According to a U.S. court ruling, intelligent design (ID) theory is religious in nature, not scientific, and must not be taught in schools. In opposition, Fuller argues for a closer rapport between science and religion. Here it is emphasized that any allegedly scientific conclusion from design in nature to the existence of God is a hypothesis subject to the same quality norms as empirical hypotheses in general. By quotations from his Iter Lapponicum , Linnæus is summoned in support of a (...) strictly immanent conception of science, against Fuller’s suggestion that Linnæus’ personal piety could be a reason for considering ID scientific. (shrink)

The editors welcome letters from readers, although we cannot guarantee that all will be published. To ensure timeliness, correspondents must respond to an article within seven weeks, and not exceed two double‐spaced pages. Letters become the property of the editors and may be edited and shortened at our discretion.

In Minima Moralia, Adorno talks about a ‘messianic light’ which shines from beyond the corrupted world, offering the possibility of redemption from suffering. Theological statements like these have created significant controversy within the literature on Adorno, with interpreters like Hent de Vries and Peter Gordon arguing that the ‘messianic light’ depicts a transcendent negativity in line with negative theology. This is in opposition to the materialist interpretation, with interpreters like Jay Bernstein who oppose this reading, arguing that Adorno’s use of (...) messianic language is only a metaphorical means to express a negative approach to finite, material experience. In this article, I argue that an ambiguity concerning the source of redemption in Adorno’s work prevents either interpretation from being conclusive. Adorno vacillates between locating hope in sensuous experience or in spiritual negativity. In response, I offer a reading of Adorno’s notion of the object’s preponderance that fulfils both the materialist concern with concrete mediation as well as the theological notion that the messianic light cannot arise from the existing world. The experience of the retreat of the object’s preponderance explains our consciousness of a negative notion of redemption that transcends our current cultural circumstance. (shrink)

The spread of misinformation and fake news raises important problems for our society and for our democracy. From the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to vaccine hesitancy, from suppressing voter turnout to peddling conspiracy theories, we know that these problems are real and need to be taken seriously. While misinformation is not a new problem for democracy, it can spread more quickly and easily because of new media’s design and popularity. Given these problems, it is encouraging that some (...) technology companies are taking steps to reduce the spread of misinformation and fake news on the platforms they manage. Despite this seemingly positive development, some scholars have criticized some interventions designed to combat the spread of misinformation and fake news as paternalistic. For example, a 2019 Facebook intervention called Click-Gap aimed to reduce the amount of low-quality content (including fake news and misinformation) that users see on their NewsFeed. Click-Gap has been criticized as an instance of epistemic paternalism because it was adopted (1) with the goal of improving the epistemic status of its users and (2) irrespective of what the company believed the wishes of its users to be. If interventions like Click-Gap are problematic because paternalistic, those of us interested in the ethics of technology would face a dilemma—either endorse technology companies treating their users paternalistically or endorse their failing to act to combat the spread of misinformation and fake news on their platforms. Both options seem to me to be problematic. While paternalism may sometimes be permissible, I think we should be very hesitant to endorse a paternalistic relationship between technology companies and their users. The relationship does not seem to bear the right sort of structure to one in which paternalism might be appropriate, if it ever is. The second option seems, if anything worse: surely technology companies should not stand by and change nothing about their platforms despite the spread of misinformation and fake news in those spaces. In this paper, I argue that Click-Gap and interventions like it are not paternalistic, contrary to the conclusion of other scholars. Further, I will argue that the focus on paternalism itself is actually a red herring here. While not just any intervention or strategy that purports to reduce fake news and misinformation is permissible, we should want technology companies to take user well-being seriously and be able to take that well-being as a direct reason for action. Their doing so is not paternalistic nor even morally problematic, and it should not be criticized as such. (shrink)

Reindeer meat, traditional food and knowledge are vital for the culture, health, and economy of Sámi reindeer herders. Nevertheless, the practices of reindeer meat smoking have barely been part of scientific research or reindeer herding management. We investigated Sámi reindeer herders’ approach to meat smoking in Northern Norway performed in the traditional Sámi tent, the lávvu. The investigation included workshops, interviews, participatory observations, and co-analyze meetings. Our findings reveal a typology of the traditional Sámi smoking (...) practices. Sámi reindeer herders use a variety of wood species and plant parts to control the smoke based on a complex system of traditional knowledge. Yet there is a need for education, industry, and research acknowledging, supporting, and maintaining the Sámi meat-smoking process and associated worldviews, knowledge, and practices to ensure ethical, sustainable, and healthy food production. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 82-83.

