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RLS: Historical fiction novels are based on the recordings of past events, but the portrayals aren't always very accurate.
Possible KQ: To what extent should historical fiction be factually accurate?

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Does historical fiction have a duty to be factually accurate? It's a question I've found myself discussing a lot lately, most recently on BBC Radio 4's Today programme with Sarah Churchwell, who claimed that some historical novelists use "poetic licence" as an excuse for sloppy or minimal research. I had a conversation on the same theme the week before at the Independent Bath Literature festival with fellow novelist Sarah Dunant, who argued forcefully that authors have a responsibility to not present readers with deliberately false information about a historical character or period, and to make clear how much they have invented.

It's certainly true that historical fiction is enjoying a boom at the moment, from heavyweight prizewinners such as Hilary Mantel and Andrew Miller to more populist series from authors including Philippa Gregory, or historical crime by the likes of CJ Sansom, Jed Rubenfeld or my own alter ego, SJ Parris. It's also the case that for many readers, a historical novel might be their point of entry or perhaps their only real window into a particular period. Shouldn't authors therefore take care not to spread an "incorrect" version of what actually happened?

Well, no, in my view, although I do agree with Churchwell on the paramount importance of meticulous research. But novelists are not history teachers. It's not our job to educate people, and if we start using words like "duty" and "responsibility" about historical fiction - or any fiction - we're in danger of leaching all the vigour out of it with a sense of worthiness. A novelist has no real duty to anything except the story he or she is creating, the characters who inhabit it and whatever view of the world he or she is offering with the novel's ending. But if you are going to play fast and loose with historical fact for the sake of a good story, you'd better have done your research thoroughly if you want readers to take you seriously; only then will you have the authority to depart from those facts.

I have no problem with the idea of an author reinventing Abraham Lincoln as a vampire hunter, for example, as long as the fantasy is grounded in a knowledge of his biography and the book is well-written. At least it's obvious to readers that it's made up. Far more irritating to me are films such as Becoming Jane, which seemed so taken with the idea of turning Jane Austen into one of her own romantic heroines that it brushed aside even the most basic understanding of Austen's life and circumstances.

I've had a reader take me to task - rightly - over an incorrect detail of clothing worn by the hero of my books, the 16th-century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, even while they seemed quite happy to accept the much more flagrant invention of turning him into a spy who solves murders. Among my favourite novels as a teenager were Peter Ackroyd's The House of Doctor Dee and Hawksmoor, historical novels that shade into magic and fantasy, but do so from a solid foundation of knowledge of the period. I may not have learned "accurate" history from those books, but I acquired a love for the atmosphere of the past through the imagination of a great storyteller.

"Histori

cal fact" is an ambiguous term. We can point to certain events taking place on certain dates - though the further back you go, the more even the dates are open to doubt - but we often don't know what was said off the record, or how the principal players behaved when the chroniclers looked away. These undocumented areas often provide the most private, human moments, away from the public stage, and the blank spaces they leave are irresistible to a novelist. Even "straight" biographers and historians are not above a bit of imaginative colouring-in if it brings the story to life.
The growing popularity of narrative non-fiction, together with the penchant for dramatising key scenes in TV history documentaries, are a further reminder that stories and characters engage our imaginations beyond dates, treaties and troop movements - though in the best history and biography, you'd hope to find both.

The words "based on" and "author's note" are essential to the historical novelist's toolkit. By making clear that you're writing fiction, you claim the freedom to speculate, to stray beyond what is known, and so breathe new life into long-dead characters. Any attempt to recreate the past requires a leap of imagination. If a bit of poetic licence in historical fiction helps to keep people's interest in the past alive, so much the better.

* Treachery by SJ Parris is published by HarperCollins
Topics

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Does historical fiction have a duty to be factually accurate? It's a question I've found myself discussing a lot lately, most recently on BBC Radio 4's Today programme with Sarah Churchwell, who claimed that some historical novelists use "poetic licence" as an excuse for sloppy or minimal research.

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Ryan and Howard who contributed nothing 

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RLS:
KQ:To what extend does religious faith affect intuition (reasoning)

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RLS: Paint color you pick for your home may affect its value

KQ: To what degree does emotional reaction to sense perception affect our ability to make reasonable judgments?

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SAN DIEGO (NEWS 8) - When it comes to selling your home, there is a lot to think about, including fixes such as a new paint job.

According to one study, the specific colors you choose can make a huge difference in the final price.

"Painting is really the first step when looking to sell a home," said Allison Shepstone with Swell Properties.

Shepstone is getting ready to put her parents' 2800-square-foot, six-bedroom Encinitas home on the market.

While it looked fine before, she's confident painting the interior will get them top dollar, in part, because if buyers see colors they don't like, they tend to offer less.

"It certainly creates a feeling of 'I need to do work to this home,' which, all of a sudden, starts dollar symbols in their head going," said Shepstone. "So, it's definitely a signal that my final buying price isn't going to be my final cost."

The difference can be in the thousands of dollars.

Real estate website Zillow analyzed 32,000 homes nationwide.

Using various online programs, News 8 was able to visualize their findings.

Here's what the study came up with:

Soft blue-gray in the kitchen will net you $1,809 more while straw yellow or marigold decreases the home value by $820.

In the bedroom, go for a cadet blue - that will bring you $1,856 more versus light pink or antique rose, which can cost you $208.

For the exterior, a grey beige will add $1,526 to the selling price, where as a medium brown will bring you down $1,970.

And the biggest money-maker is the bathroom, where you can make $5,400 with periwinkle compared to losing more than $4,000 using off-white.

"When you're doing the interior, everybody's going into modern," said Myron Cabrera, owner of Don't Blink Painting.

He says professional paint jobs can start around $300 a room.

While that may deter some people, Cabrera says the return on investment is worth it.

"To paint your place, it's less than one percent of the value of your home, so it's actually a huge savings," said Cabrera.

Those interested can use Zillow's study as a guide.

If you're not convinced, Cabrera advises choosing neutral colors and says to consider the light inside your home.

"If you have a lot of light, you can use darker colors," he said. "If you have less light, then of course you wanna use a lighter color."

Something that could make the difference between seeing red or green.

"It's definitely worth the price both from a selling and buying perspective because it really can change a home," said Shepstone.

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Paint color you pick for your home may affect its value

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SAN DIEGO (NEWS 8) - When it comes to selling your home, there is a lot to think about, including fixes such as a new paint job. According to one study, the specific colors you choose can make a huge difference in the final price.

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Possible KQ
-  To what extent can belief change our perception of world?

-  To what extent should human die for faith?
- Are faith and religion purely emotional, or is it possible to provide rational justifications for them?
- Does faith provide us with true knowledge?
- Can you understand religious belief systems without faith?
- Is doubt a part of faith?

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Oregon college shooting: ‘He asked are you Christian? Then he shot and killed them’

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Witnesses and relatives describe moments of terror as killer Chris Harper Mercer started his deadly rampage

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RLS: First monkey in world cloned like dolly the sheep

KQ: What determines the ethical boundaries of research in science and technology?

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It is the first time that scientists have successfully cloned primates using a method known as somatic cell nuclear transfer

smithsonian.com

A pair of identical long-tailed macaques were recently born in China-two weeks apart. Named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua (after the Chinese word "Zhōnghuá," which means Chinese Nation), these little monkeys are certainly not your average twins. As Ben Hirschler of reports, they are the product of a ground-breaking experiment, which has, for the first time ever, successfully cloned primates using non-embryonic cells.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai relied on a process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which has been used to clone several mammals, including Dolly the sheep. SCNT involves removing the nucleus from the egg cell of one individual, and replacing it with the nucleus of a differentiated body cell from another individual. The reconstructed egg, which is implanted into a third individual, develops into a clone of the individual that donated the replacement nucleus.

Back in 1999, scientists cloned a rhesus monkey named Tetra using a method called embryo-splitting, which is easier to execute than SCNT but cannot generate as many offspring. Until the most recent experiment, however, all attempts to clone primates with SCNT had failed. The Chinese team also ran into many stumbling blocks, but eventually figured out a way to introduce modulators that would switch on or off genes that were inhibiting embryo development.

As Nicola Davis of the explains, researchers tried the technique on two different sources of nuclei: cells from an aborted macaque fetus, and cells surrounding the eggs of an adult macaque. They implanted 181 embryos derived from the adult macaque cells into 42 surrogates, and two live babies were born-but they died almost immediately. The team had more success with the 79 embryos produced from fetal cells, which were implanted into 21 surrogates. Again, only two babies were born. But this time, they survived.

