Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
For two millennia, great artists set the standard for beauty. Now those standards are gone. Modern art is a competition between the ugly and the twisted; the most shocking wins. What happened? How did the beautiful come to be reviled and bad taste come to be celebrated? Renowned artist Robert Florczak explains the history and the mystery behind this change and how it can be stopped and even reversed.
Slavery and the slave trade were among the most important economic, political and cultural issues of the Romantic period. Although doubts about the justice and humanity of slavery had been raised as far back as the seventeenth century in the English-speaking world, and earlier in the Spanish, it was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that the trade in slaves received widespread condemnation, and it was not until well into the nineteenth century that slavery itself was successfully challenged and finally abolished. While some defended the slave trade as a necessary evil, by the late 1780s many European nations saw the emergence of popular movements for abolition and emancipation with clear majorities opposed first to the slave trade and, later, to slavery itself. In Britain, antislavery sentiment was widespread between 1780 and 1833, particularly in the 1780s and early 90s, and again in the 1820s and 30s. As such, antislavery can be identified as one of the key movements of the Romantic era. This centrality is reflected in the cultural productions of the period: poets, novelists, philosophers and political writers joined hands with dramatists, artists, printmakers and musicians both to reflect and to influence public opinion, and in many cases writers and artists were the leaders of local and national antislavery organisations.
In point of contrast, in the remainder of the world, e.g., in Islamic areas the practice of slavery continued.
Because internal growth of the slave population was not enough to fulfill the demand in Muslim society, massive numbers of non-Muslim slaves were imported, resulting in enormous suffering and loss of life from their capture and transportation.
The Muslim Arab slave trade was most active in West Asia, North Africa, and Southeast Africa. In the early 20th century (post World War I), slavery was gradually outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, largely due to pressure exerted by Western nations such as Britain and France. Among the last states to abolish slavery were Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from Britain; Oman in 1970, and Mauritania in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007. However, slavery claiming the sanction of Islam is documented presently in the predominantly Islamic countries of Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, and Sudan.
Chatbots for College:
Chatbots prove how far the technology has progressed in a relatively short time. Your time at college provides the first introduction to having to deal with many responsibilities at once without oversight, and the chatbots listed here can help ease the learning curve.
How many may need housing at some point? Consider a housing bot: Ems
How many have lost files? Try: Findo.
How many are overwhelmed with checking email and could use an assistant to prioritize communication? Astro
How many of you eat? Forksy
How many could use assistance in job hunting? Jobo
Rose is a chatbot, and a very good one — she won recognition as the most human-like chatbot in a competition described as the first Turing test, the Loebner Prize in 2014 and 2015.
The Loebner Prize is an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the chatterbot considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test.
This chatbot is one the best AI chatbots. It is the winner of a recent Loebner Prize. You can talk with Mitsuku for hours without getting bored. It replies to your question in the most humane way and understands your mood with the language you’re using.
Insomno bot is for night owls. As the name suggests, it is for all people out there who have trouble sleeping. This bot talks to you when you have no one around and gives you amazing replies so that you won’t get bored. It’s not something that will help you count stars when you can’t sleep or help you with reading suggestions, but this bot talks to you about anything.
Moving to off-campus housing is a major milestone for students, but it can also take time away from coursework, especially when scheduling real estate showings.
Ems is a London-based chatbot that learns about housing preferences, makes suggestions based upon them, keeps an eye out for possible matches and lets busy students book viewings with just two taps on a smartphone screen, without ever talking to a human.
Also, you don’t have to download an app to use Ems. Simply go to the website and start chatting in the pop-up window on the right side of the screen.
Students have dozens of file transfer apps, online storage lockers, and document creation helpers to assist them through the school year. But the plentiful technological opportunities can become problematic when you have to search through all those third-party solutions to find misplaced files.
Advertised as a “smart search assistant,” Findo sorts through emails, computers, personal clouds, and more to retrieve desired files.
Frazzled students can also request searches using natural language, even when they can’t remember the details, by saying things such as “Find me the paper I wrote for that biology professor during freshman year.”
The aptly named FindoBot is the chatbot aspect of Findo. It integrates with services like Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Slack, and delivers search results directly into those interfaces to save time.
Astro is what results when artificial intelligence enhances email. It works with Android and iOS platforms, plus Mac computers and even Alexa. Students can connect it with any Gmail or Office 365 email account and enjoy features like an AI-powered priority inbox, which tells them which emails to read first, and a snooze function that empowers students to respond to some emails later.
When unread newsletters start clogging up an inbox, the bot can send reminders about unsubscribing to mailing lists that generate emails you no longer want to get.
There’s also a mute feature you might use when an email conversation shared among dozens of classmates gets too chaotic to follow constantly. Customized notifications when emails arrive eliminate unnecessary distractions, too.
So, what does the Astro chatbot do? It monitors users’ email habits in the background. After it learns what they do, it starts running those tasks automatically for greater efficiency. The bot can also scan a person’s contact list and the resultant network to determine the best individual to introduce them to a department head, the university president, or another bigwig, helpful for a student trying to make connections.
College dining halls and the all-you-care-to-eat nature of many of them wreak havoc on students’ waistlines. And if those scholars are under stress, the problem could become even more severe.
Enter Forksy, a chatbot that recognizes pictures of menus, dictated speech about what you ate, and even food emoji.
Students can simply add Forksy as a “friend” on Facebook Messenger or Viber and ask it to count calories through the day. Also, if a student is seeing a dietitian or fitness trainer, they can get feedback from that health expert about food choices, directly in the chatbot.
Some college students depend heavily on employment to help them make ends meet throughout the semester.
Jobo is a job-hunting chatbot that looks for work around the world. Once a user provides basic employment preferences, Jobo starts hunting for income possibilities around the clock. A student can even apply for a job directly through Facebook Messenger after filling out a career profile.
Personalized job alerts clue students in to open positions they might otherwise miss. There is also a built-in capability for saving searches and looking at them later.
