The human rights case for open science

You’re writing a grant application, and you want to make a strong case for open science! You’ve seen colleagues use language from human rights treaties to support their arguments for open work in the past: but what does that actually mean? Does international human rights law really say that science should be open? In this article, Laura Carter, PhD candidate in the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex and member of the Open Heroines collective, explains that yes, it does, and yes, you can use human rights to argue for open science

Teaching Managers To Relate: Using Feedback To Bolster Commitment And Morale

Every text, indeed all writing in communication, either does or should stress the centrality of feedback in basic and advanced models of communication.  Most work in this area has focused on taking feedback, distilling information and using it to make good decisions.  What is lost in the traditional understanding is that feedback can be used to establish good relations.  A manager’s feedback can enhance employee/manger relationships, strengthen loyalty and commitment, and increase morale. This paper examines how managers can use feedback to make important and genuine connections with their employees; thereby getting the greatest return on human resources. A theory based “do and don’t do” framework is offered.  Establishing any good relationship is simply a matter of knowing what to say, how to say it, when and to whom.  It’s 9:00 a.m.; do you know who your employees are

Free Energy Mapping of Glycolonitrile Co-Oligomerization

Analytic philosophy of language has been largely devoted to the study of literal meaning, or what is said. However, we know that often times we are able to convey something over and above this literal meaning, giving us an implied meaning. For example, we can take the sentence “the cops are around the corner” and interpret this literally. The conventions of the language lead us to understand the meaning: that the cops really are around the corner. On the other hand, we are also able to say, “the cops are around the corner” to mean something over and above this literal meaning. Imagine that you are in a very dangerous situation and you say ‘the cops are around the corner” in order to alert your friend that you are safe. Or, imagine that you are at a college party and things are getting a little out of hand. When someone says “the cops are around the corner” they send a warning to all of the less than sober partygoers. When examining these meanings, the literal and implied, we encounter a problem: what do we do with metaphors? For example, take “Juliet is the sun”. If meant to be taken literally, it would be absurd! We do not mean to say that Juliet is a giant ball of gas floating around in the universe, but what do we mean to say and how does a metaphor like this one even work? Within my presentation, I will review three of the standard views on metaphor: the comparison view, interaction view, and the pragmatic view. Unfortunately, it seems that all of these standard views fall short and do not provide an adequate theory to determine what metaphorical meaning is. With this in mind, I will introduce the possibility that maybe there isn’t any distinct metaphorical meaning, and if there is, we may not be able to explain exactly what it is

SP418-T-Healthy Children: 23 -24 Months

A child\u27s self-esteem is his overall judgment of himself. It determines whether or not he likes, accepts and respects himself. One of the greatest and most important challenges you face is to help your child feel good about himself. Children begin very early to form either positive or negative pictures of themselves. You can help your child feel good about himself by telling him that you like who he is and you like the way he does things. Let him know when you think he does a good job of putting blocks in a bucket — or dumping them out of the bucket. Thank him for putting napkins on the table or hanging his towel up. Shower him with smiles as well as words. Tell your child what to do rather than what not to do. Instead of saying, “Don’t carry the cat that way” say, “Carry your cat like this.” That way, he’ll feel like a success rather than a failure. Listen to what he says and respond to his questions. Take time to understand his feelings, his joys and his fears. You are showing him that his ideas and feelings are important. All this will help him to feel important and capable. You are helping him develop the self-confidence to become the responsible, successful person you want him to be

Review of Religion Explained-- The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer (2002) (review revised 2019)

You can get a quick summary of this book on p 135 or 326. If you are not up to speed on evolutionary psychology, you should first read one of the numerous recent texts with this term in the title. One of the best is "The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology" 2nd ed by Buss. Until about 15 years ago, ´explanations´ of behavior have not really been explanations of mental processes at all, but rather vague and largely useless descriptions of what people did and what they said, with no insight into why. We might say that people gather to commemorate an event, praise god, receive his (or her or their) blessings, etc., but none of this describes the relevant mental processes, so we might say they are explanations in much the same way that it explains why an apple drops to the ground if we say its because we released it, and it's heavy-there is no mechanism and no explanatory or predictive power. This book continues the elucidation of the genetic basis of human behavior which has been almost universally ignored and denied by academia, religion, politics and the public (see Pinker´s excellent book ``The Blank Slatè`). His statement (p3) that it is meaningless to ask if religion is genetic is mistaken as the percentage of variation of any behavior due to genes and environment can be studied, just as they are for all other behaviors (see e.g., Pinker). The title should be Preliminary Attempts to Explain Some Aspects of Primitive Religion, since he does not treat higher consciousness at all (e.g., satori, enlightenment etc.) which are by far the most interesting phenomena and the only part of religion of personal interest to intelligent, educated people in the 21st century. Reading this entire book, you would never guess such things exist. Likewise, for the immense field of drugs and religion. It lacks a framework for rationality and does not mention the dual systems of thought view which is now so productive. For this I suggest my own recent papers. Nevertheless, the book has much of interest, and in spite of being dated is still worth reading. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019