The results of the remarkable experiment were published Wednesday in the journal "We tried several different methods but only one worked," Qiang Sun, senior author of the study and Director of the Nonhuman Primate Research Facility at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience, says in a statement. "There was much failure before we found a way to successfully clone a monkey."

The primary goal of the new study was to advance medical research. Having access to genetically identical animals can help scientists better understand the mechanisms of certain diseases. It also eliminates questions about genetic variability that arise when testing new drugs or therapies on animals.

"You can produce cloned monkeys with the same genetic background except the gene you manipulated," Sun says in the statement. "This will generate real models not just for genetically based brain diseases, but also cancer, immune or metabolic disorders, and allow us to test the efficacy of the drugs for these conditions before clinical use."

But some experts have cast doubt on the value of the new research. Speaking to Hirschler of Reuters, Robin Lovell-Badge, a cloning expert at the Francis Crick Institute in London, notes that the experiment boasted a very low success rate; only two live babies resulted from the implantation of more than 100 embryos.

"It remains a very inefficient and hazardous procedure," he says.

Unsurprisingly, the experiment has also drudged up questions about the ethics of animal cloning and animal testing, both highly contentious fields of research. "It gives this sense that animals are disposable and commodities for us to use," Kathleen Conlee, vice president of animal research issues at the Humane Society of the United States, tells Michael Greshko of National Geographic. "Is this appropriate, to have an animal you can do whatever you want to?"

Another vital and equally thorny question remains: What does this new experiment mean for the cloning of humans?

"There is now no barrier for cloning primate species, thus cloning humans is closer to reality," Mu-ming Poo, co-author of the research and director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Neuroscience, explains in an interview with the Guardian's Davis. "However, our research purpose is entirely for producing non-human primate models for human diseases; we absolutely have no intention, and society will not permit, this work to be extended to humans."

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Scientists Successfully Clone Monkeys, Breaking New Ground in a Controversial Field

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smithsonian.com A pair of identical long-tailed macaques were recently born in China-two weeks apart. Named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua (after the Chinese word "Zhōnghuá," which means Chinese Nation), these little monkeys are certainly not your average twins.

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RLS:

Gay rights coalition launches campaign for legalizing same-sex marriage in Taiwan

KQ: To what extent people will support what they advocate when there is a controversial topic?

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Gay rights coalition launches campaign for legalizing same-sex marriage in Taiwan | Taiwan News

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TAIPEI (Taiwan News) - A gay rights coalition set up a billboard advertisement right across from the Executive Yuan offices, calling for legalizing same-sex marriage in Taiwan.

The country's constitutional court on May 24, 2017 ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry legally, and called on the Legislative Yuan to amend the marriage laws to allow for same-sex marriage within two years.

Regardless whether the amendments are implemented or not, gay couples should be permitted to have their unions registered as marriages after two years, according to the ruling.

The coalition, formed by five gay rights and women's rights groups, said in a statement that the advertisement served to remind the government leaders, particularly President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Premier William Lai (賴清德), of the fact that Taiwan had still not legalized gay marriage and that gay couples continued to be deprived of the rights heterosexual married couples would normally enjoy.

The advertisement portrays two women each holding an infant in their arms, with the slogans "We are both mothers of the children" and "How long do we have to wait for equal rights to marry?"

The coalition emphasized even though the constitutional court had ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, gay couples would still be left without legal protection so long as the legislative process remained stalled.

In addition, the coalition fears that the anti-gay marriage camp may push for a referendum on the issue; a result in their favor would then impact future legislation.

Without directly mentioning legislation related to same-sex marriage, President Tsai said last December that the government needed to take diverse opinions across Taiwanese society into consideration.

The president also said the government would continue carrying out reforms at a steady pace, even though young people might think the government's progress was slow or inadequate.

While the media presumes the government will refrain from proposing the amendment draft until the end of the local elections in November, gay rights groups continue to attempt to persuade the Tsai administration to be more proactive on the issue rather than simply waiting until May 2019 for the two-year to pass.

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Gay rights coalition launches campaign for legalizing same-sex marriage in Taiwan | Taiwan News

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In 2017, a constitutional court ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry legally, but the legislative process has since been stalled. A gay rights coalition set up a billboard advertisement right across from the Executive Yuan, calling for legalizing same-sex marriage in Taiwan.

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RLS:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/13/national/kumamoto-castle-repairs-expected-take-decades/#.Wqcm8kxuK3A

KQ:
To what extent does the original identity of an existing object remains still when it has been imitated?

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"IT MAY be simply my educational background", John Roberts said at the Supreme Court last month, but the reasoning behind the case against gerrymandering seemed to be "sociological gobbledygook". This comment from America's chief justice, who holds two degrees from Harvard, had a tinge of false modesty: the mathematics of gerrymandering isn't brain surgery. But justices are often pressed into roles for which law school did not prepare them: historian, scientist and video-game aficionado, to name a few. It's no surprise that they sometimes get the facts wrong, as a recent ProPublica study found, or come to questionable conclusions.
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But when it comes to their gravest task-adjudicating capital punishment cases, where nine people in robes have the last word on whether someone lives or dies at the hand of the government-the justices are sometimes called upon to moonlight in an even more fraught role. In Dunn v Madison, a case involving an ailing 67-year-old convicted murderer and stroke survivor who no longer remembers his crime, the justices confronted questions perhaps better suited for moral philosophers: What is the purpose of punishment? Does failing memory affect culpability? At what point along the path of a criminal's cognitive decline does punishment cease to serve its purpose-or become an injustice itself?

The unanimity of the Supreme Court's decision on November 6th to clear the way for Vernon Madison's execution was not a sign that the justices agreed on answers to these questions. The 9-0 vote was a function, instead, of their view of a law Congress passed two decades ago making capital punishment swifter and surer to administer: the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). In Monday's unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court cited its ruling in 2011 that AEDPA permits a federal court to nullify a state court's decision in a capital case only when the latter is "so lacking in justification" that there is no "possibility for fair-minded disagreement". That's a nearly impossible hurdle for a man on death row to clear. It is not enough for a defendant to show good-or even compelling-reasons for the federal court to reconsider his case. He must show that there is no chance the trial court made the right call.

Despite that heavy lift, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Mr Madison's execution in March. Citing the testimony of medical experts, the Eleventh Circuit found that "areas of Mr Madison's brain have essentially died as a result of his strokes". Vascular injury in his brain has rendered Mr Madison incontinent, slurred his speech, impaired his vision and left him unable to walk independently. Most notably, the strokes have damaged Mr Madison's memory. Diagnosed with both dementia and amnesia, Mr Madison could not recall the time 32 years ago when he shot a police officer at point-blank range. "I never went around killing folks", he told the neuropsychologist.

In light of this pronounced decline in his physical and mental health, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the state court fundamentally erred in determining the facts and applying the law. Though state courts are entitled to "substantial deference" under AEDPA, the error here is too egregious. "A finding that a man with no memory of what he did wrong has a rational understanding of why he is being put to death", the Eleventh Circuit concluded, "is patently unreasonable".

Strong words, but all nine Supreme Court justices disagreed. There is a difference, their opinion said, between remembering a crime and understanding that a crime triggered one's punishment. Mr Madison's comments to his doctors seem to show that he grasps the "nature of the pending proceeding", that he is being punished for "murder" and that Alabama seeks "retribution" for his crime. That evidence may or may not be ironclad, but it isn't beyond the pale, the justices said, and the state court gets the benefit of the doubt. Alabama may put Mr Madison to death.

For three justices, this strategy of avoidance has its limits. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg penned a one-paragraph concurring opinion (joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor) noting that executing someone "whose disability leaves him without memory of his commission of a capital offence" is a "substantial question" the justices have never tackled but perhaps should-in a case where AEDPA is not a factor. And Justice Breyer reiterated his wider critique of the death penalty in a solo concurring opinion. Instead of focusing on how aging and disease may limit the scope of capital punishment, he wrote, "I believe it would be wiser to reconsider the root cause of the problem-the constitutionality of the death penalty itself".