Orai for iPhone is designed to help you become a better speaker. Orai gives people the confidence and skills to speak powerfully when on stage, in front of a room, or in everyday life. Orai uses artificial intelligence and deep learning to offer instant insights on your speech so that you can practice daily and become an effective communicator.
Luther once said of Zwingli, “I have bitten into many a mutt, believing it to be good, only to find it wormy. Zwingli and Erasmus are nothing but wormy mutts that taste like crap in ones mouth!”
In his treatise Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants, he urged the princes with these words,
“Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you.”
As a result, the peasants were brutally suppressed.
The Protestant historian H. A. L. Fisher wrote,
“The manner in which he [Luther] dissociated his movement from the peasant rebellion . . . and the encouragement he gave to a course of repression so savage that it left the German peasantry more defenseless and abased than any social class in central or western Europe, are serious blots upon his good name. The German peasants were rough men and rough fighters; but their grievances were genuine, and their original demands were just and reasonable.”
Here are some other quotes by Luther on the matter:
“Like the mules who will not move unless you perpetually whip them with rods, so the civil powers must drive the common people, whip, choke, hang, burn, behead and torture them, that they may learn to fear the powers that be.”
“Peasants are no better than straw. They will not hear the word and they are without sense; therefore they must be compelled to hear the crack of the whip and the whiz of bullets and it is only what they deserve.”
“To kill a peasant is not murder; it is helping to extinguish the conflagration. Let there be no half measures! Crush them! Cut their throats! Transfix them. Leave no stone unturned! To kill a peasant is to destroy a mad dog! If they say that I am very hard and merciless, mercy be damned. Let whoever can stab, strangle, and kill them like mad dogs.”
“I, Martin Luther, have during the rebellion slain all the peasants, for it was I who ordered them to be struck dead. All their blood is upon my head. But I put it all on our Lord God: for he commanded me to speak thus.”
The Enlightenment’s elevation of reason and diminution of traditional authority posed challenges and presented opportunities to Christianity. The Christian response to the Enlightenment locates the mystery of humanity in the mysterious nature of the Creator of the universe in Whose image man is made.
Rome achieved its singular dominance over most of the known world in the course of a century. Polybius, a Greek historian conquered by the Romans, attributes this remarkable achievement to three principal elements of the Roman regime or way of life in his noted work, The Histories. He argues that the greatness of the Romans is due to their unique constitution or system of government, to their moral culture or mos maiorum, and to their practice of religion. Defined most distinctly by the concept of pietas—(the duty and devotion due to the gods, ancestors, and the fatherland, a composite of love and reverence)—the Roman character lies at the heart of the Roman legacy to Western Civilization.
As we continue explore free will, today Hank considers a middle ground between hard determinism and libertarian free will: compatibilism. This view seeks to find ways that our internally motivated actions can be understood as free in a deterministic world. We’ll also cover Frankfurt Cases (we have a selection by Frankfurt in Part 5: The Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Harry Frankfurt) and Patricia Churchland’s rejection of the free-or-not-free dichotomy and her focus on the amount of control we have over our actions.
Was that man's really horrible behavior a matter of free will? Or, was it determined: by what turned out to be a medical condition? Was it neither, both?
What are two options?
What is the third option?
What is soft determinism?
What do compatibilists say?
How are examples about mental illness or alcohol instructive?
What is Harry Frankfurt's challenge? What are these called?
Are you responsible without being able to do otherwise?
What does Churchland point out? How much control do I have?
What do libertarians point out?
https://youtu.be/KETTtiprINU
Libertarian Free Will - the belief that some actions are freely chosen. Hard Determinism - the belief that all events are caused by past events such that nothing other than what does occur could occur. Compatibilists believe, somewhat like hard determinists, that the universe operates with law-like order, and that the past determines the future. Compatibilists say that action is determined--that is, it couldn't not happen--but when the action of an agent is self-determined or determined by causes internal to themselves, the action should be considered free. Internal factors vs. External factors Deterministic Nature of the Universe vs. Subjective Feeling of Freedom Feeling free = having control
Free Will Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel (born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University in the NYU Department of Philosophy, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics.
Nagel is well known for his critique of material reductionist accounts of the mind, particularly in his essay "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), and for his contributions to deontological and liberal moral and political theory in The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and subsequent writings. Continuing his critique of reductionism, he is the author of Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against a reductionist view, and specifically the neo-Darwinian view, of the emergence of consciousness.
- Free will, determinism, and predetermination are encountered by Perceiving Reality. The structure of our "I" is explained as embedded within four factors that determine our characteristics and behavior from within our genes and from our environment.
Why don't we know which of our actions are actually free?
What are the four factors?
What can we learn from a seed of wheat?
What is our single point of freedom?
Kabbalah (Hebrew: קַבָּלָ×”, literally "parallel/corresponding," or "received tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline, and school of thought that originated in Judaism.
https://youtu.be/UJj6PzyOucU
We are blind to the laws and forces that manage us.
Four factors: first factor, the bed, second factor, the cause and effect that stem from itself, thirdly, the inner cause and effect and how well the stalk of wheat grows depends on specific external factors that work directly on its essence, finally our family and upbringing.
Free Will and Determinism W. T. Stace
Walter Terence Stace (17 November 1886 – 2 August 1967) was a British civil servant, educator, public philosopher and epistemologist, who wrote on Hegel, mysticism, and moral relativism. He worked with the Ceylon Civil Service from 1910-1932, and from 1932-1955 he was employed by Princeton University in the Department of Philosophy. He is most renowned for his work in the philosophy of mysticism, and for books like Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) and Teachings of the Mystics (1960). These works have been influential in the study of mysticism, but they have also been severely criticised for their lack of methodological rigor and their perennialist pre-assumptions.
The Principle of Alternative Possibilities Harry Frankfurt
Harry Gordon Frankfurt (born May 29, 1929) is an American philosopher. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, where he taught from 1990 until 2002, and previously taught at Yale University, Rockefeller University, and Ohio State University.
