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“Simulation-based research is an inevitability,” he declared in Bern. “If I get stopped from doing this, it's going to happen. It has happened already in many areas of science. And it is going to happen in life science.”
The growing use of videos, simulations, and sophisticated graphics (DNA analysis included) as a basis for legal judgments exposes the vicissitudes of justice in the digital age. Adapting to these changes with our justice systems’ credibility intact will require broad cultivation of a more refined capacity for critical visual judgment.
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Less discussed than the suspect DNA evidence is whether a graphic digital animation also contributed to Knox’s conviction. In his closing argument at trial, Perugian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini played a computer-generated simulation that showed an avatar-Amanda killing an avatar-Meredith. It ended with a gory crime-scene photo of Kercher’s body. The animation now seems to have been a mere fantasy, an animated version of the prosecution’s theory featuring Amanda Knox as a sex-crazed femme fatale, “Foxy Knoxy,” as the British tabloids called her, a “she-devil,” as many European journalists wrote, appropriating the prosecutor’s phrase.
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“In the end, it was the trial of a different culture, a clash of cultures more than a legal case,” Zucconi argued. “The same girl whom prosecutors depicted as a she-devil starved for sex and orgies was, in inverse proportion, perceived in American public opinion as a chaste diva who fell into a hornets’ nest of inept, evil men.”
But this view assumes that law and culture are two separate worlds. They aren’t. Effective prosecutors and defense lawyers mine the popular imagination for well-known characters (“she-devil,” “femme fatale”) and stock scripts (“sex game gone wrong”) to help frame their story in court. And, increasingly, their advocacy begins well before the courtroom doors open.
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Nick Bostrom doesn't rule out the possibility that he might be part of a computer simulation. Find out why in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.
Listen to Nick Bostrom on the Simulation Argument
Listen to Nick Bostrom on Status Quo Bias on the Bioethics Bites podcast
A technologically mature posthuman civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true:
The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero;
The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero;
The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.
If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).
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Inspired by Heidegger, Paul Colaizzi articulates the interlink between sexuality embodiment time death and technology (1978): “Sexuality must be repressed because it is bodily activity; the body must be repressed because it is the vehicle of life; life itself must be repressed because life and death go together... man represses death... and to repress death successfully... creates technology” (6-7). Foucault (1976/1980) completes the picture: “death is so carefully evaded” because “death is power’s limit, the moment that escapes it” (138).
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For 2,500 years, the marriage between Platonism and Christendom has prompted praise. Western civilization exalts this abstract mythical vision as intellectually lofty and spiritually superior. Nietzsche (1889/1982), however, exposes Plato as a “coward before reality,” rails against his other-worldly orientation, his “decadence-values,” and unmasks his “hostility against life” (558-59; 572, 574). Nietzsche (1889/1982) shows that Plato’s writings about love, the body, Eros, and sublimation are contrived: “The pure spirit is the pure lie” (575).
The benefit of a flight simulator is that it allows pilots to internalize their new knowledge. Instead of memorizing lessons on the blackboard, they were forced to exercise emotional regulation, learning how to stay calm and think clearly when bad stuff happens. (I’ve been in these realistic flight simulators and let me assure you – they can be terrifying. After I crashed my jetliner, I left the simulator drenched in sweat, all jangly with adrenaline.) The essential point here is that pilots were the first profession to realize that many of our most important decisions were inherently emotional and instinctive, which is why it was necessary to practice them in an emotional state. If we want those hours of practice to transfer to the real world – and isn’t that the point of practice? – then we have to simulate not just the exterior conditions of the cockpit but the internal mental state of the pilot as well. For far too long, we’ve assumed that expertise is about learning lots of facts, which is why we settled for the “chalk and talk” teaching method. But it’s not. True expertise occurs when we no longer need to reference facts, because we already know what to do.
Japanese, and candy company Ezaki Glico has confirmed that Eguchi Aimi is completely computer generated. She’s made a composite of facial features from the six other AKB48 members in the commercial.
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meet Eguchi Aimi. She is the latest member of Japanese pop band AKB48, and her perfect good looks and uncanny similarities to other AKB48 members have taken the Internet by storm.
Well, no, not really.
To put things into context, take a look at the video below:
Just a bunch of kawaii Japanese girls advertising some candy, right? Looks tasty, too, like one of Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers. But take special notice of the girl in the center. Yes, the prettiest of the lot. Since the commercial went live on Japanese TV, she has attracted a lot of attention and a large fan base eager to learn more about her.