In side-stepping the question of Mr Madison's continued culpability for a murder he cannot recall, the justices may have fulfilled Congress's wishes when it passed AEDPA and Bill Clinton signed it. But ratifying Alabama's decision to put a very sick man with large gaps in his memory to death effectively, if not formally, puts the Supreme Court on one side-arguably the wrong one-of a philosophical debate over personal identity and punishment. Consider this proposition from Derek Parfit, an Oxford philosopher who died on January 1st, to be the unwritten dissenting opinion in Dunn: "When some convict is now less closely connected to himself at the time of his crime, he deserves less punishment. If the connections are very weak, he may deserve none."

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The Supreme Court permits the execution of a man who does not recall his crime

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"IT MAY be simply my educational background", John Roberts said at the Supreme Court last month, but the reasoning behind the case against gerrymandering seemed to be "sociological gobbledygook". This comment from America's chief justice, who holds two degrees from Harvard, had a tinge of false modesty: the mathematics of gerrymandering isn't brain surgery.

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Current Knowledge Question:
How does the perceptions and the interpretation of arts impacts our recognition of truth and value?

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The word 'selfie' may bring to mind an adolescent girl making duck faces at an iPhone, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings, or a daredevil hanging off a skyscraper moments from death - symptoms of a self-obsessed culture and, some argue, the decline of society - but selfies have much deeper cultural implications that complicate those stereotypes. In her new book, The Selfie Generation, author Alicia Eler breaks with clichés to imagine the selfie as a double-edged sword, at once an empowering and vulnerable phenomenon, characteristic of the digital age.

Was there ever a time when adolescents weren't obsessed with their own image? - Alicia Eler

In opposition to the assumption that selfies are objectifying or narcissistic, selfies have been key for empowering marginalised groups like women, people of colour (POC), the LGBTQ community, migrants and refugees. Mass media at our fingertips created access to all kinds of characters, a new generation of individuals who aren't as afraid to be different or unique, ultimately creating a mirror, says Eler. "Was there ever a time when adolescents weren't obsessed with their own image?" she asks. Young or old, you can't blame people for wanting validation, and now it's just a swipe and a tap away.
- When is a pipe not a pipe? - This dynamic duo shaped the 20th Century - The artworks that caused a scandal
Back in 2013, Eler wrote a piece for Hyperallergic titled The Feminist Politics of #Selfies, focusing on POC women and selfies, in response to an article posted on the women's blog Jezebel that suggested selfies are a cry for help, among a plethora of negative slanting media coverage. "Actually can we talk about what #selfies mean to people who never get a chance to see themselves in mainstream media?" wrote feminist comic book author Mikki Kendall on her Twitter account in November of that year. While posting selfies publicly inherently exposes the person to trolling and hate speech, it also connects them with a global network of potential support. With the rise of the selfie, images of marginalised 'others that were once kept out of the mainstream have become iconic.

Since 2013, when 'selfie' was Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year, these contemporary self-portraits have become ubiquitous in an age when visibility can be synonymous with political power. Resistance and protest movements have taken on new forms since then. They're less about marching with banners or community organising and more about decentralised fluidity or being seen across multiple online platforms.

"They are aimed at gaining visibility through a different logic - by using common images, tactics, hashtags, identity politics and iconic events," writes author Irmgard Emmelhainz for e-flux.
The flip side
Of course, there's a drawback that has become all too apparent in recent years: surveillance. Despite revelations of spying by the NSA on ordinary American citizens, or the fact that our personal information is mined and sold by large social media corporations, we seem undeterred from posting our most personal moments for all to see. We love to selfie, even if our own images are monetised for the profit of others, our every online action is monitored, and our movements tracked by the very tools that connect us.

Selfies are a way of saying, 'I am here, I'm alive and I'm not afraid."

"The threat is not a digital one so much as it is a personal one," writes Eler. There is a pervasive attitude of 'I have nothing to hide,' but that reality is different for those same activists and artists who may be empowered by the visibility that selfies offer. Working under the constraints of surveillance in an age where visibility translates to political power forces dissident movements to be fluid in their approach because their digital footprint may be used against them, even as today's tech is one of their most important tools. We see this playing out in the citizen journalism movement, whether it's a smartphone video of a white police officer shooting and killing an African-American man or the recorded final messages of citizens in war-torn Syria, this new 'self surveillance' has resulted in some of the most moving documents of political events in history.

Eler cites the Standing Rock protests, where the US company Energy Transfer was due to build a massive oil pipeline but was met with staunch resistance from the Native American community. Lakota Oglala poet and activist Mark Tilsen spent months at Standing Rock, and he told Eler about the constant surveillance happening there at the hands of the Tigerswan 'counterterrorism' contractor hired by Energy Transfer. When calls did go through, heavy breathing could sometimes be heard in the background, said Tilsen - their phones had been tapped. When the rumour circulated that law enforcement was using Facebook check-ins to track who was at the protest camp, over a million people across the world 'checked in' at Standing Rock in solidarity with the protestors.

Shares or check-ins can also be understood as more sophisticated selfies

I'm reminded of a recent Instagram post by artist Glenn Ligon: in a screen grab from his iPhone we see the image of the wireless network menu, and the first network reads "FBI Surveillance Van #9013C." Was there really an FBI surveillance van nearby? We don't know. But those shares or check-ins can also be understood as more sophisticated selfies, argues Eler. Under surveillance and perhaps even in physical danger, selfies are a way to declare, "I am here, I'm alive and I'm not afraid."

How can selfies and online activism make a difference? In his December 2017 interview with Prince Harry for BBC Radio 4, former US President Barack Obama said that in order for online movements to have an impact in the real world communities need to "move offline". It's easy to be a hateful troll or an outspoken political opponent veiled by the anonymity of the internet, Obama told the prince, but when you sit down with someone over a pint the complexities of their being are more apparent, and you might be able to connect with someone unexpected. If not, our ideas are only reinforced by the feedback loop of social media.
Selfie-portrait
Artists were quick to adopt the selfie as a rich subject matter and material. In 2003 Ryan McGinley was launched to stardom with his first solo show, The Kids Are Alright, at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, one of the youngest artists to ever be featured by the prestigious institution. Many recoiled from the works' controversial subject matter, many more rejoiced over its rawness, which painted a portrait of a somewhat dystopian youth culture in New York and in the US. Beyond uncensored documents, McGinley also turned the camera on himself for deeply intimate self-portraits in the style of what would later become known as 'selfies'.

It wasn't until 2006 that Paris Hilton claimed to invent the selfie posing alongside Britney Spears, according to The New York Times. More recently, controversy surrounding artist Richard Prince's Instagram selfie appropriations, which were printed and sold for six-figure sums as contemporary art in the Gagosian Gallery, reached a fever pitch when he was sued for copyright infringement by photographer Donald Graham. The case is ongoing. Though, to be sure, both photographers benefited from the visibility as a result of the controversy, which gets at the age-old question of what can or cannot be considered art.

Beyond controversy, younger artists are taking a more nuanced approach to the selfie. In The Selfie Generation, Eler refers to an up-and-coming generation of artists like Peregrine Honig, who created an exhibition of paintings specifically for the purpose of taking selfies, and Brannon Rockwell-Charland, who uses selfies to create her artist persona online. "Selfies give me a sense of control in the face of the always-impending fetishisation of black women's bodies," says Rockwell-Charland. For her project 400 Nudes, artist Jillian Mayer searched the internet for nude selfies and posted her own face onto the bodies.

The selfie serves as a metaphor for a unique moment when, as Francisco de Goya claimed in his series The Disasters of War (1814), "the truth has died." Selfies and internet culture call into question the basic premise of authenticity, as reflected in arts and politics today. 'Post-truth' and 'fake news' are not new concepts, and tools like selfies, social media or big data can't be blamed for our weird reality. But maybe they can help us understand it.

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Why selfies can be a force for social good

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The word 'selfie' may bring to mind an adolescent girl making duck faces at an iPhone, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings, or a daredevil hanging off a skyscraper moments from death - symptoms of a self-obsessed culture and, some argue, the decline of society - but selfies have much deeper cultural implications that complicate those stereotypes.

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RLS:
US President Trump’s trade policy will initiate Europe’s retaliation. The whole world is at the edge of trade war.
Possible KQ:
1. "Globalization" or "Protectionism"; which one is preferable trade pattern in the modern world?

2. "Competition" or "cooperation"; which one is the key to make our society thrive, or possibly cause our society collapse?

3. To what extent, people are willing to cooperate? Whether it is human’s nature to pursuit the largest benefit for the whole group?