The Capacities of Agents Neil Levy
Neil received a PhD in Continental Philosophy in 1995 and a second PhD, this time in analytic philosophy, in 2006. He was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne, from 2002 to 2009. In 2010 he moved to the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, where he was Head of Neuroethics and an ARC Future Fellow. From 2006 onwards, he has held appointments at the University of Oxford, where he is currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor. From 2016, he will be half time at Oxford and half time at Macquarie.
Associate Professor Levy was recently interviewed on ABC 612 Brisbane Afternoons by Kelly Higgins-Devine on the nature of luck.
What is luck? What is the nature of luck? Do things happen at random chance? Are people lucky? Are athletes lucky? How is skill involved?
https://youtu.be/Auj3cc1rtRI
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding David Hume
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume, published in English in 1748. It was a revision of an earlier effort, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, published anonymously in London in 1739–40. Hume was disappointed with the reception of the Treatise, which "fell dead-born from the press," as he put it, and so tried again to disseminate his more developed ideas to the public by writing a shorter and more polemical work.
The end product of his labours was the Enquiry. The Enquiry dispensed with much of the material from the Treatise, in favor of clarifying and emphasizing its most important aspects. For example, Hume's views on personal identity do not appear. However, more vital propositions, such as Hume's argument for the role of habit in a theory of knowledge, are retained.
This book has proven highly influential, both in the years that would immediately follow and today. Immanuel Kant points to it as the book which woke him from his self-described "dogmatic slumber". The Enquiry is widely regarded as a classic in modern philosophical literature.
David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Part 1, 2:55
In this two part series, we will examine David Hume’s treatise titled An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In this first lecture, we will discuss Hume’s empirical epistemology and the problem of induction. In the second lecture, we will explore the consequences of Hume’s theory of knowledge.
https://youtu.be/5p7gcRireKk
David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Part 2, 4:49
In this two part series, we will examine David Hume’s treatise titled An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In this first lecture, we will discuss Hume’s empirical epistemology and the problem of induction. In the second lecture, we will explore the consequences of Hume’s theory of knowledge.
https://youtu.be/Sagxx_yVhMU
The Dilemma of Determinism William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labeled him the "Father of American psychology".
Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, James is considered to be one of the major figures associated with the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. A Review of General Psychology analysis, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. He also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, and has even influenced Presidents, such as Jimmy Carter.
Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James, and the diarist Alice James. James wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology, which was a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology, Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy, and The Varieties of Religious Experience, which investigated different forms of religious experience, which also included the then theories on mind-cure.
William James: Founder of Pragmatism, Father of American Psychology, and One of the Most Influential American Philosophers Of All Time. This video offers a brief introduction to William James's positions.
Are some cultures better than others? Or are all cultures and their values equal? Bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza, who was born in India and moved to America, explains.
The emergence of the polis as a political form distinguished Greece from its neighbors in the ancient Near East. The polis was a small community—originally grouped around a citadel—governed by a council and a public assembly, and defended by a hoplite phalanx. Oikonomia (household management) was structured in such a way as to enable full political participation of the household in the city, through words and deeds worthy of note. The individual man who engaged in reasoned speech (logos) thus had an importance in the Greek community that was unusual compared to the other civilizations of the Near East, which were generally organized as hydraulic societies based on irrigation and public works, governed by a sacral monarchy, and administered by a bureaucratic class using the technology of syllabic script.
The “Big Idea” - talks that make one or two very strong points that are relevant and important
The big idea is that educational technology is going to transform higher education dramatically.
TOPIC: short descriptive sentence of your overall topic
OVERVIEW: 4-6 sentence description of the topic, points and flow of your presentation
TAKEAWAY: what you hope your audience walks away with at the conclusion of your talk.
1. Higher education will reestablish itself with deep learning, big data, and artificial intelligence.
2. Many
experts have noted that higher education has changed dramatically
recently but this is only the beginning. Several factors have created
the perfect storm: top heavy spending, doubts over the value of rising
tuition, and the inability to produce graduates with requisite job
skills. David Gelernter stated in the WSJ in January 23, 2017 “Over 90%
of U.S. colleges will be gone within the next generation, as the
higher-education world inevitably flips over and sinks.” On the other
hand, what I maintain is that successful higher education will
reestablish itself with deep learning, big data, and artificial
intelligence. The three critical characteristics of higher education:
the creation of new knowledge, the distribution of existing knowledge,
and the preservation of knowledge, will be radically transformed by
emerging educational technology. As a result, the existing models of
learning will collapse and give way to personalization resulting in a
new model of higher education.
3. For the first time technology exists that will radically transform higher education.
Artificial Intelligence Expert Shares His Vision of the Future of Education
AI
will dramatically change the way we deliver healthcare, entertain
ourselves, conduct warfare and, of course, teach college students.
EDTECH: How fast is AI technology developing?
QUALLS: AI is going to come far more quickly than even I can predict.
Look at personal assistants: A year ago, they were nowhere, and they
are everywhere now. So, the changes are coming and they’re coming fast. I
tell people that AI is a wave, and it’s here now. You are either going
to surf that wave or it’s going to crash on you. It’s not going to be 10
years from now — it’s today.
EDTECH: Do people understand how fast these changes could arrive?
QUALLS: No, and that’s what scares me the most. I fear there will be a digital divide because people just weren’t thinking about AI.
Businesses will go out overnight, new businesses will be formed, some
people will be left behind just because they are so afraid of the
technology. I believe millennials and future generations will adapt.
It’s the previous generation I am not so sure about.
EDTECH: Big Data can be
overwhelming without a method of analyzing the data to determine what it
tells you to do. Is that why AI is so valuable?
