Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “BBC”
Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for world domination is in trouble. The billionaire Facebook founder recently took to his social network in a bid to save Internet.org, his plan to give billions of the planet’s poorest people a limited taste of the World Wide Web. “We have a historic opportunity ahead of us to improve the lives of billions of people,” he …
The new sci-fi film Ex_Machina has been teasing back into the cultural dialogue dreams of artificial consciousness: the idea that we humans, through the Faustian power of technology, can birth into being mechanisms capable of inner life, subjectivity and affection. Since these dreams are entirely based on implicit assumptions about the nature of consciousness and reality at large, I thought a few …
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has published a report that ranks countries according to how well they protect the rights of workers. The Global Rights Index gives each country in the world a score out of five, with zero designating a country in which labour rights are sacrosanct and five a country with no protections at all. Twenty-four countries …
Ever since Milton Friedman’s series of essays on Capitalism and Freedom, conservatives have tried to link democracy and capitalism into essential handmaidens. But as the evidence shows, it’s a reality-busting bundle that only a psychotic could love. Or believe.The fact is, capitalism as practiced in America – far from being democracy’s handmaiden — is anathema to freedom, and ultimately, impoverishing to …
Angus Maddison has noted that India was the richest country in the world and had controlled a third of global wealth until the 17th century. The village was the centre of a rural economy that was an economic powerhouse of entrepreneurialism. The British Raj almost dismantled this system however by introducing mono crop activities and mill made products, and post independent India has failed to repair the …
School textbooks in India have been telling children for generations that Rajasthan is an inhospitable state in the northwest of the country, constrained by the hot, hostile sands of the Thar Desert. But the driest state in India has a softer, humane face as well – that of Rajendra Singh, known as the “Water Man of India”, whose untiring efforts …
“Just plain immoral.” That’s how Secretary of State John Kerry recently described those who stand idly by while the world burns—or, worse, obstruct those trying to douse the fire. He didn’t name names, but Kerry was clearly referring to Republicans who lockstep refuse to acknowledge climate science, even as California enters the fourth year of a historic drought and the …
The U.K.’s former top climate change diplomat says Shell and other oil companies are fighting tooth and nail to stifle climate change action. The United Kingdom’s former climate change envoy John Ashton has accused Shell of engineering a “psychopathic” attempt to block action on climate change. In an open letter to Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden published by the U.K.’s Guardian …
In an article titled “Madness in the Royal Library” published in the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen on December 7, 2012, journalist Søren Villemoes accused esteemed chemist Dr. Niels Harrit of being a “crackpot” for daring to conclude that the destruction of three World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, was a controlled demolition. Harrit, a 40-year professor of chemistry at the University …
“Give up your dreams, if you must. Cease dreaming altogether. Call those dreams and ambitions and visions…delusions. Then you will be ready. Then you can truly serve humanity. You can fall back into the arms of the many who will receive you with love. You’ll become an empty vessel through which miracles are channeled. One day Oprah will interview you.” (The …