The legal basis for processing personal data and some other types of Big Data is often the informed consent of the data subject involved. Many data controllers, such as social network sites, offer terms and conditions, privacy policies or similar documents to which a user can consent when registering as a user. There are many issues with such informed consent: people get too many consent requests to read everything, policy documents are often very long and difficult to understand and users (...) feel they do not have a real choice anyway. Furthermore, in the context of Big Data refusing consent may not prevent predicting missing data. Finally, consent is usually asked for when registering, but rarely is consent renewed. As a result, consenting once often implies consent forever. At the same time, given the rapid changes in Big Data and data analysis, consent may easily get outdated. This paper suggests expiry dates for consent, not to settle questions, but to put them on the table as a start for further discussion on this topic. Although such expiry dates may not solve all the issues of informed consent, they may be a useful tool in some situations. (shrink)

Causalists and Evidentialists can agree about the right course of action in an (apparent) Newcomb problem, if the causal facts are not as initially they seem. If declining $1,000 causes the Predictor to have placed $1m in the opaque box, CDT agrees with EDT that one-boxing is rational. This creates a difficulty for Causalists. We explain the problem with reference to Dummett's work on backward causation and Lewis's on chance and crystal balls. We show that the possibility that the causal (...) facts might be properly judged to be non-standard in Newcomb problems leads to a dilemma for Causalism. One horn embraces a subjectivist understanding of causation, in a sense analogous to Lewis's own subjectivist conception of objective chance. In this case the analogy with chance reveals a terminological choice point, such that either (i) CDT is completely reconciled with EDT, or (ii) EDT takes precedence in the cases in which the two theories give different recommendations. The other horn of the dilemma rejects subjectivism, but now the analogy with chance suggests that it is simply mysterious why causation so construed should constrain rational action. (shrink)

The legal framework governing claims of medical negligence is extensively documented within South African (SA) jurisprudence, with a predominant focus on the liability of medical practitioners. In contrast, the liability of pharmacists has received comparatively scant attention. This issue was recently highlighted by a case in which a woman from the Western Cape initiated legal action against Clicks, a leading health, beauty and wellness retailer and SA’s largest retail pharmacy chain, alleging that the provision of incorrect medication nearly cost her (...) life. At the time of writing, the case has yet to advance to trial. This article explores the legal and ethical dimensions of medical negligence attributed to pharmacists within the context of their professional duties. Additionally, it investigates how similar cases are adjudicated in foreign jurisdictions, with a specific focus on the US. (shrink)

The script focusFollowsMouse.user.js provides a very simple implementation of "click-free" web browsing: it defines a mouseover method for every HTML link, input, select and text area which calls the focus() method on that control. (Click on the link to install it as a Greasemonkey script.).

Research on pornography has distinguished between its violent and nonviolent forms. Analyses of the content of violent pornography have largely focused on readily available soft-core images in adult films and magazines. However, current research has not adequately addressed pornography on the Internet. We show that discussions about violent pornography are incomplete without an understanding of the Internet as a unique and rapidly expanding medium for disseminating images of sexual violence against women. This article attempts to fill that gap by examining (...) violent pornography using a sample of 31 free Internet sites. Each site was analyzed for its portrayal of women victims, male perpetrators, and its story of rape. Please be advised that the analysis contains graphic descriptions of violence toward women found on Internet rape sites. (shrink)

Jesus The Logician ABSTRACT: In understanding how discipleship to Jesus Christ works, a major issue is how he automatically presents himself to our minds. It is characteristic of most 20th century Christians that he does not automatically come to mind as one of great intellectual power: as Lord of universities and research institutes, of the creative disciplines and scholarship. The Gospel accounts of how he actually worked, however, challenge this intellectually marginal image of him and help us to see him (...) at home in the best of academic and scholarly settings of today, where many of us are called to be his apprentices. (shrink)

The examination of the complex cell biology of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum usually relies on the time‐consuming generation of transgenic parasites. Here, metabolic labeling and click chemistry are employed as a fast transfection‐independent method for the microscopic examination of protein S‐palmitoylation, an important post‐translational modification during the asexual intraerythrocytic replication of P. falciparum. Applying various microscopy approaches such as confocal, single‐molecule switching, and electron microscopy, differences in the extent of labeling within the different asexual developmental stages of P. (...) falciparum and the host erythrocytes over time are observed. (shrink)

John Dewey's political and educational ideas can offer some guidance in arbitrating the online literacy debate.

