GOOD READING ARTCILES TO IMPROVE ENGLISH DAY 1
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01 Jun 2020, 22:21
https://aeon.co/essays/why-superheroes-are-the-shape-of-tech-things-to-come
SUMMARY: Summary : Nikola Tesla, the late-19th-century's ultimate inventor-entrepreneur, had very
interesting things to say about how future technology would enhance humanity. There was
something viscerally embodied about these takes on technology, and it's easy to see how they
set the scene for comic-book superheroes and their technologically enhanced bodies.
Superheroes resonate within that culture. That's because these super heroes perfectly embody
in themselves the perception of technology as something that belongs to powerful and
iconoclastic individuals.
https://aeon.co/essays/how-pornography-works-to-undermine-womens-freedom-of-speechPASSAGE
Summary : As humans we don't think of freedom of speech as just a matter of freedom to
perform perlocutionary acts. Then in thinking about freedom of speech we are mainly thinking
about freedom to perform specifically illocutionary acts. Obviously enough, such freedom
depends on freedom to perform locutionary acts, since it is typically only in performing such acts
that we are able to perform illocutionary acts. Austin's distinction between locutionary and
illocutionary acts makes space for the possibility that freedom of speech might be limited in
another way: by disabling their capacities to perform illocutionary acts. The argument that
pornography can undermine women's freedom of speech is based on the idea that men's
consumption of pornography can have similar effects on their abilities to recognize which
illocutionary acts women are trying to perform.
https://aeon.co/essays/why-dont-rats-get-the-same-ethical-protections-as-primates
Summary : In 2011, the issue of rats' empathy resurfaced when a group of scientists found that
rats will reliably free other rats who are trapped inside a tube. The results of these studies are
compelling, but they don't show us much more than what we already suspected from the work
done in the 1950s and '60s - that rats are empathic; meanwhile, the studies have inflicted, and
continue to inflict, significant fear and distress on the rats. A recent article in the online
magazine The Conversation raised the concern that rat-population management strategies
might be unintentionally creating rats that are extremely fit or unusually prone to disease, but
the logic was purely anthropocentric - the worry was that we might be creating rats that are even
more dangerous and difficult to eliminate. The rats are hand-raised by humans from infancy
and trained to expect a treat when they smell TNT. The African giant pouched rats that APOPO
works with are too light to set off the landmines, and they have suffered no losses in their