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According to Channel News Asia, Eguchi Aimi took the best features of her real counterparts, namely Atsuko Maeda (eyes), Tomomi Itano (nose), Mariko Shinoda (mouth), Yuko Oshima (hair/ body), Minami Takahashi (outline) and Mayu Watanabe (eyebrows). Her voice was then provided by Yukari Sasaki.
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EVERYTHING IS A REMIX PART 3
Kirby Ferguson is back with part three of his four part series, further explaining how no one really creates anything.
"Chance is a mere seeming - the intersection of two causal lines"
Residents of the Austrian mountain town of Hallstatt, population 800, are scandalized. A Chinese firm has plans to replicate the village -- including its famous lake -- in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, Austrian media reported this week.
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But creating an exact duplicate of a city may not be legal, according to Hans-Jörg Kaiser from Icomos Austria, the national board for monument preservation under UNESCO. "The legal situation still needs to be examined," he said. Building new structures based on photographs is legal, he explained, but owners must give their permission for them to be measured.
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This isn't the first time a Chinese firm has used a European place as inspiration. The Chinese city of Anting, some 30 kilometers from Shanghai, created a district designed to accommodate 20,000 residents called "German Town Anting." Modelled after a typical mid-size German city by architecture firm Albert Speer & Partner, it includes Bauhaus style architecture and a fountain with statues of Goethe and Schiller.
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can such hoaxes be beneficial? If a Western audience was in fact impelled to learn more about the social woes in Syria, is this a net gain for society in general? Should such well-intentioned projects be condoned, even perhaps emulated in certain ways if deemed an effective educational tool? Could we use this format — a narrative-driven account of important far-flung events that allows audience a portal into such events that may be more engaging than typical AP newswire reportage? People tend to connect better to emotion-filled story arcs than recitation of facts, after all.
Perhaps instead of merely piling on MacMaster, we can learn something from his communication strategy …
To Mr. MacMaster, I say shame on you!!! There are bloggers in Syria who are trying as hard as they can to report news and stories from the country. We have to deal with too many difficulties than you can imagine. What you have done has harmed many, put us all in danger, and made us worry about our LGBT activism. Add to that, that it might have caused doubts about the authenticity of our blogs, stories, and us. Your apology is not accepted, since I have myself started to investigate Amina’s arrest. I could have put myself in a grave danger inquiring about a fictitious figure. Really… Shame on you!!!
To the readers and the western media I say, there are authentic people in the Middle East who are blogging and reporting stories about the situation in their countries. You should pay attention to these people.
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Because of you, Mr. MacMaster, a lot of the real activists in the LGBT community became under the spotlight of the authorities in Syria. These activists, among them myself, had to change so much in their attitude and their lives to protect themselves from the positional harm your little stunt created. You have, sir, put a lot of lives, mine and some friends included, in harm's way so you can play your little game of fictional writing.
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You took away my voice, Mr. MacMaster, and the voices of many people who I know. To bring attention to yourself and blog; you managed to bring the LGBT movement in the Middle East years back. You single-handedly managed to bring unwanted attention from authorities to our cause and you will be responsible for any LGBT activist who might be yet another fallen angel during these critical time.
I'm outraged, and if I lived in a country where I can sue you, I would.
a post appeared on the prominent blog "A Gay Girl in Damascus" claiming that the blogger, an out Syrian lesbian who wrote under the name Amina Arraf, had been kidnapped by Syrian security forces. As it turned out, there was no Amina—just a guy in Scotland named Tom.
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At the time of the post describing Amina's arrest, "A Gay Girl in Damascus" was generally accepted at face value. But the young woman's story began to fall apart under the scrutiny of the bloggers and journalists attempting to fact-check it and follow up. She frequently canceled interviews at the last minute. A photo that Amina sent to The Guardian turned out to be stolen from the Facebook account of a British-Croatian woman named Jelena Lecic. NPR's Andy Carvin discovered that no one—not even her Canadian girlfriend—had met Amina in person.
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MacMaster confessed on the blog:
Apology to readers
I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.
I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in thıs year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.
This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.
However, I have been deeply touched by the reactions of readers.
Best,
Tom MacMaster,
Istanbul, Turkey
July 12, 2011The sole author of all posts on this blog
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We have gathered compelling new evidence regarding the “Gay Girl in Damascus” blogger hoax.
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We believe the story of Amina to be totally baseless and the doubts expressed by other observers, such as Liz Henry and Andy Carvin, to be entirely founded.
We also believe that whoever is responsible for the hoax is attempting to conceal their responsibility and continues to disseminate false information. They have previously engaged in such behavior as taking photographs from the Facebook page of a totally uninvolved individual and deceptively presenting them as being images of Amina and members of her family.