With the increasing popularity of the Internet, email marketing has become a convenient and dynamic mode of communication that enables business organizations and personal sellers to promote their products or services at a much lower cost and with a potentially more global reach. This article aims to examine the impact of new media on the encoding of persuasive messages in sales emails as a channel of direct marketing, and the extent to which the use of new media influences the overall (...) interactional or social strategy of credibility enhancement and persuasion in the context of sales promotion. A genre analysis based on a modified move scheme proposed in this study was conducted on 160 sales letters randomly selected from a database of 10,972 sales letters collected from 36 categories of recipients in Hong Kong over a six-month period. Similarities and differences in discourse structures were found across the two corpora, and discussions were made with reference to a conceptual framework titled the Lingual-Belief Interaction Model proposed by the author. The model addresses the role of text, context, and interface in sales email study on the one hand, and the interplay of belief, interaction, and language in persuasive communication on the other. In-depth interviews were conducted with 16 specialist and corporate informants in the field of sales promotion communication to verify the results of analysis. (shrink)

It is argued that GDPR suffer from a practical problem of click-through consents, which developers of web browsers should resolve.

The paper presents a revised view of quantum mechanics centered on the notion (“genuine fortuitousness”) that the click in a counter is a totally lawless event, which comes by itself. A crucial point is the distinction between events on the spacetime scene and the content of the symbolic algorism. A revised conception of matrix variables emerges, by which such a variable, as part of a whole, does not have a value, under any circumstance. This conception is at variance with that (...) of indeterminate variables. A matrix variable not having a value does not enter spacetime and is not a measurable quantity, but manifests itself by a click in a counter with the remarkable property of having an onset, a beginning, from which the click develops. The individual click with its immense complexity is unique and lawless, even beyond probability. The notion of probability only applies to clicks in low resolution, and the completeness of a probabilistic theory is thereby seen in a new perspective. The genuinely fortuitous click is not produced by the impact of a particle, nor caused by an event in the source prior to the click in the counter. Indeed, there are no particles on the spacetime scene. The theory is thereby liberated from notions, which go with particles having indeterminate variables, and which have given to quantum mechanics the image of an unfathomable theory. With no particle as intermediary, the connection between source and detector is non-local, as is the entire theory, which deals exclusively with distributions of clicks. The locality permeating quantum mechanics is a symbolic one. The wave function enters in the sole role of encoding the probability distributions of clicks. The quest to understand the occurrence of the click in terms of the evolution of the wave function loses its meaning. However, click distributions in low resolution can be analyzed in terms of the connection between click distributions for different sets of counters, as given by the wave function. With increasing resolution, the probabilities, and the wave function, gradually lose significance, whereby the onset remains beyond reach. Thus, the downward path from events on the spacetime scene does not extend beyond the onset. The notion that quantum mechanics deals with particles (or fields) is rooted in the historical evolution but appears unable to accomodate genuine fortuitousness. The latter concept is given its due place by fully accepting the abstract nature of the matrix variables. (shrink)

Wildlife translocations often raise concerns about the purpose and impact among people living in target locations. We applied the integrated impact assessment in planning the reintroduction of wild forest reindeer in Finland. We investigated the variety of expected socioecological impacts, the relative importance of these impacts and local willingness to participate in local-level reintroduction activities. The reintroduction project organised interactive forums in 2013 and 2016 in each of the four regions suitable for wild forest reindeer. The variety of (...) recognised potential impacts was high, but the relative importance given to the expected impacts varied relatively little from forum to forum. Importantly, we found a contextual and relational value of wild forest reindeer that extended beyond their intrinsic and instrumental value. The results indicate high local acceptance of reintroduction and willingness to participate in it. (shrink)

The extremely well-known holiday television special Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is deconstructed to expose an underlying philosophical paradigm towards people, especially children, with disabilities that is mechanistic and utilitarian. This paradigm includes a static and over-determined view of any disability a person may have, and can be erroneously supported by a philosophy of “radical freedom.” Examples of this philosophy of disability as applied to the K-12 realm of special education are also provided, showing how the lessons learned from (...) the children’s movie are mirrored in the static conceptualization of the notion of disability in the general society and educational system. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to analyze the reasons behind users’ selection of news results on the news aggregator website, Google News, and the role that news factors play in this selection. We assume that user’s cognitive elaboration of users influences their news selection. In this study, a multi-method approach is used to obtain a complete picture of the users’ news selection reasoning: an open survey, a closed survey, and a content analysis of screen recording data. The results were (...) determined from online news selection of 90 news results from 47 users on Google News. Different news values could be identified as relevant for selection: time-referenced news factors and news factors of social significance were shown to be more important than the news factors of deviance. News cues (presence of a picture, position of a news result, source) were identified as selection reasons regardless of the level of cognitive elaboration during the online browsing process. (shrink)

