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A PODCAST BY AYMAN AHMED AND CAILEY FLET

EPISODE 1: HOW FREE IS THE FREE PRESS?

CAILEY'S NOTES:

  1. Types of media I’m talking about (social media, newspapers, tv, video streaming, movies)

  2. Influence of media and content (culture, identity, politics, economy) = more reach, more influence, more sharing, more data

  3. World Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders is a 87 question survey which is completed by media professionals, lawyers, sociologists in 20 different languages across the world (7.63 Norway, 8.31 Sweden, 10.01 Netherlands, 15.28 Canada (18th), 23.73 US (45th), 88.87 North Korea (last))

  • Tests for pluralism (degree of opinions represented)

  • Media independence (from government)

  • Environment and self-censorship

  • Legislative framework

  • Transparency

  • Infrastructure

  • Abuses

  • *scores 0-15 good, 15.01 to 25 fair

​​

  1. Global media conglomerates: mergers to increase control of resources and revenues (slower innovation, higher prices, and not a lot of media plurality if lower competition)

  • Bertelsmann (Germany)

  • National Amusements (US - settlement talks over subsidiary CBS attempt to strip NA controlling stake in its own company)

  • 21st Century Fox (US)

  • Sony (Japan)

  • The Walt Disney Company (market value: 72.8 billion USD) (US)

  • AT&T (US)

  • Hearst Communications (US)

  • MGM Holdings (US)

  • Grupo Globo (Brazil)

  • Lagardère (France)

​

  1. Comcast case study (largest media conglomerate in terms of revenue (84.53 billion USD in 2017 in the US)

    1. In 1983, 90% of American media was owned by 50 companies, in 2011, the same 90% is controlled by six companies (GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS)

    2. Comcast subsidiaries include NBC, Universal Pictures, Telemundo, Bravo, MSNBC etc.

    3. Interlocking Directorates (board members sit on multiple boards) of NBC: Coca-Cola, Dell, Morgan Chase & Co, Home Depot, Kellogg, Kimberly-Clark, Texaco (US oil company), Unilever, New York Stock Exchange

    4. Comcast NBC merger guaranteed control of 1 of every 5 hours of television, monopoly of 11 large US markets like NYC and Chicago

  2. Here in Canada:

    1. Canadian radio-television and telecommunications commission is an independent governing agency (excludes newspapers and internet media ownership) = imposes limits on the ownership of broadcasting licences to ensure no company controls more than 45% of the total television audience share

    2. Media in Canada is owned mainly by Bell Canada, the Shaw family, Rogers Communications, Quebecor, and CBC (government owned)

    3. Bell and Rogers account for 43% of all revenues (vertically integrated = distribute content to all subsidiaries)  

    4. Bell parent company is BCE Inc (21.72 billion CAD in 2016)

    5. Rogers parent company Rogers Communications (14.143 billion CAD in 2017)

    6. Government influences on media (sec 2 of CCRAF - freedom of press and other media of communication, Competition act, Broadcasting act, Security of Information Act, Access to Information Act, etc.)

  3. Are there positives? Future questions/thoughts:

  • Unity in message, if it is a good message, why not have standards in media

  • Larger media outlets generally have more resources and are able to provide a high standard of quality

  • Convenience, we are in an age of now, so it's easy to get all of your information from one spot that is centralized and not confusing

  • What do you think? Share with us.

EPISODE 2: HOW HAS TIME CHANGED US - CRAZY CRIME EDITION?

CAILEY'S NOTES:

Mary Celeste mystery - considered to have criminal undertones

  • November 7, 1872

  • 282 ton brigantine (two-masted sailing ship) sailed from New York Harbour to Genoa, Italy

  • On board: Benjamin Briggs, Sarah Briggs (wife), Sophia Briggs (2 yr old daughter), with 8 crewmembers

  • December 5, 1972 the Dei Gratia’s (passing British ship) captain David Morehouse and crew saw Mary Celeste at full sail adrift 643 km east of the Azores (autonomous region of Portugal - archipelago in the mid-Atlantic) with nobody on it

  • Boat had 3 and a half feet of water in the hold due to one of two pumps being disassembled, missing lifeboat, personal belongings still there, ship was completely undamaged and was loaded with 6 months of alcohol and food

  • Last ship’s log was on 5 am on November 25, 1872 where Mary Celeste was in sight of the Azores island of Santa Maria 804 km from where the Dei Gratia would find it 9 days later

  • Investigation into whether to grant payment by its insurers to the Dei Gratia crew for finding ship found no evidence of foul play

  • Why would experienced captain Briggs/sails abandon a perfectly fine ship? No pirates cause everything was still there.

