Scientists at the British Museum have developed pioneering imaging to discover how enterprising Egyptians used dyes on a child’s sock, recovered from a rubbish dump in ancient Antinoupolis in Roman Egypt, and dating from 300AD.
More than 5,000 years ago a nomadic group of shepherds rode out of the steppes of eastern Europe to conquer the rest of the continent. The group, today known as the Yamna or Pit Grave culture, brought with them an innovative new technology, wheeled carts, which enabled them to quickly occupy new lands. More than 4,500 years ago, the descendants of these people reached the Iberian peninsula and wiped out the local men, according to new research by a team of international scientists.
colonized by the first Neolithic migration wave 8,000 or 9,000 years ago but also by a later one 4,500 years ago, which brought with it a very different culture
War axes and carts with four wheels can be found in the layers of earth that date back 4,500 years. “From then on, almost all men’s tombs were filled with weaponry, adornments, displays of wealth. The archaeology reveals marked signs of a hierarchical society that broke with the old egalitarianism of the early Neolithic period.
This research team announced they had discovered a “discontinuity” in the Y chromosome during the Bronze Age in the Iberian Peninsula, after studying the DNA of the remains of 14 people found in archaeological sites in Portugal.
“In terms of why the Y chromosome was replaced, we could speculate that the populations from the steppes had superior technology, better weapons and also domesticated horses that could have given them an advantage in war
Around the turn of the millennium, American society realized a looming crisis: the lack of female representation in STEM fields. But today we are witnessing a crisis of male leadership in a variety of workplaces. From the president to CEOs of major companies to actors and power players in Hollywood, the past several months have exposed the toxic work environments they preside over or worsen in scandal after scandal. Though different in nature, this crisis is of equal importance as the STEM shortage. Yet, to date, no prominent solutions or interventions have been seriously proposed. In contrast, a quick Google search brings up dozens of programs for girls in STEM, but not one national program appears for boys in the arts and humanities.
latest indicators of the demographics and earnings of public school humanities teachers — most of whom are women and many of whom aren’t paid well — underscore that we need more men in the arts and humanities.
The Humanities Indicators report that, “As of 2015, women earned 61 percent of all master’s and professional-practice degrees in the humanities and 54 percent of the doctoral degrees in the field.” And the latest report on public school teachers found that “76 percent of humanities teachers were women, the largest share among subject specialists.” When male K-12 role models barely exist in these disciplines, what message does that send to our young boys and men?
But our society suffers when boys and men are actively discouraged from pursuing their interests in the arts and humanities. The cycle of toxic masculinity starts early. Boys are often told not to cry or show emotion. They are socially trained to repress it, and they take pride in this false resilience.
the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. In an annual event called “Cops and Docs,” accomplished medical professionals and highly trained police officers take a group trip to the museum. Over the course of the evening, mixed groups of cops and docs look at paintings, sculptures and other works of art, and they then share their answers to a pretty basic question: What do you see?
Another program, “The Art of Perception,” takes police detectives, FBI agents and high-ranking Secret Service and CIA executives to well-known museums and galleries like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection to observe works by Picasso, Caravaggio, Edward Hopper and other masters. Program creator Amy E. Herman says the exercise is “not about looking at art. It’s about talking about what you see.”
A new virtual reality (VR) training lab at the University of Waterloo’s School of Optometry and Vision Science, will help Canada’s next generation of optometrists learn how to diagnose vision problems and eye diseases more quickly and accurately.
The new lab, funded through an $800,000 investment by national eye care provider FYidoctors, At a total cost of $1.5 million, the FYidoctors Simulation Lab is the first of its kind in Canada and will ensure the School remains at the forefront in optometric education in North America.
Dr. Al Ulsifer, CEO and Chairman of FYidoctors and Waterloo alumnus, said that this investment isn’t just an investment in the University, but a stake in the future generation of optometrists.
The Equipment:
The lab will initially include 5 Eyesi® Binocular Indirect Ophthalmoscopes (BIO) are state of the art augmented reality simulator for training of retinal examinations and provides a highly realistic and dynamic 3D simulation of the anatomical structures of the eye and ophthalmoscope optics.
Phase two of the lab, to be unveiled at a later date, will include the addition of the Eyesi® Slit Lamp simulators. This technology will allow students to practice basic handling of the device and skills required to conduct a corneal exam, retinal exam and Gonioscopy & Tonometry.
distributed computing + power encryption = the future of Internet
the Dark Net is going mainstream, liberty, freedom, democracy; neither entirely dark, not entirely light, both things
The threat that tech monopolies pose to democracies is about more than the prices they charge: it’s the concentration of power, data and control over the public space — and their ability to wield this power over a growing number of economic activities, especially in the infrastructure and technologies of the future. The following companies operate as either monopolies or oligopolies in their respective fields: Google, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, Spotify. Integrated into everything, everywhere, their technology will blanket the world.
cultural hegemony.” That is, where domination can be achieved through controlling the ideas and assumptions available to the public. The idea, associated with philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci
In 1995, left-wing academics Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron detailed the philosophy and ideas of the new tech wunderkinds, christening it “The Californian Ideology.” This ideology represented a fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco and entrepreneurial free market zeal.
All you needed to get to utopia was a belief in “disruption,” the idea that progress is achieved through smashing up old industries and institutions and replacing them with something new and digital.
Money and ideas in Silicon Valley have a very complicated relationship. Silicon Valley runs according to a Faustian pact: money in exchange for world-changing ideas.
Over the years, the big tech firms have very carefully cultivated the Californian Ideology. Even though they are massive multi-billion-dollar corporations with huge PR teams, they pitch themselves as anti-establishment.The worse these companies behave and the richer they become, the more they spend on looking cool and talking about fairness and community.
And to whom do we look in order to solve our collective social problems? It’s no longer the state, but the modern tech-geek superhero.
Total victory for the monopoly is not over economics or politics. It’s over assumptions, ideas and possible futures.