Free Republic

“Expanding the definition so far beyond the current guidance risks further discouraging individuals and groups from legitimately exercising their right to free speech, while allowing the government to crack down on community groups, charities or faith groups they disagree with.” Martin Bright, editor-at-large, Index on Censorship, added: “This is an unwarranted attack on freedom of expression and would potentially criminalise every student radical and revolutionary dissident. It has never been the British way to arrest people for thought crime.”

A team of researchers at the University of Texas has developed a noninvasive means by which human thoughts can be converted into text. Though currently somewhat clunky, the "semantic decoder" could one day be miniaturized and mobilized such that one's most private thoughts could be made apparent anywhere and endlessly.The scientists' paper, recently published in the journal Nature Neuroscience (look for the centerfold!), indicated that a "brain-computer interface that decodes continuous language from non-invasive recordings would have many scientific and practical applications."I'm sure that is the case. You can bet that tyrannical governments from China to Canada, and from Iran...

MSNBC anchor Joy Reid said Thursday on her show “The ReidOut” that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is implementing “literal government thought control.” Discussing DeSantis, Reid said, “What do you make of the fact he seems to be putting the whole weight of his appeal on attacking black people and brown immigrants and gay people and trans people?” Political panelist David Jolly said, “Ron DeSantis is tapping into the bloodstream of a party that wants to take America back 50 years.”

From cattle to uncontrolled wildlife, pesky but pervasive large parasites like tapeworms have a far greater impact on the total body health of their mammal hosts than previously known, new University of Alberta research suggests. "Parasites don't have to kill the animal to control a population," says Kyle Shanebeck, a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Science's Department of Biological Sciences who led the study. Shanebeck explained that all wildlife have at least one and often multiple parasites. The less fatal a parasite, the more prevalent it is within a population, with potentially stronger negative effects. "They can affect the...

A few years ago, a novel measurement technique showed that protons are probably smaller than had been assumed since the 1990s. The discrepancy surprised the scientific community; some researchers even believed that the Standard Model of particle physics would have to be changed. Physicists at the University of Bonn and the Technical University of Darmstadt have now developed a method that allows them to analyze the results of older and more recent experiments much more comprehensively than before. This also results in a smaller proton radius from the older data. So there is probably no difference between the values -...

Neuroscientists have tried to map various categories of mental function to specific regions of the brain, but recent work has shown that the definitions and boundaries of those regions are complex and context-dependent. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Neuroscientists are the cartographers of the brain’s diverse domains and territories — the features and activities that define them, the roads and highways that connect them, and the boundaries that delineate them. Toward the front of the brain, just behind the forehead, is the prefrontal cortex, celebrated as the seat of judgment. Behind it lies the motor cortex, responsible for planning and coordinating movement. To the...

A study using epilepsy patients undergoing surgery has given neuroscientists an opportunity to track in unprecedented detail the movement of a thought through the human brain, all the way from inspiration to response. The findings, published in 2018, confirmed the role of the prefrontal cortex as the coordinator of complex interactions between different regions, linking our perception with action and serving as what can be considered the "glue of cognition". Previous efforts to measure the passing of information from one area to the other have relied on processes such as electroencephalography (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which, while...

Over the past few weeks, as the Black Lives Matter movement has grown following outrage over the killing of George Floyd, high school students have leveraged every social media platform to call out their peers for racist behavior.

One of the greatest mysteries of our time is how people who claim to be the intellectual elite seem to value diversity of skin color over diversity of thought. An acquaintance of mine in New York just had to give up his career plans there and start studying for a different career in another state because he came to the conclusion that a white male with the best of academic credentials and life experiences would not be able to find or hold a job in a field dominated by women, nonwhites, and transgenders of all variations in a "liberal" bastion....

Washington (AFP) - Global warming could make the planet far hotter than currently projected because today's scientific models do not correctly account for the influence of clouds, researchers said this week. The study in the journal Science was led by researchers at Yale University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. When climate scientists look ahead to how much the planet's surface temperature may warm up in response to a doubling of carbon dioxide -- a byproduct of fossil fuel burning -- they typically predict a rise of between 2.1 and 4.7 degrees Celsius (3.75 to 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit). But these models...

So the question comes down to really the difference between being Persian, full blooded, and wanting to see Iran someday or calling yourself Mexican and maybe one day "returning" to Mexico, for a visit. How many Mexicans could possibly visit Mexico and return to America the country of the birth? Is there a parallel to Persians and Do called Mexicans?

General Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the US Army, told BBC Radio 4 that he had spoken to senior Republican senators who had been briefed by the US president on Monday, and had been assured that Mr Obama planned to do significant damage to the forces of Bashar al-Assad. The Obama administration has previously said that military strikes would not be aimed at toppling Assad's government nor altering the balance of the conflict. Instead, the White House has suggested, they would be intended to punish Assad for the alleged gas attack in Damascus on Aug 21...

Conservative columnist Jacob Sullum may have planted a dangerous seed the other day when he suggested – one can only hope tongue-in-cheek – that in addition to criminal and mental health background check requirements, one’s ideology must also be determined before that citizen is allowed to buy a gun. Sullum offered the suggestion in a column originally published by Town Hall on Aug. 8 and more recently in the Desert Dispatch on Tuesday. He notes that the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is now lobbying Congress and the two mainstream presidential contenders to “do something” about guns. Writing about...

I think when we express a desire to be in, or go back to, simpler days, we're really wanting less thought.

Invisible dark matter particles may regularly pass through our bodies, and dozens to thousands of these particles may be colliding with atoms inside us every year, according to a new calculation. However, radiation from these impacts is unlikely to cause cancer, investigators added. Dark matter is one of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time — an invisible substance thought to make up five-sixths of all matter in the universe. Scientists think it might be composed of things called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, that interact normally with gravity but very weakly with all the other known forces of...

GAMBLERS already had enough to think about without factoring the end of time into their calculations. But a year after a group of cosmologists argued that they should, another team says time need not end after all. It all started with this thought experiment. In a back room in a Las Vegas casino, you are handed a fair coin to flip. You will not be allowed to see the outcome, and the moment the coin lands you will fall into a deep sleep. If the coin lands heads up, the dealer will wake you 1 minute later; tails, in 1...

Iran, like many other dictatorships, has wrestled with the problem (at least from its point of view) of shielding their people from what it considers to be dangerous ideas about freedom and human rights, transmitted via the Internet.

MOUNT CLEMENS – Some people still take off right after Communion at St. Peter Church, but not as many now that they have to walk under signs that read "Judas left early too." Fr. Cooney says putting the signs up at each of the three exits was "a bit of Irish diplomacy" aimed at addressing a long-standing source of frustration for many Catholic priests: people who leave Mass early, rather than staying for the dismissal. Perhaps one of the reasons the signs had a positive effect is that he introduced them with humor, rather than scolding the congregation, he believes....

The George Orwell congress resumed its session yesterday. Not content to attempt to end the secret ballot by the “Employee Free Choice Act,” the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up and pass the equally-Orwellian “Hate Crimes” bill, HR 1913. Just as the “Employee Free Choice Act” would end free choice, the “Hate Crimes” bill would criminalize free speech. No, it’s not another version of the “Fairness Doctrine” -- which is fair to all except conservatives. The “Hate Crimes” bill wants to criminalize speech that insults politically-fashionable minorities, such as gays. Even if it means sacrificing religiousl freedom to...