Author: Matthew Westphal

Apple E-Book Price Fixing Trial Begins

“A three-week trial got under way before a federal judge in New York in a case pitting the Justice Department against the popular iPad and iPhone maker that could shine a light on the secretive Silicon Valley giant’s business practices. ‘Apple told publishers that Apple – and only Apple – could get prices up in their industry’,” said prosecutors in opening arguments.

Science Listens To The Voices In Our Heads

“But although philosophers have long been interested in the relationship between language and thought, many believed that inner speech lay outside the realms of science. That is now changing, with new experimental designs for encouraging it, interfering with it and neuroimaging it. We are beginning to understand how the experience is created in the brain; its subjective qualities – essentially, what the words ‘sound’ like; and its role in processes such as self-control and self-awareness.”

Class War On The Multiplex Screen

Andrew O’Hehir looks at a spate of new releases wherein Hollywood cinema (by no means for the first time) becomes “the space where the angry and confrontational politics of class conflict – which are almost entirely absent in the realm of, y’know, actual politics – can play out as dream or wish fulfillment, with no real-world consequences.”