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Levi jeans and bourbon could be hit with a 25% import tax by the European Union if President Donald Trump imposes tariffs on European steel and aluminium.

Cecilia Malmström, EU Commissioner for Trade, told the BBC the items were on a draft list of US goods to be taxed.

Last week, the President said he would tax imported steel, declaring: "trade wars are good".

His comments have prompted reaction around the world.

Prime Minister Theresa May expressed her concern in a telephone call to Mr Trump on Sunday.

What is the EU considering?

Kamal Ahmed: Why Trump is playing tough on trade

Ms Malmström told the BBC: "We are looking at possibilities to retaliate, meaning we will also put taxes or tariffs on US imports to the European Union."

She said they would wait for the final decision, but added that "we are of course preparing. This has been in the air for some time". She said that if the US went ahead and applied taxes to European steel, the EU would take the issue to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Ms Malmström stressed that Europe was looking to respond "to retaliate but not escalate".

But any action by Europe is likely to provoke further action by the US.

Has there been any impact on European business so far?

Shares in major European car makers fell on Monday following a threat by US President Trump to tax their vehicles.

Mr Trump said if the EU "wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on US companies... we will simply apply a tax on their cars".

The US is an important market for cars built in the country. US demand for British-built cars rose by 7% in 2017, with exports reaching almost 210,000, and the US is now the UK's second-largest trading partner after the EU, taking 15.7% of car exports.

Why Trump is hanging tough on trade

What would China do in a US trade war?

Five reasons why trade wars aren't easy to win

Steel tariffs: What impact will they really have?

What does Trump want to do and why?

Mr Trump has decried the "$800 Billion Dollar Yearly Trade Deficit because of our 'very stupid' trade deals and policies", and vowed to end it.

On Thursday, he said steel imports would face a 25% tariff and aluminium 10%.

Then came Saturday's threat on EU-made cars.

In January, he had already announced tariffs on solar panels and washing machines.

What are US's trading partners making of this?

Downing Street said that during Mrs May's call to President Trump on Sunday she raised "our deep concern at the President's forthcoming announcement on steel and aluminium tariffs, noting that multilateral action was the only way to resolve the problem of global overcapacity in all parties' interests."

Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for China's National People's Congress, said it was natural that "some friction will exist" between the US and China, given the volume of trade between them surpassed $580bn (£420bn) last year.

But he said China would take "necessary measures" if its interests were hurt.

Canada said tariffs would cause disruption on both sides of the border. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was "confident we're going to continue to be able to defend Canadian industry".

EU trade chiefs could apply 25% tariffs on around $3.5bn of imports from the US - targeting iconic US exports including Levi's jeans, Harley-Davidson motorbikes and Bourbon whiskey.

Brazil, Mexico and Japan, that have said they will consider retaliatory steps if the president presses ahead with his plan next week.

The move has also been strongly criticised by the International Monetary Fund and the WTO.

Where Trump stands on world trade

Has Trump got political support at home for a trade war?

A number of Republicans have questioned the wisdom of the tariff proposal and have been urging the president to reconsider.

Senator Orrin Hatch said American citizens would be made to pay.

Senator Ben Sasse agreed that "kooky 18th Century protectionism will jack up prices on American families".

Jason Furman, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama, told the BBC the proposed tariffs were "a very costly and inefficient way to help a small number of people".

He says consumers are likely to face higher prices. "This could be bad or awful, there's no scenario under which it's good."

Industry bodies like the US Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association have expressed deep concern.

But steelworkers in Pennsylvania and Indiana will welcome Mr Trump's comments.

Is there room for compromise?

President Trump hinted on Monday that if the US achieved a better deal for itself in the latest North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) he would abandon plans for a tariff on Canada's and Mexico's steel imports.

The rest of the tweet is a reference to Canada and US farmers.

Substantial changes to the Nafta agreement are not likely to happen soon, however. The current round of Nafta talks, about updating the 24-year old treaty, are due to finish on Monday and have achieved little.

This is the seventh round of eight scheduled meetings. The next is planned for April.

Is Trump right about the trade imbalance?

The US imports steel from more than 100 nations and brings in four times more steel from abroad than it exports.

Since 2000, the US steel industry has suffered, with production dropping and the number of employees in steel work falling.

The US is the largest export market for EU cars - making up 25% of the €192bn (£171bn; $237bn) worth of motor vehicles the bloc exported in 2016 (China was second with 16%).

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Levi jeans and bourbon could be hit with a 25% import tax by the European Union if President Donald Trump imposes tariffs on European steel and aluminium. Cecilia Malmström, EU Commissioner for Trade, told the BBC the items were on a draft list of US goods to be taxed.

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RLS
A man showing his experience living without time notion.
Possible KQ:
To what extent can the notion of time limit or benefit us?

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I probably never would have noticed any of this if Men's Health had not proposed an experiment: that I spend a week as a Man Out of Time. No clocks, no watches, no time-monitoring devices of any kind. The plan was for me to wake up when I thought I should, arrive at work when I arrived, and go home when I felt ready to pack it in. In theory, relying on life's natural rhythms would lead me to a healthier way of living, one that could provide relief from my temple-throbbing, blood-pressure-ratcheting, compulsive need to monitor every minute of every unfolding day. For the first time since I was too young to know the big hand from the little hand, I would live "off the clock."

The idea scared me silly.

LIKE A LOT OF AMERICANS, I'VE ALWAYS BEEN time obsessed. You know the type: Two hours early to the airport; antsy about being a tick late to a meeting; seated, popcorn in hand, for the entire block of movie previews. I've always counted this awareness of time as a strength, something grounding, soothing even. "Lost time is never found again," Benjamin Franklin said. What better way to avoid mislaying the hours than to track their passing?

Indeed, our focus on time-and our ever-multiplying ability to monitor it-may seem to make life go more smoothly and feel less stressful. But the reality, say researchers, is that we're often tortured by time as we try and inevitably fail to schedule our lives with Swiss precision.

"From the first ring of the alarm in the morning, the clock rules our lives," says Betty Phillips, Ph.D., a North Carolina psychologist who regularly counsels clients about the harmful effects of time stress. "It ends up as, yes, a ticking time bomb in our minds and bodies."

Consider a place like Brazil, where "I'll meet you at 4" can mean anything from sunset to not at all. A 2011 report by the Pan American Health Organization notes that the prevalence of adult hypertension is lower there than in the United States, where punctuality is as prized as apple pie and Oprah. One reason, says Robert Levine, Ph.D., a psychology professor at California State University at Fresno and the author of A Geography of Time, is that fast-paced cultures attract and create a high concentration of type A personalities. To handle the resulting chronomania, we may turn to unhealthy behaviors like drinking and smoking. Levine says his past studies, for example, show more smoking in on-the-go cities.

Researchers at the University of South Australia also seem to confirm the negative effects of my nocturnal clock watching. Men in the 2010 study were deprived of all external time cues (including, presumably, an iPhone you can tap throughout the night), and slept well in the time-free zone, averaging nearly 8 hours a night.

Take another consequence of time addiction: impatience. Scientists at Northwestern University found that this unique form of self-induced stress can increase young adults' long-term risks of high blood pressure.

Your perception of time may affect even your tolerance for pain. In a pair of experiments, French researchers had people look at different clocks while exposing them to pain. In one case the people saw the actual time, while in the other they gazed at a clock that made it seem like the session was shortened. (It wasn't.) The results, published in the journal Pain, show that simply believing that time is on your side can make pain seem more bearable.

"I THINK LIFE MIGHT BE A BIT NICER FOR US IF we were to get up with the sun in the morning, eat when we are hungry, work when we are most productive, and go to bed when we are sleepy-regardless of the clock time," says Neil Stanley, Ph.D., a British sleep expert who has spent the better part of three decades researching stress and snoozing.

I set out to test his theory on a Sunday night. I made my wife swear to time secrecy for the next week, covered the red-eye gleam of her bedside clock, and tucked my iPhone into a drawer. I then lay back, waiting to ooze into a desert of sleep like one of Dali's melting clocks.

I adjusted my head on the pillow.

I turned onto my right side.

Then the thoughts came: How will I know when to get up? If I'm taking too long to shower? Will I have time for breakfast, or should I stop for a bagel on the way in? Do I stroll to the office, or panic-sprint to make the 9 a.m. meeting?

