Reformers in the field of penology are looking at alternative forms of achieving justice and reviewing the history of how our present system has come to dominate such an important part of our world view (Zehr 1990, Bianchi 1995). The existing criminal justice system is based largely on the idea of retribution, seeking to answer three questions: 1) What laws were broken?, 2) Who “done”it?, 3) What punishment do they deserve?. Crime is breaking the rules, breaking the rules is a violation of the state and the state is the victim. The real victims are not even a significant part of the equation. Retributive justice is preoccupied with blame and pain and is primarily negative and backward‐ looking.
As every middle-school child knows, in the process of photosynthesis, plants take the sun’s energy and convert it to electrical energy. Now a Tel Aviv University team has demonstrated how a member of the animal kingdom, the Oriental hornet, takes the sun’s energy and converts it into electric power — in the brown and yellow parts of its body — as well.
The web browser Firefox, the email client Thunderbird, and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, are examples of free and open source tools. The Sarapis Foundation believes that instruments like these are essential to human society because of their ability to provide “everyone with the rights to own, customize and contribute to the technologies we all use everyday” – effectively liberating human collaboration. Emile Durkheim wrote in The Division of Labour In Society that, “no individual is sufficient unto himself, it is from society that he receives all that is needful, just as it is for society that he labors.” It is reasonable to believe we are born with the intention to help each other, directly or indirectly. As a result, the means for building, and modifying the structures society depends on should be freely obtainable.
Biocentrism, also known as the biocentric universe, is a theory that was proposed in 2007 by American scientist, Robert Lanza. According to the theory, life and biology are central to being, reality, and the cosmos — instead of asserting the universe creates life, the theory posits, life creates the universe. As a result, biocentrism states no theory of the physical world will be accurate without taking consciousness into consideration. After all, it is consciousness that allows us to know the physical world exists.
More and more our phones are becoming who we are, and beginning to become the only interface for interacting with the world. Near-field communication is a low-power technology that beams and receives wireless information from up to four inches away. This will be present in stickers on storefront windows and restaurants as well. The NFC stickers interact with a person’s phone, giving them information about the establishment and also at some point (maybe not right away) giving the merchant information about the person. This technology will enable people to make payments just by waving their phones at an establishment. In the near future you will receive very targeted ads because of technology like this, and merchants will collect info about their clients.
Brian McElhaney’s 2008 NYU Thesis Film, based on a script he and Nick wrote that garnered no support or money from any of the faculty, and nearly got him thrown out of class. According to The Huffington Post, it’s the ‘best short film’ and ‘Brian and Nick are the rare comedic duo whose perfect timing and inexhaustible likability are surpassed only by their incredibly proficient filmmaking.
More than 10 million Americans moved from one county to another during 2008. The map visualizes those moves. Click on any county to see comings and goings: black lines indicate net inward movement, red lines net outward movement.
Lesley Hazleton sat down one day to read the Koran. And what she found — as a non-Muslim, a self-identified “tourist” in the Islamic holy book — wasn’t what she expected. With serious scholarship and warm humor, Hazleton shares the grace, flexibility and mystery she found, in this myth-debunking talk from TEDxRainier.
Speaking at a TED Salon in London, economist Martin Jacques asks: How do we in the West make sense of China and its phenomenal rise? The author of “When China Rules the World,” he examines why the West often puzzles over the growing power of the Chinese economy, and offers three building blocks for understanding what China is and will become.
As the U.S. Department of Justice considers charging WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917, we [Democracy Now!] speak with Robert Meeropol, the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—the only U.S. citizens to be executed under the Espionage Act, in what’s been described as the most controversial death sentence in U.S. history.
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