QUALLS: That’s what drove the military to embrace
AI. They have sensor technologies on drones, but you have 18-year-old
kids who can’t read or understand the data coming in. That’s where we
can introduce our AI and say, “There is an explosive right there on that
road,” or “There is something going on over here.” Now that soldier is
equipped with the tools and the right information. He’s not trying to
interpret the data, because it takes a guy who’s got 50 years of experience to look at that data and understand it. So we take his knowledge and put that inside of an AI system.
Look at what Facebook is doing with targeted ads. Companies like
Amazon are trying to use AI to figure out what kind of shopping
experience they can give you. Can we eliminate shopping and give you the
product you need at any given time? That’s what Amazon is trying to do
with the Dash buttons. Once they have enough data, they can start giving you products you never even thought about.
You can’t go anywhere or do anything nowadays without interacting with
some form of AI. You may not recognize it as AI, but it’s there.
EDTECH: Is AI a form of thought, or just a series of mathematical algorithms?
QUALLS: I will probably make many AI people mad when I say that it’s just algorithms.
Recently, I was asked, “When will we see conscious AI?” That’s when you
interact with something and you can’t tell if it’s human or not — like
the Turing test. If you want to talk about a life form, it won’t be
created by a human. It will be AI systems writing new AI in ways we have
never thought about. That’s when you will have a system that’s thinking
on its own and forming its own agenda to do whatever it chooses to do.
Currently, there is no AI system on the planet that I know of that does
that.
There is high-end research trying to create an AI system that can create more AI systems,
but it’s still in infancy right now. I give that another five years
before you will start to see published results and some interesting
things, but will it be usable anytime soon? Probably not, because most
corporations have a task they need AI to do. You write a simple system
for that task, and it can’t branch out and do anything else. So, yes, AI
is still on the algorithm side. But, like I said, everything changes in a yearly cycle right now, so I could be completely wrong come next year.
EDTECH: What AI applications might we see in higher education?
QUALLS: You are going to see a massive change in
education from K–12 to the university. The thought of having large
universities and large faculties teaching students is probably going to
go away — not in the short-term, but in the long-term. You will have a
student interact with an AI system that will understand him or her and provide an educational path
for that particular student. Once you have a personalized education
system, education will become much faster and more enriching. You may
have a student who can do calculus in the sixth grade because AI
realized he had a mathematical sense. That personalized education is going to change everything.
Think about things the military has started to do. Instead of putting
a war fighter on the battlefield, they are using virtual reality
helmets to walk around cities to understand the cultural mindset of
wherever they are going. You can’t hire enough people to teach a war
fighter that, but an AI system can have thousands of those going at one
time. Now you’ve got a war fighter who understands the culture and the
background of the area he is going into, and that was AI teaching him.
That aspect of leveraging AI to teach is the next frontier of education.
EDTECH: What is the role of the educator in this scenario?
QUALLS: For the next 20 years, your professors will be there to step in when the AI is not ready. Eventually, we may go the way of the dinosaur. Our role may change from educating a student to educating an AI. Our role may become research-oriented,
while still paying attention to what’s happening to the AIs themselves.
You will probably see systems come online and students interacting with
them within 10 to 20 years. I have a daughter who is 2 months old, and I
think her education is going to be vastly different from anything we
sat through. I’m of the view that she will have a far better education.
EDTECH: If personalized
education becomes the norm, will we ask why we ever thought students
should all learn the same material, in the same way, at the same time?
QUALLS: When we look back, we will probably consider
that education out of the Dark Ages. If we could do one-on-one with our
students today, we would. But there are far more students than professors, and that’s where AI can come in.
I look at some of these lecture halls with 300 students in a class, and
I wonder, “Are they actually learning?” But resources are always a
problem. I think that’s what’s going to eventually drive AI to enter the
education workforce: necessity.
EDTECH: Is there anything human educators can provide that AI cannot?
QUALLS: Currently, yes. AI is still just algorithms. AI doesn’t have intuition. That’s what a human teacher can provide, so even if AI provides the bulk of the education, you will still have a human watching,
interacting with these systems, providing the intuition behind that AI.
But if you have massive amounts of students in your class, you are back
to square one: You can’t provide that one-on-one experience, so the AI
is just as good.
EDTECH: Are there any AI applications for public safety, which is a concern for college campuses?
QUALLS: There is research into allowing AI systems
to determine intent. For instance, if a large crowd of people is
gathering, what is the likelihood the crowd will turn violent? The idea
originated in the Iraq war, to help redirect troops from potentially
hostile operations. One area involves collecting meta information from
other sensors and social media — for example, the crowd may be gathering
for a celebration over a sports game. The second area is recognition
within crowd dynamics. Large groups of people can cause tight swirls to
form, causing people to become agitated, leading to people fighting and
spiraling out of control. Can an AI predict and locate hostile swirls
before they escalate?
EDTECH: In 2016, a Georgia
Institute of Technology professor used an AI personal assistant to
respond to routine questions, and students couldn’t tell the difference.
QUALLS: That’s nothing new. How many times have you
had a telemarketer call and you questioned whether you were speaking to a
human? Most telemarketers nowadays are glorified chatbots, and they are
very good. I like it when they call my house. I start asking weird
questions — that’s how you break these types of systems — and the
computer can’t figure out what to do, so it just hangs up on you. A
human operator will tell you off. You interact more with AI systems or chatbots than you may realize.
If you use a support chat online, most of the time an AI system is
answering your questions. When you interact with it, your questions are
very specific toward that chatbot, and that’s why it’s able to help you
pretty easily.
EDTECH: What about AI applications for campus transportation, such as driverless cars or shuttles?
QUALLS: This is an active discussion on most
campuses. The question is, would people ride in an autonomous vehicle?
The answer seems to be a 50 percent split. The people who say they will
not ride in an autonomous car say they must be in control of the vehicle
at all times. This is where I point out, have you flown in a plane in
the last five years? Most commercial airlines are on autopilot now.
