Saturday/Sunday, February 6-7, 2010

WEB BOHEMIAN Weekend Edition (Saturday/Sunday, February 6-7, 2010)
(1)- ONLY ONE LEFT – Australia’s trouble-prone $6 billion submarine fleet is reduced to one operational boat, raising questions about the long-term serviceability of the Collins Class vessels designed to serve as Australia's frontline strike weapon.

(2)- FIGHTING BRIBERY -- In India, petty corruption is pervasive; people face situations where they are asked to pay bribes for public services that should be provided free. 5th Pillar distributes zero rupee notes to protest bribe demands.

(3)- EMPATHY EVOLUTION -- Empathy's not a uniquely human trait, explains primatologist Frans de Waal. Apes and other animals feel it as well, suggesting that empathy is truly an essential part of who we are.

(4)- LIBERAL -- . In the European tradition a liberal is committed, above all, to personal freedom, including a belief in free competitive markets as a means to this end. To confuse matters, the US meaning is creeping into European usage too.

(5)- KASPAROV SAYS -- Chess is far too complex to be definitively solved with any technology we can conceive of today. However, our looked-down-upon cousin, checkers, or draughts, suffered this fate quite recently thanks to the work of...

(6)- MORALITY -- A Very Bad Wizard is a collection of delightful interviews or conversations with and by philosopher Tamler Sommers and an array of researchers who all have one thing in common: their study of morality.

(7)- ARTHUR KOESTLER – crossed paths with (for/against) almost every single important 20-century intellectual movement from progressive education and Freudian psychoanalysis through Zionism, communism, and existentialism to psychedelic drugs, parapsychology, and euthanasia.

(8)- BYE, BYE -- After more than a century of founding and subsidizing literary magazines as a vital part of their educational missions, colleges and universities have begun off-loading their publications, citing overburdened budgets...

(9)- NEW PSYCH -- Our bodies evolved over eons, slowly calibrating to the African savanna on which 98 percent of our ancestors lived and died. So, too, did our brains. Evolutionary psychology says the mind is shaped by survival to reproduce.

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

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