In a recent article, O. Ulfbeck and A. Bohr [Found. Phys. 31, 757 (2001)] have stressed the genuine fortuitousness of detector clicks, which has also been pointed out, in different terms, by the present author [Am. J. Phys. 68, 728 (2000)]. In spite of this basic agreement, the present article raises objections to the presuppositions and conclusions of Ulfbeck and Bohr, in particular their rejection of the terminology of indefinite variables, their identification of reality with “the world of experience,” their (...) identification of experience with what takes place “on the spacetime scene,” and the claim that their interpretation of quantum mechanics is “entirely liberated” from classical notions. An alternative way of making sense of a world of uncaused clicks is presented. This does not invoke experience but deals with a free-standing reality, is not fettered by classical conceptions of space and time but introduces adequate ways of thinking about the spatiotemporal aspects of the quantum world, and does not reject indefinite variables but clarifies the implications of their existence. (shrink)

This experimental study sets out to determine whether people detect click sounds in American English. Recent research has documented the use of non-phonemic clicks in a variety of languages to fulfill a range of functions such as sequence management or signaling searches and different types of attitudinal stance. While these clicks are acoustically salient and have been reported to occur with a frequency of up to 14 per minute in British English, they have not been widely investigated until relatively recently. (...) For this experiment, we designed video stimuli consisting of A and B pairs of approximately 10 seconds of speech, one with a click and the other with the click edited out. We gave 118 participants a questionnaire and asked if they could detect a difference between the pairs of videos. The results indicate that the majority of participants, between 79% and 86%, do not detect click sounds. (shrink)

A mathematical model based upon catastrophe theory is derived to describe the kinematics of the wing beat in Dipteran flight. The parameters of the model correspond to anatomical and physiological characteristics of the insect.

BioPortal is a Web portal that provides access to a library of biomedical ontologies and terminologies developed in OWL, RDF(S), OBO format, Protégé frames, and Rich Release Format. BioPortal functionality, driven by a service-oriented architecture, includes the ability to browse, search and visualize ontologies (Figure 1). The Web interface also facilitates community-based participation in the evaluation and evolution of ontology content.

Congenital hip dysplasia is an abnormal formation of the hip socket that can cause painful arthritis of the joints. Early intervention is essential to ensure proper development of the bones that make up the hip joint, because the longer the condition goes undetected and untreated, the more difficult it is to correct. The assessment test to detect congenital hip dysplasia in newborns was first described by Marino Ortolani, an Italian pediatrician.Marino Ortolani was born in 1904 in Altedo, a small town (...) between Bologna and Ferrara in northeastern Italy. His parents were agricultural workers. He studied medicine at the University of Bologna and, after graduating in 1929, was awarded a medal for being the first.. (shrink)

Clicks, comments, transactions, and physical movements are being increasingly recorded and analyzed by Big Data processors who use this information to trace the sentiment and activities of markets and voters. While the benefits of Big Data have received considerable attention, it is the potential social costs of practices associated with Big Data that are of interest to us in this paper. Prior research has investigated the impact of Big Data on individual privacy rights, however, there is also growing recognition of (...) its capacity to be mobilized for surveillance purposes. Our paper delineates the underlying issues of privacy and surveillance and presents them as in tension with one another. We postulate that efforts at controlling Big Data may create a trade-off of risks rather than an overall improvement in data protection. We explore this idea in relation to the principles of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation as it arguably embodies the new ‘gold standard’ of cyber-laws. We posit that safeguards advocated by the law, anonymization and pseudonymization, while representing effective counter measures to privacy concerns, also incentivize the use, collection, and trade of behavioral and other forms of de-identified data. We consider the legal status of these ownerless forms of data, arguing that data protection techniques such as anonymization and pseudonymization raise significant concerns over the ownership of behavioral data and its potential use in the large-scale modification of activities and choices made both on and offline. (shrink)