There is potential for campus transportation to be autonomous,
but the private sector is beating the universities to the punch. Look
at what Uber is doing with autonomous cars. In the future, you’ll just
walk outside and pull up your phone, and the car is right there to take
you where you want to go. That’s what AI will do: It’s going to provide
services for us to make our lives better.
Does each person consist of a soul connected to a body?
Are you identical with your body, your mind, or some combination of the two?
If you are a combination, how are the mind and body connected so as to form one person?
What field of philosophy do these questions belong to?
The Ghost in the Machine Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900 – 6 October 1976) was a British philosopher.
He was a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers who shared Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the machine."
Some of his ideas in the philosophy of mind have been referred to as "behaviourist." Ryle's best known book is The Concept of Mind (1949), in which he writes that the "general trend of this book will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be stigmatised as 'behaviourist'." Ryle, having engaged in detailed study of the key works of Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, himself suggested instead that the book "could be described as a sustained essay in phenomenology, if you are at home with that label."
What is Cartesian rationalism and how does Ryles differ from Descartes?
What is the category mistake?
What is at least one example?
What are the two fundamental kinds of substance?
Why does Ryle condemn dualism?
How is the argument extended?
What is a fun fact?
https://youtu.be/GCCnCdNNR3g
Materialism is the view that a person is just a body. If the materialist is correct, then how can a person think and feel? Can a mere body do that?
Body and Soul Richard Taylor
Richard Taylor (November 5, 1919 – October 30, 2003), born in Charlotte, Michigan, was an American philosopher renowned for his dry wit and his contributions to metaphysics. He was also an internationally known beekeeper.
In this lecture, I cover Richard Taylor's defense of free will. I also touch on the relationship between free will and ethical responsibility.
Richard Taylor:
Why do humans do what they do according to Taylor?
What are the two responses?
What is the big problem?
What is our predicament?
By what does moral responsibility exist?
How does Taylor apply free will?
How do we know free will exists?
Did Taylor prove free will? Why or why not?
https://youtu.be/LqgBaVSwa-M
The Mind–Body Problem Paul M. Churchland
Paul Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is a Canadian philosopher known for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh under Wilfrid Sellars (1969), Churchland rose to the rank of full professor at the University of Manitoba before accepting the Valtz Family Endowed Chair in Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a joint appointments in that institution's Institute for Neural Computation and on its Cognitive Science Faculty. As of this February 2017, Churchland is recognised as Professor Emeritus at the UCSD, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Moscow State University. Churchland is the husband of philosopher Patricia Churchland, with whom he collaborates, and The New Yorker has reported the similarity of their views, e.g., on the mind-body problem, are such that the two are discussed as if they are one person.
The mind–body problem is the question of how the human mind and body can causally interact. This question arises when mind and body are considered as distinct, based on the premise that the mind and the body are fundamentally different in nature.
Each of these categories contain numerous variants. The two main forms of dualism are substance dualism, which holds that the mind is formed of a distinct type of substance not governed by the laws of physics, and property dualism, which holds that mental properties involving conscious experience are fundamental properties, alongside the fundamental properties identified by a completed physics. The three main forms of monism are physicalism, which holds that the mind consists of matter organized in a particular way; idealism, which holds that only thought truly exists and matter is merely an illusion; and neutral monism, which holds that both mind and matter are aspects of a distinct essence that is itself identical to neither of them.
Several philosophical perspectives have been developed which reject the mind–body dichotomy. The historical materialism of Karl Marx and subsequent writers, itself a form of physicalism, held that consciousness was engendered by the material contingencies of one's environment. An explicit rejection of the dichotomy is found in French structuralism, and is a position that generally characterized post-war French philosophy.
The absence of an empirically identifiable meeting point between the non-physical mind and its physical extension has proven problematic to dualism and many modern philosophers of mind maintain that the mind is not something separate from the body. These approaches have been particularly influential in the sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology, and the neurosciences.
An ancient model of the mind known as the Five-Aggregate Model explains the mind as continuously changing sense impressions and mental phenomena. Considering this model, it is possible to understand that it is the constantly changing sense impressions and mental phenomena (i.e., the mind) that experiences/analyzes all external phenomena in the world as well as all internal phenomena including the body anatomy, the nervous system as well as the organ brain. This conceptualization leads to two levels of analyses: (i) analyses conducted from a third-person perspective on how the brain works, and (ii) analyzing the moment-to-moment manifestation of an individual’s mind-stream (analyses conducted from a first-person perspective). Considering the latter, the manifestation of the mind-stream is described as happening in every person all the time, even in a scientist who analyses various phenomena in the world, including analyzing and hypothesizing about the organ brain.
Paul Churchland: What is the overwhelming factor in the mind-body problem?
What is the one dramatic exception?
What is the large gulf?
What did Orwell contribute to the discussion?
What does the problem lead us to?
Is what is inside actually who we are?
What is the solution?
https://youtu.be/q8uM9_tbfCI
If materialism is correct and a person is identical with a body, can we explain the phenomenon we all experience of being conscious? How can my body be conscious? Is my consciousness like yours? Is ours like that of animals?
What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel (born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University in the NYU Department of Philosophy, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics.
Nagel is well known for his critique of material reductionist accounts of the mind, particularly in his essay "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), and for his contributions to deontological and liberal moral and political theory in The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and subsequent writings. Continuing his critique of reductionism, he is the author of Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against a reductionist view, and specifically the neo-Darwinian view, of the emergence of consciousness.
"Suppose a caterpillar is locked in a sterile safe by someone unfamiliar with insect metamorphosis, and weeks later the safe is reopened, revealing a butterfly. If the person knows that the safe has been shut the whole time, he has reason to believe that the butterfly is or was once the caterpillar, without having any idea in what sense this might be so... It is conceivable that we are in such a position with regard to physicalism."
https://youtu.be/LTDvoXLX_VE
What can bat behavior reveal about human minds?
What does it mean to say: what is it like?
If foreign intelligence is found will we be able to understand it?
