Everything is Interesting
Jane Elliott (b. 1933) is an American anti-racism activist and educator (she is also a feminist and LGBT activist).
She created the famous ‘blue-eyed/brown-eyed’ exercise, first done with grade school children in the 1960s, and which later became the basis for her career in diversity training.
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Pubic Wars, a pun on the Punic Wars, is the name given to the rivalry between the pornographic magazines Playboy and Penthouse during the 1960s and 1970s. Each magazine strove to show just a little bit more than the other, without getting too crude. The term was coined by ‘Playboy’ owner Hugh Hefner. In 1950s and 60s America it was generally agreed that nude photographs were not pornographic unless they showed pubic hair or, even worse, genitals.
‘Respectable’ photography was careful to come close to, but not cross over, this line. Consequently the depiction of pubic hair was de facto forbidden in U.S. pornographic magazines. ‘Penthouse’ originated in 1965 in Britain and was initially distributed in Europe. In 1969 it was launched in the U.S., bringing new competition to ‘Playboy.’ Due to more liberal European attitudes to nudity ‘Penthouse’ was already displaying pubic hair at the time of its U.S. launch. According to the magazine’s owner Bob Guccione, ‘We began to show pubic hair, which was a big breakthrough.’
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Project Iceworm was the code name for a US Army Top Secret proposal during the Cold War (a study was started in 1958), to build a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The ultimate objective of placing medium-range missiles under the ice – close enough to Moscow to strike targets within the Soviet Union – was kept secret from the Danish government.
To study the feasibility of working under the ice, a highly publicized ‘cover’ project, known as ‘Camp Century’ was launched in 1960. However, unsteady ice conditions within the ice sheet caused the project to be cancelled in 1966. Details of the missile base project were classified for decades, and first came light in 1997, when the Danish Foreign Policy Institute (DUPI) was asked by the Danish Parliament to research the history of nuclear weapons in Greenland during the Thulegate scandal.
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The Tuskegee [tuhs-kee-gee] Airmen is the popular name of a group of African-American pilots who fought in World War II. During World War II, African Americans in many U.S. states were still subject to discriminatory Jim Crow laws. The American military was racially segregated, as was the federal government. The Tuskegee Airmen were treated with prejudice both within and outside the army. Despite these adversities, they trained and flew with distinction. The Fighter Group saw action in Sicily and Italy, before being deployed as bomber escorts in Europe, where they were very successful.
The Tuskegee Airmen initially were equipped with Curtiss P-40 Warhawks fighter-bomber aircraft, briefly with Bell P-39 Airacobras, later with Republic P-47 Thunderbolts, and finally with the aircraft with which they became most commonly associated, the North American P-51 Mustang. When the pilots painted the tails of their P-47s and later, P-51s, red, the nickname ‘Red Tails’ was coined. Bomber crews applied a more effusive ‘Red-Tail Angels’ sobriquet. A B-25 bomb group, was forming in the U.S., but was not able to complete its training in time to see action.
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The Three Laws of Robotics are a set of rules devised by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story ‘Runaround,’ although they had been foreshadowed in a few earlier stories.
The Three Laws are: ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; and A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. These form an organizing principle and unifying theme for Asimov’s robotic-based fiction, appearing in his ‘Robot’ series, the stories linked to it, and his ‘Lucky Starr’ series of young-adult fiction.
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The term roboethics was coined by roboticist Gianmarco Veruggio in 2002, who also served as chair of an Atleier (workshop) funded by the European Robotics Research Network to outline areas where research may be needed. The road map effectively divided ethics of artificial intelligence into two sub-fields to accommodate researchers’ differing interests:
Machine ethics is concerned with the behavior of artificial moral agents (AMAs); and Roboethics is concerned with the behavior of humans, how humans design, construct, use and treat robots and other artificially intelligent beings.
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Machine Ethics is the part of the ethics of artificial intelligence concerned with the moral behavior of Artificial Moral Agents (AMAs) (e.g. robots and other artificially intelligent beings). It contrasts with roboethics, which is concerned with the moral behavior of humans as they design, construct, use and treat such beings.
In 2009, academics and technical experts attended a conference to discuss the potential impact of robots and computers and the hypothetical possibility that they could become self-sufficient and able to make their own decisions. They discussed the possibility and the extent to which computers and robots might be able to acquire any level of autonomy, and to what degree they could use such abilities to possibly pose any threat or hazard.
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The ethics of artificial intelligence is the part of the ethics of technology specific to robots and other artificially intelligent beings. It is typically divided into Roboethics, a concern with the moral behavior of humans as they design, construct, use and treat artificially intelligent beings, and Machine Ethics, concern with the moral behavior of artificial moral agents (AMAs).
The term ‘roboethics’ was coined by roboticist Gianmarco Veruggio in 2002. It considers both how artificially intelligent beings may be used to harm humans and how they may be used to benefit humans. ‘Robot rights’ are the moral obligations of society towards its machines, similar to human rights or animal rights. These may include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.
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In economic theory, a moral hazard is a situation where the costs that could incur from a decision will not be felt by the party taking the risk. Knowing that the potential costs and/or burdens of taking such risk will be borne, in whole or in part, by others creates a moral hazard and invites high risk behavior.
For example, with respect to the originators of subprime loans, many may have suspected that the borrowers would not be able to maintain payments and that, for this reason, the loans were not, in the long run, going to be worth much. Still, because there were many buyers of these loans (or of pools of these loans) willing to take on that risk, the originators did not concern themselves with the potential long-term consequences of making these loans.
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‘Too big to fail‘ describes financial institutions that are so large and so interconnected that their failure is widely held to be disastrous to the economy, and which therefore must be supported by government when they face difficulty. The term was popularized by Congressman Stewart McKinney in a 1984 hearing discussing the FDIC’s intervention with a failing bank, Continental Illinois.
Proponents of this theory believe that the importance of some institutions means they should become recipients of beneficial financial and economic policies from governments or central banks. One of the problems that arises is moral hazard (where costs that could incur will not be felt by the party taking the risk), in this case companies insulated by protective policies will seek to profit by it, and take positions that are high-risk high-return, as they are able to leverage these risks based on the policy preference they receive.
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Commodity money is money whose value comes from a commodity of which it is made (e.g. precious metals, cigarettes). Unlike representative money (a certificate or token which can be exchanged for the underlying commodity) or fiat currency (money backed only by an assurance from the issuing government), commodity money consists of objects that have value in themselves as well as value in their use as money.
Examples of commodities that have been used as mediums of exchange include gold, silver, copper, peppercorns, Rai stones (large, circular stone disks carved out of limestone), decorated belts (wampum belts), shells, cigarettes, barley, laundry detergent, etc.
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Deprogramming is an attempt to force a person to abandon allegiance to a religious, political, economic, or social group. The person in question is may be taken against his/her will, which has led to controversies over freedom of religion, kidnapping, and civil rights, as well as the violence which is sometimes involved. Deprogramming is often commissioned by relatives, including parents of adult offspring, who object to someone’s membership in an organization or group.
It was started in the 1970s in the United States by Ted Patrick (widely considered to be the ‘father of deprogramming’). In addition to the ethics and legality, the efficacy of deprogramming has been questioned by scholars, as well as by members of the Christian countercult movement. Similar actions, when done without force, are called ‘exit counseling.’ Sometimes the word deprogramming is used in a wider (and/or ironic or humorous sense), to mean the freeing of someone (often oneself) from any previously uncritically assimilated idea.
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