Category Archives: Politics

How are Americans practicing religion during the pandemic?

Divinity School/AP-NORC poll: 9% think in-person services should continue without restrictions

An overwhelming majority of people in the United States support restricting or suspending in-person religious services during the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a new poll from the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. (more…)

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How conspiracy theories emerge – and how their storylines fall apart

UCLA research uses artificial intelligence to analyze differences between a true story and a completely fabricated one

A new study by UCLA professors offers a new way to understand how unfounded conspiracy theories emerge online. The research, which combines sophisticated artificial intelligence and a deep knowledge of how folklore is structured, explains how unrelated facts and false information can connect into a narrative framework that would quickly fall apart if some of those elements are taken out of the mix. (more…)

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Fragile fragments: Marina Rustow unpacks daily life in medieval Egypt

Imagine what the stuff of everyday life — personal letters, the deed of a house, a shop owner’s inventory records — might look like in medieval times. Since the late 1990s, historian Marina Rustow has immersed herself in a unique cache of such documents hidden away for centuries in an Egyptian synagogue. (more…)

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A conversation with Dan Chirot about his new book ‘You Say You Want a Revolution,’ exploring radical idealism

Those who wish for revolution should be wary, a new book by Dan Chirot warns; they might come to regret that wish should revolution become a violent reality.

Chirot is a professor in the University of Washington Jackson School of International Studies and of sociology. His latest book, “You Say You Want a Revolution: Radical Idealism and its Tragic Consequences” was published in March by Princeton University Press. He is the author or co-author of many articles and several books, most recently “The Shape of the New: Four Big Ideas and How They Made the Modern World” (with Jackson School colleague Scott Montgomery, 2015). (more…)

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New Tool Aims to Assist Military Logistics in Evacuating Noncombatants

Researchers from the U.S. Army and North Carolina State University have developed a computational model that can be used to expedite military operations aimed at evacuating noncombatants, disaster response or humanitarian relief. (more…)

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DIE Men­schen­rechte gibt es nicht

Marie-Luisa Frick ist Professorin für Philosophie. Neben der Philosophie hat die gebürtige Lienzerin auch Rechtswissenschaften studiert. Da liegt es nahe, dass die Rechtsphilosophie zu ihren Forschungsfeldern zählt. Im Interview zum Internationalen Tag der Menschenrechte spricht Frick über Menschenrechte, ihre gesellschaftliche Bedeutung und warum es sie zu wahren gilt. (more…)

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