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Category: law – Page 3

Misinformation and distrust in science — with Naomi Oreskes

Find out how organisations like tobacco and fossil fuel companies sell doubt about science, in order to undermine public trust.

You can watch Naomi’s recent talk about the origin of the plate tectonics theory here: • Rethinking the origin of plate tectonics -… and if you sign up as one of our Science Supporters, see the full Q&A here: • Q&A: Rethinking the origin of plate tecton…

Buy Naomi’s book ‘Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming’ here: https://geni.us/orTZL9D

00:00 Introduction.
0:41 Why do bad actors work to create mistrust in science?
2:26 How do bad actors create mistrust in science?
3:24 How does the fossil fuel industry create mistrust?
5:04 How can we rebuild trust in science and government?
7:50 Does it matter who funds science?
11:52 What role does government regulation play in science?
14:01 How does the concept of freedom affect the climate debate?

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She has worked on studies of geophysics, climate change and the history of science. She sits on the board of US based not-for-profit organisations the National Center for Science Education and Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. She is a distinguished speaker and has published 10 books, including Science on a Mission and The Big Myth.

The Ri is on Twitter: / ri_science.

Continue reading “Misinformation and distrust in science — with Naomi Oreskes” | >

Robert Anton Wilson — Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley

Few people are aware of Marvel Whiteside Parsons (a.k.a Jack Parsons), co-founder of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Parsons made major contributions to rocket development, particularly in the area of solid fuel propellant. The solid motors on the Space Shuttle and the motors in the Minuteman missile were based on the solid propellant technology that he invented. He was a founding member of Aerojet Corporation, and he even has a crater on the dark side of the moon named after him. So why isn’t he as celebrated as the other founding fathers of spaceflight?

Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley, was a British occultist, writer, mountaineer, philosopher, poet, mystic, drug experimenter, and chess player. He was an influential member in several occult organizations, including the Golden Dawn, the A∴A∴, and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and is best known today for his occult writings, especially The Book of the Law, the central sacred text of Thelema. He gained much notoriety during his lifetime, and was infamously dubbed \.

Mozilla warns Germany could soon declare ad blockers illegal

A recent ruling from Germany’s Federal Supreme Court (BGH) has revived a legal battle over whether browser-based ad blockers infringe copyright, raising fears about a potential ban of the tools in the country.

The case stems from online media company Axel Springer’s lawsuit against Eyeo — the maker of the popular Adblock Plus browser extension.

Axel Springer says that ad blockers threaten its revenue generation model and frames website execution inside web browsers as a copyright violation.

Tesla’s Monster Week: $29B + Robotaxi Boom

Tesla is poised for significant growth and expansion, driven by advancements in its Full Self-Driving technology, robotaxi initiatives, and strategic partnerships, which could lead to a major increase in its stock value ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.

Tesla’s FSD and Robotaxi Advancements.

🚗 Q: What major update is coming to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system? A: A new FSD model with 10x more parameters is expected to be ready for public release by the end of next month, offering a big leap forward in capabilities.

🛣️ Q: How much safer is Tesla’s FSD compared to human drivers? A: Tesla’s FSD is reported to be 10x safer than human drivers, with the new model expected to provide a magnitude increase in safety and features.

🚕 Q: How is Tesla’s Robotaxi service expanding? A: Tesla’s Robotaxi service is expanding rapidly, with the geofenced area in Austin quadrupled to 80 square miles in just 42 days, and ride-hailing launched in California.

Tesla’s Strategic Moves.

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The hidden mental health cost of climate distress

A new Stanford-led study sheds light on “an emerging psychological health crisis” that disproportionately affects girls. Published July 30 in The Lancet Planetary Health, the study is among the first to quantify how repeated climate stressors impact the psychological well-being and future outlook of adolescents in low-resource settings.

Researchers from Stanford’s schools of Medicine, Law, and Sustainability partnered with in Bangladesh to survey more than 1,000 teenagers and conduct focus groups across two regions with starkly different flood exposure.

“What we found really lifts the voices of frontline —a group whose perspectives and are so rarely investigated and communicated,” said lead author Liza Goldberg, an incoming Earth system science Ph.D. student in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Universal law predicts how city traffic adapts during extreme flood events

When a 100-year flood hits a city, traffic doesn’t suddenly stop or disappear—it adapts.

“In spite of increasing flood risks, more and more people are moving into flood-prone areas,” said Jianxi Gao, associate professor of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “This makes it even more urgent to understand how resilient our infrastructure is—and how people adapt when disaster strikes.”

Gao is part of an international team studying how urban transportation systems adapt to like floods. Their work, “Adaptive capacity for multimodal transport network resilience to extreme weather,” published in Nature Sustainability, uses an innovative modeling approach to uncover a universal law governing how travelers shift between and during such disruptions. This law reveals that shifts between transport modes, such as from cars to buses, follow predictable patterns driven by changes in travel demand, the density of transport networks, and how modes either compete or support each other.

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