I'm not sure how much time passed before I finally drifted into a fitful sleep. What I can say is that I woke, as usual, at intervals, jonesing each time for a clock check. When I woke up for good, I lay for a moment, disoriented. On any other day I would have hit the snooze and luxuriated in a few minutes of twilight slumber, feeling safely backstopped by the alarm. On this morning, however, I threw back the covers, made a beeline for the shower, bolted some toast, and dashed to the car.

The first inkling that something wasn't quite right came when I swung my Jeep into the underground parking lot at work. As I took the first turn, the deck was empty, like a zombie movie where the hero is the last man on earth.

I legged it to the office anyway, but when I arrived, I could see through the glass doors that everything was dark. I powered up my computer, resisting the urge to glance at the digital display. It seemed like a long time before my coworkers finally began to trickle in.

Instead of kicking myself, I delighted in the stillness-not to mention the benign self-congratulation for being, perhaps for the first time, the guy who turns on the lights in the morning. Something else odd happened. Usually before I start to work, I dither away a good hour on a procrastination ritual: downstairs for coffee, check the mail, the e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, a few newspaper websites. On this day I chucked it all, plunged right into work, and didn't look up for (I think) several hours.

Interesting.

I ROSE EARLY AGAIN THE NEXT DAY. AS I DID the first morning, I parked in a deserted garage and sank into the quiet of a still-dark office.

I discovered that even without a watch, and with the clocks facedown on the nightstand and other time-monitoring devices safely covered, I could divine the hour within a few minutes through various cues. Sundown fell at around 7 p.m. If my favorite TV show, Modern Family, was on, then it was between 8 and 8:30. (Yes, if I were being a purist, I probably would have kept the boob tube off.) My cat, Luna, is mostly sweet and purry, but to leave the food bowl empty past 6:30 p.m. is to suffer the hot scorn of her stink eye.

Generally, however, I sort of... floated through the days, surprised not only at how quickly I'd adapted to this new way of living but also at how agreeable it seemed. The experience reminded me of childhood, when I paid about as much attention to the hour as I did to the icky girl with the ponytail, when I knew it was time to go home by the setting sun and not the hands of a watch. I generally felt calmer, less pressed, more free.

Levine wasn't surprised about this. "I feel my time goes by more smoothly when I'm not looking at a watch all the time," he says. "I have the feeling that I'm in control of my time, as opposed to being under the control of other people's schedules. Obsessing over time doesn't make me feel good, and it doesn't really do me any good."

There's a big difference between Levine and me, however. "I'm in a privileged position," he says. "I'm a university professor, so I have a lot of control over the way I spend my time. I have a schedule, but it's not the kind of schedule many other people have. As long as I have time cues, as long as I can manage to go to the 9 a.m. class or the 10:30 meeting, I can live more on event-based time than most people."

He was right. I had time-sensitive obligations-to home, to work, to my cat. Accordingly, it was only a matter of, well, time that the clock struck 13 on my experiment.

As nice as it was to find myself more engrossed in work and less concerned about hotfooting it out the door the moment the hour hand hit 6, I also found myself working far later into the evening, a change that exasperated my wife. ("Do you have any idea what time it is?" she asked one day, her irritation obviously overriding the silliness of the question.)

I also struggled with errands, like wondering if I'd make it to the pharmacy before it closed. And I struggled with punctuality. My golf buddies weren't quite furious when I arrived late (by how long? A half hour, an hour?) for a 1 p.m. tee time, but they weren't happy that they'd scrambled to get there only to be bumped. And I don't blame them.

It was only luck and circumstance, meanwhile, that the week of my experiment I didn't need to make a flight, meet with the boss, or hew to a medication schedule. In Brazil, according to Levine, family members are willing to wait 2 hours before declaring someone late for a child's birthday party. Here, the children are wailing; Bozo has packed up his clown nose, and the mothers are fuming.

We might be better off without our clocks, but the fact is that our culture revolves around them. Tempus vitam regit ("Time rules life"), asserts the motto of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors. A decision that henceforth I'm not playing the game simply isn't sustainable.

ON THE SUNDAY NIGHT THAT MARKED the end of my experiment, I was grateful to know how many hours of sleep lay ahead. And while I did, in fact, wake up later on Monday, I did not do my usual time checks during the night and did not have to rely on my alarm clock.

After circling in search of a parking spot in the full garage, I hurried to what I knew was my already bustling office. I fidgeted at the elevator, knowing I was running a few minutes late for the morning meeting.

When the door opened, I strode to the office entrance, keyed myself in, dropped my bag, and slunk to the conference room, certain that, as with my cat, the stink eye from my boss awaited. I looked in and saw no one. The meeting had been canceled. The anxiety had been for nothing.

Back at my desk I plucked off the Post-it note covering the computer clock. I glanced at the time. Not that I needed to. I was there. I was present. The day would unfold, same as ever.

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IT ISN'T A LONG DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL. Rather, it's my nightly preoccupation with the hours and minutes that pass until the alarm shrieks and compels me to reach yet again for the iPhone I keep propped against a book on my nightstand. I tap once; the screen snaps on like a prison searchlight.

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RLS
Identifying uncertainty in role of aviation NOx emissions

KQ
To what degree is uncertainty apart of scientific knowledge claims？

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Climatologists continue to develop and refine predictive models for climate change, attempting to limit uncertainty. A lot of attention is focused on carbon dioxide emissions, but a major source of uncertainty is the role of nitrogen oxides (NO x, the sum of NO and NO ₂), which promote greenhouse gas formation. In addition to other sources, these are emitted by aircraft engines in the upper atmosphere. A paper that recently appeared in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science studied the complex influence of NO x and describes the processes that need to be studied further to reduce our uncertainty about the impact of NO x emissions.

NO x emissions from combustion contribute on the ground to smog and acid rain, and in the upper atmosphere they act as an indirect greenhouse gas by causing a short-term increase of ozone (O ₃), an important greenhouse gas. Atmospheric ozone is eliminated through reactions with the hydroxyl (OH) and hydroperoxyl (HO ₂) radicals, and NO interferes with these reactions by competing for HO ₂, leading to an increase in ozone. This increase in ozone causes a greenhouse forcing, an increase in the amount of energy retained by the atmosphere.

In the long term, emissions of NO x lead to reduced levels of methane (CH ₄), another potent greenhouse gas. Due to the complex relationships between chemical species in the atmosphere, the loss of methane also leads to a longer-term decrease in ozone. These decreases lead to negative greenhouse forcing, causing atmospheric cooling.

Currently, our uncertainty lies in the relative amount of negative and positive forcing, which are both large and almost cancel out. Most past studies showed that NO x emissions result in a net positive forcing (and therefore emissions tend to cause global warming), but other studies showed a net negative forcing.

<!--The authors of the paper took multiple recently-published models and calculated the resulting radiative forcing due to 1.0 Tg/yr of NO x emissions (the actual estimated emissions ranges from 0.4-1.3 Tg/yr). Then, taking the resulting values as samples in a normal distribution, they found the following radiative forcing effects: +27.3 ± 9.7 mW/m ² from short-term O ₃ increase, -16.1 ± 5.6 mW/m ² from long-term CH ₄ reduction, and -6.6 ± 3.3 mW/m ² from long-term O ₃ reduction. Taken together, the net forcing is +4.5 ± 4.5 mW/m ².
--> The authors of the paper took multiple recently published models and calculated the resulting radiative forcing due to 1.0 Tg/yr of NO x emissions (estimates of emissions range from 0.4-1.3 Tg/yr). Then, taking the resulting values as samples in a normal distribution, they found the net radiative forcing is +4.5 ± 4.5 mW/m ². That would imply a likely warming effect, although the impact could be quite small.

Using this approach, however, the sources of uncertainty cannot be determined. To get at those, the authors used an approach called factor decomposition to break down each of the sources of forcing into key components, such as the responses of O ₃ and CH ₄ due to NO x emissions, the atmospheric concentrations of the species, and the radiative forcing efficiency of each species. Another benefit of this approach is that it depends more on fundamental chemistry than modeling. Assuming each of the terms are not correlated, the resulting net radiative forcing calculated in this manner is +0.6 ± 8.3 mW/m ². This mostly agrees with the results from the set of models, although the uncertainty is larger.

The authors found that factors specifically related to aviation emissions (the response of chemical concentrations to aviation NO x) control the uncertainty in the forcing due to the short-term O ₃ and long-term CH ₄ changes. But long-term O ₃ impacts are influenced by how ozone and methane interact in the atmosphere (which isn't aviation specific).

