Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Israel Maimon, chairman of the presidential conference said: "This decision is outrageous and wrong.
"The use of an academic boycott against Israel is outrageous and improper, particularly for those to whom the spirit of liberty is the basis of the human and academic mission. Israel is a democracy in which everyone can express their opinion, whatever it may be. A boycott decision is incompatible with open democratic discourse."

In 2011, the Israeli parliament passed a law making a boycott call by an individual or organisation a civil offence which can result in compensation liable to be paid regardless of actual damage caused. It defined a boycott as "deliberately avoiding economic, cultural or academic ties with another person or another factor only because of his ties with the State of Israel, one of its institutions or an area under its control, in such a way that may cause economic, cultural or academic damage".

"London-based Wellcome Trust says that it has withheld grant payments on 63 occasions in the past year because papers resulting from the funding were not open access. And the NIH, in Bethesda, Maryland, says that it has delayed some continuing grant awards since July 2013 because of non-compliance with open-access policies, although the agency does not know the exact numbers."

http://www.nature.com/news/funders-punish-open-access-dodgers-1.15007

Several legal experts believe that criminal prosecution of cannabis users doesn't serve the desired purpose. Lorenz Böllinger, emeritus professor of criminal law at Bremen University, founded the ‘Schildow Circle' two years ago. It now consists of 122 criminal law professors who are campaigning to legalize the sale and ownership of marijuana.

http://www.dw.de/law-professors-demand-cannabis-legalization/a-17559144

A subsection entitled "Review of Irrelevant Literature"

"Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, which they hope will be copied by universities across the country. The organisers criticise university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs." - The Guardian

Lai gan Žižeka domas par ideoloģiju nav kaut kas jauns - varbūt viņam vairāk vajadzētu pievērst uzmanību tam, ar ko nodarbojas citi idioti - Rammstein jebkurā gadījumā ir laba izvēle.

To suggest – as Science (though not Bohannon) are trying to do – that the problem with scientific publishing is that open access enables internet scamming is like saying that the problem with the international finance system is that it enables Nigerian wire transfer scams. - See more at: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439#sthash.ikOdk9wy.dpuf

Clash of the titans: final exchange. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114754/steven-pinker-leon-wieseltier-debate-science-vs-humanities

Divas interesantas lietas. Īens Hakings (Ian Hacking) uzrakstījis vērīgu DSM-5 apskatu. Būtu grūti nepiekrist. Un pamācoša - izklaidējoša lapa iz akadēmiķu dzīves, pētniekiem un visiem pārējiem, atkarībā no piederības, pārliecības un garastāvokļa - Retraction Watch.

"Napoleon Chagnon is a Living World Treasure. Arguably our greatest anthropologist [...] Chagnon came along at just the right time for the Yanomamö and for scientific anthropology. Encroaching civilisation was about to close the last window on a tribal world that embodied vanishing clues to our own prehistory: a world of forest "gardens", of kin-groups fissioning into genetically salient sub-groups, of male combat over women and trans-generational revenge, complex alliances and enmities; webs of calculated obligation, debt, grudge and gratitude that might underlie much of our social psychology and even law, ethics and economics."
Tā Ričards Dokinss par Napoleonu Šanonu. Apbēdinoši, ka savos centienos popularizēt evolūcijas teoriju un zinātnisko metodi kopumā, nopelniem bagāti zinātnieki sāk slīgt nejēdzībās. Dokinsa gadījumā apbēdina ne vien neizprotams patoss (greatest anthropologist?), bet arī standarta eksotizēšana un etnocentrisms. Lai gan tas nav nekas neierasts, ka nespeciālisti, jaucot metodoloģisko relatīvismu ar radikālu kulturālo relatīvismu, lai pieņemtu apgaismotu pozīciju, atvedina ļoti problemātiskus secinājumus par, piemēram, civilizāciju. Bet Šanons, kā izrādās, ir zinātniskais moceklis. Šeit emocionālais fons mainās gandrīz no skumji uz smieklīgi. Lietojot reliģiozu retoriku, Dokinss spriež: "Chagnon committed the unforgivable sin, cardinal heresy in the eyes of a certain kind of social scientist: he took Darwin seriously." Nē, ko viņš darīja, nav savietojams ar pētniecības ētiku un etnogrāfisko metodi un, ārpus postmoderni apmātu skolāru prātiem, "Šanona problēma" nav saistāma ar viņa (mis)application of natural selection theory. Problēmu kopumā labi ekplicējis antropologs, ko var saukt par izcilu, Maršals Sālins.

Tracis ap RPIVA piešķirto doktora grādu likumību un sekojoši - validitāti, pievērsa manu uzmanību vienai detaļai. Šodien ziņu portālos parādās informācija, ka grādi ir pieškirti arī dažām sabiedrībā zināmām personām. Vadoties pēc man pieejamās informācijas, grādi, kas ir nonākuši uzmanības centrā, ir piešķirti 2012.g.: "Kā aģentūrai LETA pastāstīja RPIVA Zinātņu daļas vadītāja Sanita Madalāne, kura aizvieto zinātņu prorektori, akadēmijai 2010.gada 25.novembrī Latvijas Zinātnes padome piešķīrusi promocijas tiesības. Tolaik akadēmija informējusi, ka tai ir pietiekoši liels profesoru skaits, un saskaņā ar likumu lūdza šādas tiesības deleģēt, kas tika piešķirtas. Akadēmijai 2012.gada beigās bija pirmais doktorants, kurš absolvēja, bija izpildījis programmu un iesniedzis promocijas darbu, tad arī Promocijas padome sākusi savu darbību."
Detaļa, kas mani pārsteidz, ir tā, ka viena no šīm personām jau ir Latvijas Kultūras akadēmijas profesore. Es, protams, varbūt kaut ko nesaprotu, vai arī man pieejamā informācija ir nepilnīga, bet, vai tas nav uzskatāms par pārsteidzoši īsu laika posmu, kādā kļūt par profesoru?