevant provisions of Cuomo’s order is to confront the
mentality of petty censoring tyranny, flavored with McCarthyite public
shaming, in its purest form.
theantimedia | In the true Orwellian fashion now typifying
2016, a bill to implement the U.S.’ very own de facto Ministry of Truth
has been quietly introduced in Congress — its lack of fanfare
appropriate given the bill’s equally subtle language. As with any
legislation attempting to dodge the public spotlight, however, the
Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 marks a
further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify
avenues of accurate information.
Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and stability.”
“As Russia continues to spew its disinformation and false
narratives, they undermine the United States and its interests in places
like Ukraine, while also breeding further instability in these
countries,” Kinzinger explained in a statement. “The
United States has a role in countering these destabilizing acts of
propaganda, which is why I’m proud to introduce [the aforementioned
bill]. This important legislation develops a comprehensive U.S. strategy
to counter disinformation campaigns through interagency cooperation and
on-the-ground partnerships with outside organizations that have
experience in countering foreign propaganda.”
Make no mistake — this legislation isn’t proposing some team of noble
fact-finders, chiseling away to free the truth from the façades of
various foreign governmental narratives for the betterment of American
and allied populations. If passed, this legislation will allow
cumbrously pro-‘American’ propaganda to infiltrate cable, online, and
mainstream news organizations wherever the government deems necessary.
“From Ukraine to the South China Sea, foreign disinformation
campaigns do more than spread anti-Western sentiments — they manipulate
public perception to change the facts on the ground, subvert democracy
and undermine U.S. interests,” Lieu explained. “In short, they make the world less safe.”
H.R. 5181 tasks the Secretary of State with coordinating the
Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the
Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.
arvix | Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution. Here we show that molecules taking part in biochemical processes from small molecules to proteins are critical quantum mechanically. Electronic Hamiltonians of biomolecules are tuned exactly to the critical point of the metal-insulator transition separating the Anderson localized insulator phase from the conducting disordered metal phase. Using tools from Random Matrix Theory we confirm that the energy level statistics of these biomolecules show the universal transitional distribution of the metal-insulator critical point and the wave functions are multifractals in accordance with the theory of Anderson transitions. The findings point to the existence of a universal mechanism of charge transport in living matter. The revealed bio-conductor material is neither a metal nor an insulator but a new quantum critical material which can exist only in highly evolved systems and has unique material properties.
physorg | Stuart Kauffman, from the University of Calgary, and several of his colleagues have recently published a paper on the Arxiv server titled 'Quantum Criticality at the Origins of Life'. The idea of a quantum criticality, and more generally quantum critical states, comes perhaps not surprisingly, from solid state physics. It describes unusual electronic states that are are balanced somewhere between conduction and insulation. More specifically, under certain conditions, current flow at the critical point becomes unpredictable. When it does flow, it tends to do so in avalanches that vary by several orders of magnitude in size.
In suggesting that biomolecules, or at least most of them, are quantum critical conductors, Kauffman and his group are claiming that their electronic properties are precisely tuned to the transition point between a metal and an insulator. An even stronger reading of this would have that there is a universal mechanism of charge transport in living matter which can exist only in highly evolved systems. To back all this up the group took a closer look at the electronic structure of a few of our standard issue proteins like myoglobin, profilin, and apolipoprotein E.
theatlantic | If his mushrooms could grow tailor-made weapons against any other types of fungi, would it be possible for them to do the same against any type of bacteria, too?
The rise of drug-resistant bacteria is sobering. Just last week, colistin-resistant E. coli––a “superbug” resistant to the antibiotic that’s considered the last resort for combatting particularly dangerous types of infections––landed in the U.S.Soon, public health officials anticipate, infections will be harder to stop; 10 million peoplecould die of drug-resistant superbugs
It may be a long shot, but it’s conceivable that Cotter's process offers a new kind of hope. While scientists have been working on the problem of antibiotic resistance for many years—some are looking toharness the human immune systemto better fight it; others are working on simplydetecting the superbugs faster—his vision is to beat superbugs with medicine that actually adapts to destroy them. It’s not pharmaceuticals he has in mind; he's not planning to mass produce many different types of secondary metabolites. Rather, he believes it’s his unique style of co-culturing itself––the process of culturing two different microbes together to produce a defense entirely specific to the attacker––that may be able to create custom antibiotics that, at least in theory, could be inherently less susceptible to resistance.
Hisgoal, in other words, is to grow mushrooms that are themselves medicine, because they could create whatever metabolites a sick person needs.
"The best situation I could describe is something everyone has gone through, like a strep throat culture,” Cotter says, imagining a scenario in which an infected patient walks into the doctor’s office, gets a throat swab, and then has the swab dropped into a specially designed module containing a fungus. That fungus would then sweat metabolites into a reservoir that would be naturally calibrated to combat the patient’s illness.
Cotter doesn’t know how the metabolites would be administered yet. A lollipop or throat spray for strep? Delivered topically for staph? His testing is still thoroughly ongoing. Should he receive the NIH grant he's applying for––a grant backed by a $1.2 billion White House Initiativeto stop resistant diseases––answers could arrive rapidly. Analytical labs would go up, animal testing would begin, streptococcus lollipopus before we know it.
wired | Artificial intelligence wasn’t supposed to work this way. Until a few
years ago, mainstream AI researchers assumed that to create
intelligence, we just had to imbue a machine with the right logic. Write
enough rules and eventually we’d create a system sophisticated enough
to understand the world. They largely ignored, even vilified, early
proponents of machine learning, who argued in favor of plying machines
with data until they reached their own conclusions. For years computers
weren’t powerful enough to really prove the merits of either approach,
so the argument became a philosophical one. “Most of these debates were
based on fixed beliefs about how the world had to be organized and how
the brain worked,” says Sebastian Thrun, the former Stanford AI
professor who created Google’s self-driving car. “Neural nets had no
symbols or rules, just numbers. That alienated a lot of people.”
The implications of an unparsable machine language aren’t just
philosophical. For the past two decades, learning to code has been one
of the surest routes to reliable employment—a fact not lost on all those
parents enrolling their kids in after-school code academies. But a
world run by neurally networked deep-learning machines requires a
different workforce. Analysts have already started worrying about the
impact of AI on the job market, as machines render old skills
irrelevant. Programmers might soon get a taste of what that feels like
themselves.
Of course, humans still have to train these systems. But for now, at
least, that’s a rarefied skill. The job requires both a high-level grasp
of mathematics and an intuition for pedagogical give-and-take. “It’s
almost like an art form to get the best out of these systems,” says
Demis Hassabis, who leads Google’s DeepMind AI team. “There’s only a few
hundred people in the world that can do that really well.” But even
that tiny number has been enough to transform the tech industry in just a
couple of years.
These forces have led technologist Danny Hillis to declare the end of
the age of Enlightenment, our centuries-long faith in logic,
determinism, and control over nature. Hillis says we’re shifting to what
he calls the age of Entanglement. “As our technological and
institutional creations have become more complex, our relationship to
them has changed,” he wrote in the Journal of Design and Science.
“Instead of being masters of our creations, we have learned to bargain
with them, cajoling and guiding them in the general direction of our
goals. We have built our own jungle, and it has a life of its own.” The
rise of machine learning is the latest—and perhaps the last—step in this
journey.
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