Is physicalism false? Why or why not?
What can lead to understanding?
What does "is" mean?
Dasein:
Dasein is a German word that means "being there" or "presence" (German: da "there"; sein "being"), and is often translated into English with the word "existence". It is a fundamental concept in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger, particularly in his magnum opusBeing and Time. Heidegger uses the expression Dasein to refer to the experience of being that is peculiar to human beings. Thus it is a form of being that is aware of and must confront such issues as personhood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself.
The Qualia Problem Frank Jackson
Frank Cameron Jackson AO (born 1943) is an Australian analytic philosopher, currently Distinguished Professor and former Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University. He was also a regular visiting professor of philosophy at Princeton University from 2007 through 2014. His research focuses primarily on philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and meta-ethics.
Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like 'red', 'blue', and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence 'The sky is blue'. [...]
What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?
In other words, Jackson's Mary is a scientist who knows everything there is to know about the science of color, but has never experienced color.
Frank Jackson:
The question that Jackson raises is: once she experiences color, does she learn anything new?
Ontologically, the following argument is contained in the thought experiment:
(P1) Any and every piece of physical knowledge in regards to human color vision has been obtained (by the test subject, Mary) prior to her release from the black-and-white room. She has all the physical knowledge on the subject.
(P2) Upon leaving the room and witnessing color first-hand, she obtains new knowledge.
(C) There was some knowledge about human color vision she did not have prior to her release. Therefore, not all knowledge is physical knowledge.
Most authors who discuss the knowledge argument cite the case of Mary, but Frank Jackson used a further example in his seminal article: the case of a person, Fred, who sees a color unknown to normal human perceivers. We might want to know what color Fred experiences when looking at things that appear to him in that particular way. It seems clear that no amount of knowledge about what happens in his brain and about how color information is processed in his visual system will help us to find an answer to that question. In both cases cited by Jackson, an epistemic subject A appears to have no access to particular items of knowledge about a subject B: A cannot know that B has an experience of a particular quality Q on certain occasions. This particular item of knowledge about B is inaccessible to A because A never had experiences of Q herself. The knowledge argument:
The knowledge argument is that if Mary does learn something new upon experiencing color, then physicalism is false. Specifically, the Knowledge Argument is an attack on the physicalist claim about the completeness of physical explanations of mental states.
Mary may know everything about the science of color perception, but can she know what the experience of red is like if she has never seen red?
Jackson contends that, yes, she has learned something new, via experience, and hence, physicalism is false. Jackson states:
It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false.
It is important to note that in Jackson's article, physicalism refers to the epistemological doctrine that all knowledge is knowledge of physical facts, and not the metaphysical doctrine that all things are physical things.
Based on your understanding is physicalism false?
In philosophy, physicalism is the ontological thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substance" view of the nature of reality as opposed to a "two-substance" (dualism) or "many-substance" (pluralism) view. Both the definition of "physical" and the meaning of physicalism have been debated.
Physicalism is closely related to materialism. Physicalism grew out of materialism with the success of the physical sciences in explaining observed phenomena. The terms are often used interchangeably, although they are sometimes distinguished, for example on the basis of physics describing more than just matter (including energy and physical law). Common arguments against physicalism include both the philosophical zombie argument and the multiple observers argument, that the existence of a physical being may imply zero or more distinct conscious entities.
https://youtu.be/gZy3Ky9y_fg
A materialist believes that reality consists only of physical objects and their properties. Can materialism, however, account for phenomenal qualities, that is, what it is like to have a certain kind of experience?
Knowing What It’s Like David Lewis
David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941 – October 14, 2001) was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years. He made contributions in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of probability, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical logic, and aesthetics. He is probably best known for his controversial modal realist stance: that (i) possible worlds exist, (ii) every possible world is a concrete entity, (iii) any possible world is causally and spatiotemporally isolated from any other possible world, and (iv) our world is among the possible worlds.
david lewis, on the plurality of worlds 28-09-16, 5:27
Is everything that exists a part of our world?
Is everything that exists in time a part of our world?
https://youtu.be/2N5VfbpTljU
Do only living things think? What about a computer? Does it have conscious thoughts?
Computing Machinery and Intelligence Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist.
Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. For a time he led Hut 8, the section which was responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Here he devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bombe method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. Turing played a pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic, and in so doing helped win the war. Counterfactual history is difficult with respect to the effect Ultra intelligence had on the length of the war, but at the upper end it has been estimated that this work shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over fourteen million lives.
After the war, Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the ACE, among the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1948 Turing joined Max Newman's Computing Machine Laboratory at the Victoria University of Manchester, where he helped develop the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, first observed in the 1960s.
Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when by the Labouchere Amendment, "gross indecency" was criminal in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as suicide, but it has been noted that the known evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning. In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated." Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013. The Alan Turing law is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
In this clip from the movie "The Imitation Game", Alan Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) explains about how machines can think. Based on the real life story of Alan Turing , who is credited with cracking the German Enigma code, THE IMITATION GAME portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team at Britain's top-secret code-breaking centre, Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II. Turing, whose contributions and genius significantly shortened the war, saving thousands of lives, was the eventual victim of an unenlightened British Establishment, but his work and legacy live on. This video is for educative purposes only. The copyright remains with BlueSkyFilm, Studiocanal, Weinstein and CoPeerRight Agency - Italy.
Do good machines think?
Or, do they think differently?
Do our brains work differently?
What is the imitation game all about?
https://youtu.be/Vs7Lo5MKIws
The Turing test: Can a computer pass for a human? - Alex Gendler, 4:42
What is consciousness? Can an artificial machine really think?
For many, these have been vital considerations for the future of artificial intelligence. But British computer scientist Alan Turing decided to disregard all these questions in favor of a much simpler one:
Can a computer talk like a human?
Alex Gendler describes the Turing test and details some of its surprising results.
What is consciousness?
Is there a core in the mind?
How did Turing ask a simple question?