Another interesting result in the paper is that the positive greenhouse forcing due to the short-term increase in O ₃ and the negative forcing due to long-term CH ₄ reduction appear to be strongly negatively correlated (when one goes up, the other goes down). If this is taken into account in the uncertainty calculations, this correlation drops the uncertainties to 20 percent of the original values.

The authors suggest that background processes that control naturally produced NO x are the primary factors affecting both the uncertainty and the strong negative correlation between positive and negative forcings. For instance, lightning is a large source of NO x (4 Tg/yr based on one study), and the impact of aviation emissions will be influenced by this value. A better understanding of this and other natural processes will reduce the uncertainty when it comes to aviation NO x, as will further studies focusing on the factors identified by the authors of this paper.

PNAS, 2011. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1101458108 ( About DOIs).
Listing image by Image: NASA

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Identifying uncertainty in role of aviation NOx emissions

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Climatologists continue to develop and refine predictive models for climate change, attempting to limit uncertainty. A lot of attention is focused on carbon dioxide emissions, but a major source of uncertainty is the role of nitrogen oxides (NO x, the sum of NO and NO 2), which promote greenhouse gas formation.

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RLS: The tesla's autopilot is driving for a person. Later it does not does respond well with the surrounding obstacle and the car crashed.

Possible KQ:

To what extent can statistic create a realistic worldview?

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The first known death caused by a self-driving car was disclosed by Tesla Motors on Thursday, a development that is sure to cause consumers to second-guess the trust they put in the booming autonomous vehicle industry.

The 7 May accident occurred in Williston, Florida, after the driver, Joshua Brown, 40, of Ohio put his Model S into Tesla's autopilot mode, which is able to control the car during highway driving.

Against a bright spring sky, the car's sensors system failed to distinguish a large white 18-wheel truck and trailer crossing the highway, Tesla said. The car attempted to drive full speed under the trailer, "with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S", Tesla said in a blogpost.

A police report in the Levy County Journal said the top of the vehicle "was torn off by the force of the collision". The truck driver, Frank Baressi, 62, of Tampa, Florida, was uninjured, the Journal reported.

America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an inquiry into the accident.

Brown owned a technology company called Nexu Innovations and was a Tesla enthusiast who posted videos of his car on autopilot on YouTube. One video showed his car avoiding a collision on a highway, racking up 1m views after it was tweeted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

In its 537-word statement on the incident, the electric vehicle company repeatedly went out of its way to shift blame for the accident. The first paragraph notes that this was Tesla's first known autopilot death in some 130 million miles driven by its customers. "Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles," the company then notes.

It goes on to say that the car's autonomous software is designed to nudge consumers to keep their hands on the wheels to make sure they're paying attention. "Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not perfect and still requires the driver to remain alert," the company said.

At the end of its blogpost, Tesla stated: "The customer who died in this crash had a loving family and we are beyond saddened by their loss," the company said. "He was a friend to Tesla and the broader [electric vehicle] community, a person who spent his life focused on innovation and the promise of technology and who believed strongly in Tesla's mission."

"Preliminary reports indicate the vehicle crash occurred when a tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of the Tesla at an intersection on a non-controlled access highway. The driver of the Tesla died due to injuries sustained in the crash," the NHTSA said.

The car continued to travel after passing under the truck's trailer, veered off the road, and then crashed through two fences and into a power pole, the local police report said. Brown died at the scene.

The accident comes at a time when Americans have just started to become more comfortable with letting machines take the wheel. Tesla has generated enormous fanfare with its autopilot mode and inspired consumers - despite the company's warnings - to see just how much they can do while letting the car drive.

A popular video posted online appeared to show a man taking a nap as his car navigated busy traffic. One member of a Tesla owner message board recently quipped that he uses his free hands to play air guitar to Billy Idol songs. Another claimed that during a road trip, he noticed Tesla's autopilot camera struggling to pick out lines during bright sunlight in the morning or at dusk.

Other carmakers have said they will be releasing autonomous vehicles in the near future. Within a year, General Motors plans to test self-driving taxis with the ride-hailing app Lyft. One startup backed by Google is testing completely autonomous trucks in Nevada that will let drivers rest as they complete cross-country shipping routes.

Musk recently hinted that the company plans to include its autopilot feature in its upcoming Model 3, which at $35,000 is being marketed to middle-class drivers.

The appeal of the technology is obvious. And Tesla isn't wrong when it says that statistically, vehicles driving themselves have a much better safety record than ones driven by humans.

But the Tesla accident offers the first test of how consumers will react when reminded that they are putting their lives in the hands of computer code when they turn over control of the wheel.

Brown, for his part, appeared to believe that he was safe when letting go of the wheel. In one of the YouTube videos he posted of his Model S driving itself in slow-moving traffic, he said, "It takes all the stress out of it."

"You get to your destination slightly slower but at least now you don't have to worry about anything. Just let it go."

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Tesla driver dies in first fatal crash while using autopilot mode

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The first known death caused by a self-driving car was disclosed by Tesla Motors on Thursday, a development that is sure to cause consumers to second-guess the trust they put in the booming autonomous vehicle industry.

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"Blue and black or white and gold, how the dress colour you see says a lot about you"
Possible KQ: To what extent human can understand other's perception and feeling?

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It's not every day that fashion and science come together to polarise the world.

Tumblr blogger Caitlin posted a photograph of what is now known as #TheDress - a layered lace dress and jacket that was causing much distress among her friends. The distress spread rapidly across social media, with Taylor Swift admitting she was "confused and scared".

Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13)
I don't understand this odd dress debate and I feel like it's a trick somehow. I'm confused and scared. PS it's OBVIOUSLY BLUE AND BLACK

The internet is now made up by people firmly in two camps: the white and gold, and the blue and black - with each thinking the other is completely wrong.

But Ron Chrisley, director of the Centre for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex, believes that the problem mainly lies in the fact that everyone has forgotten we are dealing with an illusion.

Chrisley said: "The first step in reaching a truce in the dress war is to construct a demonstration that can show to the white-and-gold crowd how the very same dress can also look blue and black under different conditions."

The image below, tweeted by @namin3485, demonstrates that even though the right-hand side of each image is the same, in the context of the two different left halves, the right is interpreted as being either white and gold, or blue and black.

So does this mean people who are less self-confident are more likely to be able to see both, at least eventually?

Chrisley said: "My guess is it's not to do with self-confidence. It's a perceptual issue. I could imagine someone that's open minded could still see it only one way. This is below the level of us trying to understand other peoples views. It's more physiological than that."

Look at the image below. The colour of surfaces A and B are identical. Place your finger over the join where the top and bottom half of the image meet.

Both surfaces are grey, right? But how?! Why?!

Chrisley said: "Which colour we see isn't just a matter of the light coming into eyes, it's the inferences that caused that input. We use the context to inform our colour experiences.

"Some suffer more than others due to how people factor in context in order to construct a colour experience. Some people see just what's in front of them and some people are affected much more by the context.

"This has yet to be proven, but given what we know of the brain, and it's a good guess, is that someone who is used to manipulating images and white balance might be able to perceive the true dress colour in a wider range of contexts and ignore context, whereas others can be easily manipulated. People who have changed luminance in Photoshop may not be fooled by it."

Take the following colour illusion. Squares A, B and C appear to be different shades of brown. Cover the surrounding squares and you'll see they are in fact the same colour.

Chrisley said: "Another striking thing about the dress illusion is that it is quite unlike the checked shadow illusion, in that not all people experience it, and those that do often do so differently.

"It is as if there is a perceptual equivalent of those who can roll their tongues and those who can't. But it is too early to say whether the difference is genetic, as with tongue rolling ability, or something affected by learning and personality such as being a night-owl or one's particular sensitivity to context in perception, as I and fellow Sackler colleague Acer Chang speculate."

Here's the science behind #TheDress colour illusion

You may have gathered this by now, but what we are experiencing is really a colour illusion. Colour illusions are images where the object's surrounding colours trick the eye into incorrectly interpreting the colour.

What's happening with #TheDress is that your eye is either discounting the blue so you're seeing white and gold, or discounting the gold so your eye sees blue and black. But why would your eyes lie to you like this?

Human beings evolved to see in daylight, but daylight changes the colour of everything we see. Human eyes try to compensate for the chromatic bias of daylight colour.