We believe that the person or persons responsible should end this deception which has been harmful to individuals who trusted and believed in “Amina” and more broadly has sown confusion, distraction and absorbed energy and attention at a time when real people are in danger in Syria and in other countries in the region.
We are sharing the information we have gathered here not in order to level accusations, but so that others might pursue these leads to conclusive ends. The best outcome would be if the person or persons behind the hoax would take responsibility themselves to bring the matter to a close and provide all doubters with reassurance that “Amina” is not in danger because she is a fictitious character.
While we believe that the information gathered here is compelling in its own right, we have managed to corroborate additional information from several independent sources that we are not publishing and that significantly increases our confidence in the information we have. We do not know the motives of the person or persons behind this hoax.
NewsFeed has covered the story of the 'Gay Girl in Damascus,' a blogger who has drawn significant attention for writing about her experiences living as a gay woman in Syria. But recent reports question Amina Abdullah's identity and the veracity of her posts.
NPR's Andy Carvin questioned Amina's existence in a tweet that asked if anyone had met Abdullah in person. He wrote that he decided to investigate after receiving, "a tip from an LGBT Syrian source who didn't believe Amina existed."
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Similarly, though some sites interviewed a "close friend" of Abdullah's, NPR reports that the source, Sandra Bagaria, only communicated with Abdullah via Facebook.
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Bagaria also told NPR that, "Amina posted some 200 pictures [to Facebook] of someone who wasn't her." The person in question, is in fact Jelena Lecic, of London. Lecic told the BBC that she is not friends with Abdullah and has never met her. Her photo, however, has been used on several media sites to picture Abdullah.
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German police believe that American actor, comedian and collector Steve Martin played a minor role as a victim in what may be Germany's biggest-ever art forgery scandal. According to investigators at Berlin's state criminal police office (LKA), the art lover purchased what he believed to be a 1915 work by the German-Dutch modernist painter Heinrich Campendonk. He bought the colorful "Landschaft mit Pferden," or "Landscape With Horses," from the Paris gallery Cazeau-Béraudière for what would have been considered the bargain price of an estimated €700,000 (around $850,000 at the time) in July 2004.
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Before the purchase a Campendonk expert had confirmed the painting's authenticity and identified the painter's signature on a label attached to the back. But 15 months later Martin, who would later publish a novel about the New York art scene called "An Object of Beauty," tried to re-sell the work. Art auction house Christie's finally auctioned it off in February 2006 to a Swiss businesswoman for €500,000 -- a loss of €200,000 from Martin's original purchase price.
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Some forgeries of Max Ernst paintings were so convincing that even Werner Spies, an art historian and Ernst expert, gave them his seal of approval. When the true origin of the paintings emerged last year it caused a commotion in the art community, where trading works by classic 20th century artists is a lucrative business.
In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might be completely unethical, such as lethal experiments involving people. This feature aims to look at the impossible dreams, the seemingly intractable problems in science. However, the question mark at the end of "Too Hard for Science?" suggests that nothing might be impossible.
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HB Gary people are talking about creating "personas", what we would call sockpuppets. This is not new. PR firms have been using fake "people" to promote products and other things for a while now, both online and even in bars and coffee houses.
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But for a defense contractor with ties to the federal government, Hunton & Williams, DOD, NSA, and the CIA - whose enemies are labor unions, progressive organizations, journalists, and progressive bloggers, a persona apparently goes far beyond creating a mere sockpuppet.
According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HB Gary emails, it involves creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated "persona management" software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other. Then, to top it off, the team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online.
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Riddle of the two Van Dycks
X-radiography and infrared imaging help scholars determine which is the copy
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Between 1618 and 1621, two ostensibly identical works entitled St Jerome with an Angel were produced in Van Dyck’s Antwerp studio; one painting now belongs to the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and the other is on long-term loan to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Now after almost 40 years of scholarly debate, new research conducted by the two institutions has finally answered the question as to which came first.
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In February 2009, after extensive conservation work on both paintings—the Rotterdam version underwent treatment in 2005 and work on the Stockholm painting finished in early 2009—the two works were compared side-by-side for the first time at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. There, a team which included Boijmans conservator Annetje Boersma and Lena Dahlén from the Stockholm institution, took paint samples
and examined the works using
x-radiography and infrared imaging. Direct examination showed that the Rotterdam painting was in better condition: the Stockholm work had sustained damage as a result of previous restorations which have abraded the faces of the figures and the folds of St Jerome’s robe.
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