What is the Turing test?
What game did he propose?
How could a computer be intelligent?
What was the first claim to success?
What was another early script?
What was one weakness of the test?
What are chat bots and how are they used today?
What approach has Clever bot taken?
What does it lack?
Is memory and processing power enough? Why or why not?
Can a computer really understand a new language? Marcus Du Sautoy tries to find out using the Chinese Room Experiment. Taken from The Hunt for AI.
https://youtu.be/D0MD4sRHj1M
If a computer is following instructions is it thinking?
What is the mind doing while following instructions?
What is the threshold point between following instructions and the mind actually thinking?
John Rogers Searle (born 31 July 1932) is an American philosopher. He is currently Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy, he began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959.
As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, Searle was secretary of "Students against Joseph McCarthy". He received all his university degrees, BA, MA, and D Phil, from Oxford University, where he held his first faculty positions. Later, at UC Berkeley, he became the first tenured professor to join the 1964–65 Free Speech Movement. In the late 1980s, Searle challenged the restrictions of Berkeley's 1980 rent stabilization ordinance. Following what came to be known as the California Supreme Court's "Searle Decision" of 1990, Berkeley changed its rent control policy, leading to large rent increases between 1991 and 1994.
In 2000 Searle received the Jean Nicod Prize; in 2004, the National Humanities Medal; and in 2006, the Mind & Brain Prize. Searle's early work on speech acts, influenced by J. L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein, helped establish his reputation. His notable concepts include the "Chinese room" argument against "strong" artificial intelligence. In 2017, Searle was accused of sexual harassment.
When you ask what things really exist, and you think deeply about this probe to apprehend what is out there, you see the whole world anew. What are the most general categories to understand the world? Click here to watch more interviews with John Searle http://bit.ly/1GhLZWB Click here to watch more interviews on what really exists http://bit.ly/2mcbbGA Click here to buy episodes or complete seasons of Closer To Truth http://bit.ly/1LUPlQS For all of our video interviews please visit us at www.closertotruth.com
Spike Jonze's movie "Her" deals with a man (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with his intelligent, self-aware computer operating system (Scarlett Johansson).
But what is it that we find so fascinating about artificial intelligence?
Could we ever create completely self-aware artificial intelligence? Maybe we already have!
Do you think it's a good idea for us to give machines intelligence, including self-awareness and consciousness?
What is the spectrum?
How does at least one neuroscientist disagree with Searle?
Is the Internet conscious?
Do you think it's a good idea for us to give machines intelligence?
Why or why not?
https://youtu.be/Lbvj81iu_ig
The Body Problem Barbara Montero
Associate professor of philosophy at the City University of New York (CUNY), and member of the doctoral faculty of the philosophy program of the Graduate Center since 2004 and a member of the philosophy faculty at the college of Staten Island since 2003. Before coming to the City University of New York, an assistant professor at Georgia State University (2001-2003), and prior to that spent a year as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh (2000-2001). Received a number of national research awards, including two National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Research Fellowships, an NEH Summer Stipend, and an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Ryskamp Research Fellowship.
Barbara Montero, Associate Professor of Philosophy at The College of Staten Island and The CUNY Graduate Center, talks about her work in science studies. For more information about The Mellon Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, see: http://sciencestudies.gc.cuny.edu/.
What does Montero counter?
What types does she show?
What does it mean to be an expert?
Do you agree or disagree with Montero?
Can self-help efforts make you an expert?
What in her background may provide insight into the question?
Descartes in his Meditations tries to prove that mind and body are separate and fundamentally different substances, but is he right?
What is the link between Descartes and Keanu Reeves?
What is dualism?
What is res cogitans?
What is Leibniz's Law?
What is the masked man fallacy?
What is another example?
Can a non-physical mind affect a physical brain?
What reasons have meant that Cartesian dualism is not as popular these days?
https://youtu.be/jteIKYWAS4A
Handout Questions: Mind
What questions intrigue you from "I Robot"?
Ryles: What is the ghost in the machine?
What is Cartesian rationalism and how does Ryles differ from Descartes?
What is the category mistake?
What is at least one example?
What are the two fundamental kinds of substance?
Why does Ryle condemn dualism?
How is the argument extended?
What is a fun fact?
Richard Taylor:
Why do humans do what they do according to Taylor?
What are the two responses?
What is the big problem?
What is our predicament?
By what does moral responsibility exist?
How does Taylor apply free will?
How do we know free will exists?
Did Taylor prove free will? Why or why not?
Paul Churchland: What is the overwhelming factor in the mind-body problem?
What is the one dramatic exception?
What is the large gulf?
What did Orwell contribute to the discussion?
What does the problem lead us to?
Is what is inside actually who we are?
What is the solution?
What can bat behavior reveal about human minds?
What does it mean to say: what is it like?
If foreign intelligence is found will we be able to understand it?
Is physicalism false? Why or why not?
What can lead to understanding?
What does "is" mean?
Frank Jackson:
The question that Jackson raises is: once she experiences color, does she learn anything new?
Mary may know everything about the science of color perception, but can she know what the experience of red is like if she has never seen red?
Based on your understanding is physicalism false?
David Lewis:
Is everything that exists a part of our world?
Is everything that exists in time a part of our world?
Alan Turing:
Do good machines think?
Or, do they think differently?
Do our brains work differently?
What is the imitation game all about?
Can a computer talk like a human?
Alex Gendler:
What is consciousness?
Is there a core in the mind?
How did Turing ask a simple question?
What is the Turing test?
What game did he propose?
How could a computer be intelligent?
What was the first claim to success?
What was another early script?
What was one weakness of the test?
What are chat bots and how are they used today?
What approach has Clever bot taken?
What does it lack?
Is memory and processing power enough? Why or why not?
If a computer is following instructions is it thinking?
What is the mind doing while following instructions?
What is the threshold point between following instructions and the mind actually thinking?
John Searle:
What worlds exist?