We see objects because light is reflected. When we look at something, light enters the eye with different wavelengths which correspond to different colours. This light hits the retina in the back of the eye where pigments shoot signals to the part of the brain that processes these signals into an image.

Your brain figures out what colour light is bouncing off the object your eyes are looking at by subtracting that colour from the real colour of the object.

Speaking to Wired magazine, Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies colour and vision at Wellesley College in Massachusetts said: "Most people will see the blue on the white background as blue. But on the black background, some might see it as white."
Topics

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The science behind the dress colour illusion

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It's not every day that fashion and science come together to polarise the world. Tumblr blogger Caitlin posted a photograph of what is now known as #TheDress - a layered lace dress and jacket that was causing much distress among her friends. The distress spread rapidly across social media, with Taylor Swift admitting she was "confused and scared".

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RLS:  Famous dissenter (political prisoner) in China, Liu Xiaobo. Receiving a Nobel peace Prize. 

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RLS:  Famous dissenter (political prisoner) in China, Liu Xiaobo. Receiving a Nobel peace Prize. 

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I am interested in knowing how is the quality of freedom be measured in society, and whether freedom always improve the stability of society.
Possible KQ:
How can the quality of freedom be measured in a society?

To what extend does freedom (always) improve the stability of society?

To what extend is freedom applied to current society?

Does freedom always improve a society?

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China is facing a barrage of international criticism for its treatment of the Nobel laureate and democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo, who died at the age of 61 on Thursday.

Liu, who championed non-violent resistance as a way of overcoming "forceful tyranny", had been serving an 11-year jail sentence for demanding an end to one-party rule when he was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May.

He died of multiple organ failure while under guard at a hospital in north-east China, making him the first Nobel peace prize winner to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, the 1935 recipient, who died under surveillance after years confined to Nazi concentration camps.

News of Liu's death sparked an immediate outpouring of international mourning and condemnation. His peaceful activism and biting criticism of one-party rule meant he had spent almost a quarter of his life behind bars.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, paid tribute to "a courageous fighter for civil rights and freedom of opinion".

The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said he mourned the loss of a man who had dedicated "his life to the betterment of his country and humankind, and to the pursuit of justice and liberty".

The leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prize, said the Chinese government - which had stopped Liu travelling abroad for treatment despite appeals from world leaders - bore "a heavy responsibility for his premature death".

"We find it deeply disturbing that Liu Xiaobo was not transferred to a facility where he could receive adequate medical treatment before he became terminally ill," said Berit Reiss-Andersen.

The British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said he was deeply saddened by the "huge loss" of the "lifelong campaigner for democracy, human rights and peace" and attacked Beijing for denying Liu and his family the chance to seek medical treatment overseas.

"Liu Xiaobo should have been allowed to choose his own medical treatment overseas, which the Chinese authorities repeatedly denied him. This was wrong and I now urge them to lift all restrictions on his widow, Liu Xia."

One of the most forceful attacks on the authoritarian regime of China's president, Xi Jinping, came from his Taiwanese counterpart, Tsai Ing-wen, who paid tribute to a "human rights warrior".

Tsai said Liu had striven to transform China into a nation where human rights and the rule of law were respected. "This was Liu Xiaobo's Chinese dream," Tsai said, alluding to Xi's central propaganda slogan.

"We hope that the Chinese authorities can show confidence in engaging in political reform so that the Chinese people can enjoy the God-given rights of freedom and democracy ... Only through democracy, in which every Chinese person has freedom and respect, can China truly become a proud and important country."

Liu Xiaobo was famed for his Gandhian "no enemies" philosophy - but there was rage as well as grief among his friends as news of his death spread.

"I hate this government," said the author and activist Tienchi Martin-Liao, breaking down in tears as she learned of her friend's death. "It is not only sadness - it is fury. How can a regime treat a person like Liu Xiaobo like this?

"This is unbearable. This will go down in history. No one should forget what this government and the Xi Jinping administration has done. It is unforgivable."

The writer and activist Mo Zhixu, said he felt "bitter hatred". "It is so cruel and inhuman."

Hu Ping, a friend of almost three decades who edits a pro-democracy journal called the Beijing Spring, said: "Liu Xiaobo is immortal, no matter whether he is alive or dead. Liu Xiaobo is a man of greatness, a saint."

Hu said his friend's plight highlighted the bleak realities facing activists living under Xi, who has presided over what observers call the most severe political chill since the days following the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

"I think the situation in China now is deteriorating - and the way in which Liu has been treated clearly shows us what the current situation is, and how it goes beyond our imagination."

Born in the northern province of Jilin in 1955, Liu was part of the first generation of Chinese students to go to university after they reopened following the upheaval of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. He studied Chinese literature and went on to become a revered writer and public intellectual.

When pro-democracy protests broke out in Beijing in the spring of 1989, Liu was lecturing in New York but decided to return despite having previously shown little interest in politics.

"He thought: 'This is where I should be and this is where I can make a contribution. So I am going there'," said Perry Link, a Chinese literature expert from the University of California, Riverside, who knew him.

Liu flew back to Beijing and headed to Tiananmen Square, where he played a central role in the protests. He led a hunger strike shortly before the 4 June military crackdown in which hundreds, possibly thousands of lives were lost. He was jailed for almost two years for his role in what Beijing called "counter-revolutionary" riots. The experience served as a political awakening that transformed Liu into a lifelong activist and champion of democracy.

Over the coming years Liu continued to speak out, despite two more stints behind bars, railing incessantly against China's authoritarian regime in essays and interviews.

The "crime" that led to Liu spending his final years behind bars was Charter 08, a 2008 declaration inspired by Charter 77, a manifesto published by Czechoslovakian dissidents in 1977. "The current system has become backward to the point that change cannot be avoided," it warned, calling for an end to one-party rule.

Authorities did not approve. Hours before it was due to be published, Liu, who had been one of the document's drafters, was detained at his Beijing home. The following year he was handed an 11-year sentence for "inciting subversion of state power".

"The charter was the first public document since 1949 to dare to mention the end of one-party rule," said Link. "But of course the problem with having an influence is that the crackdown has been effective. A lot of young people don't know about the charter and don't know about Liu Xiaobo now."

In 2010, Liu was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". He was represented at the award ceremony by an empty chair. When he was informed of his victory he reportedly said: "I dedicate this prize to the lost souls of 4 June," in reference to the victims of the Tiananmen massacre.

Human rights and democracy campaigners saw Liu's Nobel prize as a triumph for their cause. But for his wife, the poet and artist Liu Xia, with whom he had fallen in love during the 1990s, it was a catastrophe. She was immediately placed under house arrest and has spent recent years living in almost total isolation, under constant surveillance.

"She is a wonderful woman. A really wonderful woman," says Jean-Philippe Béja, a French academic and longstanding friend. "I don't even dare to imagine how she feels now."

Eva Pils, an expert in Chinese law and human rights from King's College London, said Liu Xiaobo would be remembered for his "wise and forceful" style of political resistance. Supporters had been counting the days until his expected release from prison in 2019. "Now this is extremely disappointing," she said. "Naturally, I, like many others, had been counting down to the time of his release. It's so unfair."

Link said Liu would be remembered as "a stubborn truth-teller" and someone who opened "the possibility of a different kind of China".

"That is a lasting legacy. The model of how an independent intellectual stands up to the state will be admired if it is not completely obliterated."

Béja said Liu's ideas would continue to inspire, long after his death. "It's always very hard to evaluate the impact of a thinker or of an actor but I am sure that - despite all the efforts by the party - he won't be forgotten."
Additional reporting by Wang Zhen
Topics

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Liu Xiaobo, Nobel laureate and political prisoner, dies at 61 in Chinese custody

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China is facing a barrage of international criticism for its treatment of the Nobel laureate and democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo, who died at the age of 61 on Thursday. Liu, who championed non-violent resistance as a way of overcoming "forceful tyranny", had been serving an 11-year jail sentence for demanding an end to one-party rule when he was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May.

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Ricky and Tommy
My RLS is about the argument whether a criminal who is diagnosed with both dementia and amnesia should be executed or not due to killing a police officer in three decades ago.
KQ :
To what extent, does criminal’s cognitive decline does punishment cease to serve its purpose—or become an injustice itself?