A sensibility of humour: BSA Prize Essay, 2022

What does it say about you if you enjoy sexist humour? One answer to this question holds that finding sexist humour funny reveals that you have sexist beliefs, whilst another holds that it reveals nothing deeper about you at all. I argue that neither of these answers are correct, as neither can capture the feeling of unwilling complicity we often get from enjoying sexist jokes. Rather, we should navigate between these two positions by understanding the sense of humour as a kind of sensibility or taste, analogous to Anne Eaton’s account of erotic taste. This allows for a fleshing out of the purely belief-centred understanding of the sense of humour, adding emotional, perceptual and motivational aspects to it. Finally, I propose that one’s sense of humour is shaped the representations one engages with, which suggests a possible avenue for habituating it in a more egalitarian direction

Ribtickling Literature: Educational Implications for Joke and Riddle Books in the Elementary Classroom

During a recent visit to an elementary school we delighted in the number of classrooms which featured writing and reading centers. One innovative third grade teacher went a step further and provided her students with a lively outlet for their creative skills in the Humor Corner. As we entered the classroom, two youngsters were enjoying jokes produced by classmates and browsing through a few of the riddle books on display. Holding The Biggest Riddle Book in the World (Rosenbloom, 1976), one student greeted us with: I bet you can\u27t answer this one! What does an envelope say when you lick it? Before we had time to come up with an answer, the giggling youngster popped out with: Nothing, it just shuts up

This Track Contains Politics: The Culture of Sampling in Experimental Electronica

What does it mean to process field recordings from the Ukrainian war in an electronic music track? How can the sampling of an Armenian keyboard melody be read as a critique of traditional gender roles? And what does it say about voyeurism in our culture when a techno producer uses viral YouTube videos as the basic material of his compositions? Across five detailed case studies, Hannes Liechti discusses the culture and politics of musical sampling from a new perspective. Giving particular attention to the reasons behind sampling processes, Liechti’s in-depth analysis of sampling strategies by artists such as COOL FOR YOU and Lara Sarkissian shows that sampling political material, and sampling with political intentions reveals a complex net of contexts, meanings, and often deeply personal choices and creative decisions. Offering tangible tools and concepts for further exploration of sample-based music, the book illustrates the potential of popular music to tell stories about the world, and it describes the habits, thoughts, and realities of the laptop producer, one of the core actors in 21st century music-making

Logic and Normativity

What is the relationship between logic and thought? One view is that logic merely describes how people think. But this view – called 'psychologism' – cannot be quite right. Logic cannot describe how people reason, because although people can reason well, they can also reason badly. The obvious response is to say that logic does not describe how people do think, but rather prescribes how they ought to think. If logic describes how people ought to reason, then if the premises of a logical argument imply the conclusion of that argument and you believe the premises, then you ought to believe the conclusion. According to classical logic the premise, 'grass is green' implies the conclusion, 'the sky is blue or the sky is not blue', but it seems absurd to say that because I believe that grass is green, I ought to believe that the sky is blue or the sky is not blue. What has gone wrong here? Should the principle, 'if the premises imply the conclusion and you believe the premises, then you ought to believe the conclusion' be changed? If so, perhaps it would be more correct to say, 'if the premises imply the conclusion and you believe the premises, then you have reason to believe the conclusion'. Or is classical logic to blame? Are we mistaken in thinking that 'grass is green' implies 'the sky is blue or the sky is not blue'? I examine a number of arguments that relate to this question. I argue that classical logic deserves a philosophy of logic that does not imply that classical logic is not proper logic

A Venezuelan Position on the Bolivarian Revolution

My interest in politics started during my high school years. At 13 I got hooked on the Venezuelan political scenario with the same intensity as most adults. It is not usual for a teenager to be interested in politics, but the impact of the 1998 Venezuelan presidential election was so significant, the coverage by media so widespread, that it was practically inevitable that I would become enthralled in the outcome. “How does who you are and where you stand in relation to others shape what you know about the world?” By raising this question, David Takacs (2002) introduces the importance of positionality to knowledge production. Positionality provides a way to understand how objective or subjective researchers are during knowledge production (Lave & Wenger, 1991). I can firmly say that the representations portrayed in Venezuela’s mainstream media built up my character, and shaped the analytical approach that I follow today as a scholar