What worlds exist according to Searle?
How do mathematically entities exist?
What is the temptation in philosophy?
Do numbers exist?
What is the way out?
How many worlds does Searle have?
What is the spectrum?
How does at least one neuroscientist disagree with Searle?
Is the Internet conscious?
Do you think it's a good idea for us to give machines intelligence?
Why or why not?
What does Montero counter?
What types does she show?
What does it mean to be an expert?
Do you agree or disagree with Montero?
Can self-help efforts make you an expert?
What in her background may provide insight into the question?
What is the link between Descartes and Keanu Reeves?
What is dualism?
What is res cogitans?
What is Leibniz's Law?
What is the masked man fallacy?
What is another example?
Can a non-physical mind affect a physical brain?
What reasons have meant that Cartesian dualism is not as popular these days?
Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order;
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Irwin, Robert, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents;
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Schweizer, Peter, Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy---and How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them;
Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe;
Seagren, Eric, Secure Your Network for Free: Using Nmap, Wireshark, Snort, Nessus, and MRTG;
Security Technology & Design: The Security Executive's Resource for Systems Integration and Convergence;
Seibel, Peter, Coders at Work;
Sekunda N., & S. Northwood, Early Roman Armies;
Seneca: Naturales Quaestiones, Books II (Loeb Classical Library No. 450);
Sewall, Sarah, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual;
Sheppard, Ruth, Alexander the Great at War: His Army - His Battles - His Enemies;
Shinder, Jason, ed., The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later;
Sidebottom, Harry, Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction;
Sides, Hampton, Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West;
Simkins, Michael, The Roman Army from Caesar to Trajan;
Sinchak, Steve, Hacking Windows Vista;
Smith, RJ, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown;
Software Development Times: The Industry Newspaper for Software Development Managers;
Software Test Performance;
Solomon, Norman, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death;
Song, Lolan, Innovation Together: Microsoft Research Asia Academic Research Collaboration;
Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays, tr. Robert Fagles;
Sound & Vision: The Consumer Electronics Authority;
Southern, Pat, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History;
Sri, Edward, A Biblical Walk Through the Mass: Understanding What We Say and Do In The Liturgy;
Sri, Edward, Men, Women and the Mystery of Love: Practical Insights from John Paul II's Love and Responsibility;
Stair, John Bettridge, Old Samoa; Or, Flotsam and Jetsam From the Pacific Ocean;
Starr, Chester G., The Roman Empire, 27 B.C.-A.D. 476: A Study in Survival;
Starr, John Bryan, Understanding China: A Guide to China's Economy, History, and Political Culture;
Stauffer, John, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln;
Steyn, Mark, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It;
Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories;
Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War;
Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika;
Strategy + Business;
Streete, Gail, Redeemed Bodies: Women Martyrs in Early Christianity;
Sullivan, James, The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America;
Sumner, Graham, Roman Military Clothing (1) 100 BC-AD 200;
Sumner, Graham, Roman Military Clothing (2) AD 200-400;
Suskind, Ron, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11:
Swanston, Malcolm, Mapping History Battles and Campaigns;
Swiderski, Richard M., Quicksilver: A History of the Use, Lore, and Effects of Mercury;
Swiderski, Richard M., Quicksilver: A History of the Use, Lore, and Effects of Mercury;
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels;
Syme, Ronald, The Roman Revolution;
Talley, Colin L., A History of Multiple Sclerosis;
Tawil, Camille, Brothers In Arms: The Story of al-Qa'ida and the Arab Jihadists;
Tech Briefs: Engineering Solutions for Design & Manufacturing;
Tech Net: The Microsoft Journal for IT Professionals;
Tech Partner: Gain a Competitive Edge Through Solutions Providers;
Technology & Learning: Ideas and Tools for Ed Tech Leaders;
Tenet, George, At the Center of the Storm: The CIA During America's Time of Crisis;
Thackeray, W. M., Vanity Fair;
Thompson, Derrick & William Martin, Have Guitars ... Will Travel: A Journey Through the Beat Music Scene in Northampton 1957-66;
Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina;
Trento, Joseph J., The Secret History of the CIA;
Twain, Mark, The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today;
Ungar, Craig, House of Bush House of Saud;
Unterberger, Richie, The Unreleased Beatles Music & Film;
VAR Business: Strategic Insight for Technology Integrators:
Virgil, The Aeneid
Virtualization Review: Powering the New IT Generation;
Visual Studio: Enterprise Solutions for .Net Development;
VON Magazine: Voice, Video & Vision;
Wall Street Technology: Business Innovation Powered by Technology;
Wallace, Robert, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda;
Wang, Wallace, Steal This Computer Book 4.0: What They Won’t Tell You About the Internet;
Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization;
Warren, Robert Penn, All the King's Men;
Wasik, John F., Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream;
Weber, Karl, Editor, Lincoln: A President for the Ages;
Website Magazine: The Magazine for Website Success;
Weiner, Tim, Enemies: A History of the FBI;
Weiner, Tim, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA;
West, Bing, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq;
Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence;
Wilcox, Peter, Rome's Enemies (1) Germanics and Dacians;
Wise, Terence, Armies of the Carthaginian Wars 265 - 146 BC;
Wissner-Gross, What Colleges Don't Tell You (And Other Parents Don't Want You To Know) 272 Secrets For Getting Your Kid Into the Top Schools;
Wissner-Gross, What High Schools Don't Tell You;
Wolf, Naomi, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries;
Wolf, Naomi, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot;
Woodward, Bob, Plan of Attack;
Woodward, Bob, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House;
Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11;
Wright-Porto, Heather, Beginning Google Blogger;
Xenophon, The Anabasis of Cyrus;
Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power;
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A tax on toilet paper; I kid you not. According to the sponsor, "the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act will be financed broadly by small fees on such things as . . . products disposed of in waste water." Congress wants to tax what you do in the privacy of your bathroom.
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