EU external migration policy: In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king. EPC Commentary, 6 February 2017

The Malta Declaration, on the external dimension of migration, was adopted by the members of the European Council at an informal EU Summit in Valetta on Friday 3 February 2017. Its adoption represents the continuation of a ‘one-eyed’ security-oriented strategy which serves to impede a more holistic vision of EU migration law and policy

Open all hours? Institutional models for open access

Conclusion: In H G Wells’s ‘Country of the Blind’ the “one-eyed man is king’, while Canadian author Margaret Atwood has said, “an eye for an eye only leads to more blindness”! Many in the academic community remain “blind” to OA issues and are often constrained in taking action by historical practices, and more importantly by reward systems, both perceived and real. They thus occupy the academic institutional “country of the blind”. Informed institutional leadership, combined with vibrant advocacy programmes and enhanced reward systems, is required for relevant eyes to be opened to the nature and benefits of OA. Institutions now have the chance to accelerate the OA scholarly communication process. Such “action does not require total agreement with the OA movement's beliefs and proposals, but it requires an active engagement with them.”(Bailey, 2005) This “engagement” with individual researchers in institutions will be the key to scholarly communication change

Appreciation of the Machinations of the Blind Watchmaker

One danger in using the language of engineering to describe the patterns and operations of the evident products of natural selection is that invoking principles of design runs the risk of invoking a designer. But as we analyze the increasing amount of data on the genome and its organization across a wide array of organisms, we are discovering there are patterns and dynamics reminiscent of designs that we, as imperfect human designers, recognize as serving an engineering purpose, including the purpose to be designable and evolvable. There is no doubt that biological artifacts are the product of Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker, natural selection. But natural selection has at its heart one of engineering’s most prized principles, optimization. Survival of the fittest, while not directly specifying an objective function that an organism must meet, nonetheless provides a clear figure of merit for long term biological success, persistence of lineages through reproduction of organisms, and is a well-formed if ever-changing specification. The mechanisms which provide the optimization algorithm for an organism to meet the demands of this changeable requirement, composed of a program subject to operations of mutation and interorganismal transfer and inheritance, are themselves under selection. Repeated rounds of this process leads, some argue, to architectures that facilitate evolution itself, the evolving of evolvability

Women Who Steal

Carter W. Lewis\u27 new play introduces us to Peggy and Karen, the latter of whom has recently commited, as they say, adultery with the former\u27s husband. Women Who Steal is about the aftermath of that revelation, and it\u27s a hilarious, tightly constructed joy ride, complete with squealing tires and tequila-chugging and Meat Loaf -- yes: Meat Loaf! -- blaring from the car radio. How these women deal with each other as they attempt to resolve the resultant conflict and stress, how they interact with the different men in their lives, is played out in a story that reaches the fullness of its comedic potential without losing sight of the serious emotions that fuel the action. Lewis\u27 writing is marvelously structured to make the best use of the situation; though there are a few disposable jokes -- which are funny, after all -- this weaving of circumstance and consequence is beyond clever the way concrete is beyond Styrofoam. https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2000-05-26/77308/https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/summer_production_2001/1002/thumbnail.jp

The Country of the Blind: knowledge, knower and knowing (part 1)

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from RE Today Services via the link in this recor

Information along familiar routes:on what we perceive and how this affects our behaviour

Would you notice if the speed limit on an electronic road sign changes? Are we aware of the route instructions that we follow? How is it possible that we avoid an obstacle without being aware of it? The aim of this PhD dissertation is to provide insight in the cognitive processes involved in visual information processing of familiar traffic environments. What is seen and what is not. For this study, various research techniques were used, such as a driving simulator and an observational study. Most remarkable conclusion: we don't always notice, but in traffic we see more than we think. Drivers as well as pedestrians typically reported an interest in other road users’ behaviour. Reporting changes in objects on or alongside a familiar road or pavement proved difficult. However, participants’ behavioural responses revealed they had perceived more information than they were aware of. They complied with a route diversion sign on a motorway or avoided a signboard on a pavement. Without having any recollection of this immediately afterwards. People get used to familiar traffic environments so much that they don’t have to think about walking or driving with much conscious focus. They can act without thinking about it, so they don’t always even remember what they’ve done. Despite the apparent lack of full or even partial awareness, road information – including information that has changed in an otherwise familiar environment – may still guide behaviour. This outcome is also important for the way in which research on road users should be conducted

A Triadic Approach to Deception in Strategic Counterintelligence Operations

This article describes a model for inducing deception in strategic counterintelligence operations based on the psychology of communications and influence