AOK
Value judgement- what is wrong and what is right, an eye of an eye.
utilitarianism- the nature of punishment.
Watch black mirror, white bear

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"IT MAY be simply my educational background", John Roberts said at the Supreme Court last month, but the reasoning behind the case against gerrymandering seemed to be "sociological gobbledygook". This comment from America's chief justice, who holds two degrees from Harvard, had a tinge of false modesty: the mathematics of gerrymandering isn't brain surgery. But justices are often pressed into roles for which law school did not prepare them: historian, scientist and video-game aficionado, to name a few. It's no surprise that they sometimes get the facts wrong, as a recent ProPublica study found, or come to questionable conclusions.
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But when it comes to their gravest task-adjudicating capital punishment cases, where nine people in robes have the last word on whether someone lives or dies at the hand of the government-the justices are sometimes called upon to moonlight in an even more fraught role. In Dunn v Madison, a case involving an ailing 67-year-old convicted murderer and stroke survivor who no longer remembers his crime, the justices confronted questions perhaps better suited for moral philosophers: What is the purpose of punishment? Does failing memory affect culpability? At what point along the path of a criminal's cognitive decline does punishment cease to serve its purpose-or become an injustice itself?

The unanimity of the Supreme Court's decision on November 6th to clear the way for Vernon Madison's execution was not a sign that the justices agreed on answers to these questions. The 9-0 vote was a function, instead, of their view of a law Congress passed two decades ago making capital punishment swifter and surer to administer: the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). In Monday's unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court cited its ruling in 2011 that AEDPA permits a federal court to nullify a state court's decision in a capital case only when the latter is "so lacking in justification" that there is no "possibility for fair-minded disagreement". That's a nearly impossible hurdle for a man on death row to clear. It is not enough for a defendant to show good-or even compelling-reasons for the federal court to reconsider his case. He must show that there is no chance the trial court made the right call.

Despite that heavy lift, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Mr Madison's execution in March. Citing the testimony of medical experts, the Eleventh Circuit found that "areas of Mr Madison's brain have essentially died as a result of his strokes". Vascular injury in his brain has rendered Mr Madison incontinent, slurred his speech, impaired his vision and left him unable to walk independently. Most notably, the strokes have damaged Mr Madison's memory. Diagnosed with both dementia and amnesia, Mr Madison could not recall the time 32 years ago when he shot a police officer at point-blank range. "I never went around killing folks", he told the neuropsychologist.

In light of this pronounced decline in his physical and mental health, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the state court fundamentally erred in determining the facts and applying the law. Though state courts are entitled to "substantial deference" under AEDPA, the error here is too egregious. "A finding that a man with no memory of what he did wrong has a rational understanding of why he is being put to death", the Eleventh Circuit concluded, "is patently unreasonable".

Strong words, but all nine Supreme Court justices disagreed. There is a difference, their opinion said, between remembering a crime and understanding that a crime triggered one's punishment. Mr Madison's comments to his doctors seem to show that he grasps the "nature of the pending proceeding", that he is being punished for "murder" and that Alabama seeks "retribution" for his crime. That evidence may or may not be ironclad, but it isn't beyond the pale, the justices said, and the state court gets the benefit of the doubt. Alabama may put Mr Madison to death.

For three justices, this strategy of avoidance has its limits. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg penned a one-paragraph concurring opinion (joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor) noting that executing someone "whose disability leaves him without memory of his commission of a capital offence" is a "substantial question" the justices have never tackled but perhaps should-in a case where AEDPA is not a factor. And Justice Breyer reiterated his wider critique of the death penalty in a solo concurring opinion. Instead of focusing on how aging and disease may limit the scope of capital punishment, he wrote, "I believe it would be wiser to reconsider the root cause of the problem-the constitutionality of the death penalty itself".

In side-stepping the question of Mr Madison's continued culpability for a murder he cannot recall, the justices may have fulfilled Congress's wishes when it passed AEDPA and Bill Clinton signed it. But ratifying Alabama's decision to put a very sick man with large gaps in his memory to death effectively, if not formally, puts the Supreme Court on one side-arguably the wrong one-of a philosophical debate over personal identity and punishment. Consider this proposition from Derek Parfit, an Oxford philosopher who died on January 1st, to be the unwritten dissenting opinion in Dunn: "When some convict is now less closely connected to himself at the time of his crime, he deserves less punishment. If the connections are very weak, he may deserve none."

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The Supreme Court permits the execution of a man who does not recall his crime

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"IT MAY be simply my educational background", John Roberts said at the Supreme Court last month, but the reasoning behind the case against gerrymandering seemed to be "sociological gobbledygook". This comment from America's chief justice, who holds two degrees from Harvard, had a tinge of false modesty: the mathematics of gerrymandering isn't brain surgery.

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RLS: Neil Harbisson, the world's first cyborg artist.
Possible KQ: To what extent can  technology generate authentic representation of the reality?
We are interested In knowing more about the potentials and the qualities of the beginning of cyborg era.
https://www.ted.com/talks/neil_harbisson_i_listen_to_color?language=zh-tw#t-165773

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Neil Harbisson: the world’s first cyborg artist

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Thanks to the antenna implanted in his skull, Neil Harbisson can hear images and paint sounds. The world’s first cyborg artist tells Stuart Jeffries why ringtones are green and Amy Winehouse is red and pink

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My RLS is China's decision to clamp down on the use of strippers at funerals.
I am interested in knowing more about why solemnity and seriousness are qualities commonly associated with funerals and death in general. Where do this values comes from and where do they get their authority.
Possible KQ: To what extent can a historical practice be an ethical value in itself.

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Music blaring through loudspeakers, strippers dancing to the beat and audiences whistling along. In some parts of China, this is what you would see during a funeral procession.

Earlier this year, China renewed a clampdown on strippers performing at funerals, wedding and temples, calling it "obscene and vulgar".

This isn't the first time authorities have tried to get rid of the practice but it has proven resilient.

Why do people hire strippers at funerals?

According to one theory, strippers are used to boost funeral attendances because large crowds are seen as a mark of honour for the deceased.

Another states the practice could be linked to a "worship of reproduction".

"In some local cultures, dancing with erotic elements can be used to convey the deceased's wishes of being blessed with many children," Huang Jianxing, a professor of Fujian Normal University told state-media outlet the Global Times.

One practical theory is that the hiring of strippers could be seen as a sign of wealth.

"Chinese rural households are more inclined to show off their disposable incomes by paying out several times their annual income for actors, singers, comedians and strippers to comfort the bereaved and entertain the mourners," said the Global Times.

Is the practice common?

It is mainly seen in rural parts of China, but it's actually more common in Taiwan - where it first originated from.

"The practice of funeral strippers first caught widespread public attention in Taiwan in 1980," University of South Carolina anthropologist Marc Moskowitz told the BBC.

"It has become fairly common in Taiwan but in China the government has been more restrictive so many people have never even heard of this."

But even in Taiwan, the practice isn't usually seen in major cities.

"Because funeral stripping is in a grey area between legal and illegal activity... it is less common to see it taking place in urban centres, although one often finds the practice in the outskirts of most cities," said Mr Moskowitz.

The funeral was for a local politician, who according to his family, told them he wanted a colourful funeral "through a dream".

Why the crackdown?

The newest crackdown is hardly surprising. It's just the latest in a series of campaigns over the years by the Chinese government to end the practice of funeral strippers.

China's Ministry of Culture has deemed such performances "uncivilised" and announced that anyone who hires a stripper to entice people to a funeral will be "severely punished".

"China's government envisions itself as being a father figure who needs to guide its citizens," said Dr Moskowitz.

"They worry about public nudity and the influence that this might have on society, especially given that children often see these shows.

However, Dr Moskowitz adds that it might not be so easy to get rid of the practice.

"The fact that it keeps popping up, in spite of laws against it, points to how resilient [it] can be," added Dr Moskowitz.

In 2006, the leaders of five striptease troupes in the eastern province of Jiangsu were detained after hundreds attended a farmer's funeral that saw striptease acts being performed.

In 2015, villages in Hebei and Jiangsu province made headlines on Chinese social media when it was discovered that strippers had been invited to stage "obscene performances" at funerals. The government again punished organisers and performers involved.

The Ministry of Culture's new campaign will target in particular the Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu and Hebei provinces. The government has also set up a hotline for the public to report any "funeral misdeeds" in exchange for a monetary reward.

It's not clear if the practice will ever go away completely, but what is clear is that the Chinese government definitely isn't going to stop trying until it does.

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Why do some Chinese funerals involve strippers?

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Chinese authorities are once again cracking down on the practice which have existed for years.