 

Back-story and for-story

  • Christened Amazon, but had to change names due sudden illness of first captain and a collision with another ship in the English channel shortly after

  • Mary Celeste sailed under different owners for 12 years until last captain after Briggs deliberately ran it aground in Haiti for insurance money

  • 1884, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle anonymously submitted a story called J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement in The Cornhill Magazine where the entire crew was killed by an ex-slave seeking revenge - fictionalized (changed spellings and some details like no waterlogged and no boat missing) - first person survivor testimony suggesting what happened to Mary Celeste (so convincing and well written that many people took it as fact at the time)

  • 2001, Clive Cussler claimed to have found the wreck of Mary Celeste (but later analysis concluded that the wood was living at least a decade after Mary Celeste sank - fun fact dating ship timbers uses dendrochronological dating - essentially studying tree ring growth)

 

Cyber Crimes:

Defined according to technopedia: “a crime in which a computer is the object of the crime (hacking phishing, spamming) or is used as a tool to commit an offense (child pornography, hate crimes). Cyber criminals may use computer technology to access personal information, trade secrets, or use the internet for exploitative or malicious purposes.”

  • 25% of reported cyber crimes go unsolved (another problem is that most cyber crimes aren’t really reported cause we don’t usually know when they occur, difficult to track)

  • 38% of surveyed organizations feel prepared to combat/prevent cyber crime according to 2015 Global Cybersecurity Status Report

  • AI is becoming very useful in predicting and preparing for fraud detection

 

Why is it so hard to trace cyber criminals?

  • Unknown address

  • Common and hard to prevent spear phishing (water joke) = email to trip people up

  • Computer operating systems aren’t perfect yet (updates and patches help)

 

The Carbanak Gang

Largest amount of money stolen in cyber crime in history = 650 million pounds equivalent to just over a billion dollars CAD

  • Discovered in 2015 by cybersecurity firm in Russia called Kaspersky Lab

  • Russian based hackers labeled Carbanak cybergang (named after malware deployed) spent two years planning the heist using malware to infect networks and the bank’s internal employee computers of more than 100 global financial institutions (non-disclosure so we don’t know which ones) in 30 countries

  • Sent emails containing malware to bank employees that if activated would infect bank’s admin computer, keystrokes recorded on computers, took screenshots of daily activities, and mimicked bank procedures as if it were business as usual

  • Malware sent video feeds and images that told how bank conducted daily routines - hackers impersonated bank officers, turned on cash machines remotely, and transferred millions (limited 10 million at a time, and multiple times at the same banks) from banks in Russia, Japan, Switzerland, US, and the Netherlands into fake accounts offshore

  • Brought together digital crimes units in FBI, Interpol, Dutch High Tech Crime Unit, among others

  • Same group proliferated and continued to commit the similar crimes (especially with the advent of crypto currency, which is untraceable - haven’t been caught or stopped)

  • Used various malware including Cobalt as well as Carbanak

 

UPDATE: March of this year, a main player/ key figure in the group named by Spain’s Interior Ministry as Denis K. was arrested by the Spanish National Police

  • Denis K. is said to be Ukrainian and the criminal behind the coding of the malware

  • The rest of the gang is still at large (unsolved)

AYMAN'S NOTES:

Sara Wilson

  • Born in staffordshire, family really poor so moved to london at age 16 in search of work

  • Became maidservant for chick (caroline vernon) who was lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte

  • Started stealing royal jewelry

    • Stole dresses + paintings, queen noticed so had wardrobe watched

      • Caught Sara as she came a second time for more

  • Sentenced to death as punishment but Carolline pleaded so instead sent to american colonies but managed to bring some of the stolen items

    • Sold as an indentured servant to W. Devail

      • Meaning she had a certain amount of labour that she was contractually bound to complete

      • Escaped after only a few days

  • Started calling herself the Queen’s sister

    • Used stolen garb + claimed she had a scandal so moved to America to get away from her family

    • Princess Susanna Caroline Matilda of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

      • She could only speak english which was wierd cuz Queen Charlotte was from Germany

        • BUT still managed to fool most people due to her extensive knowledge regarding courtly matters

  • Eventually, Devail heard of this and realized she looked a lot like his former servant

    • So put out advertisement saying this supposed princess is actually his slave and sent some people to hunt her down and drag her back

    • She was once more his servant BUT

      • In 1775 some other chick named Sarah Wilson arrived in America so our Sarah swapped places with her

        • Devail was like whatever

          • Out sarah went on to marry a Dragoons officer

            • Spy officer

The Gossip’s Bridle

  • If you were a woman who gossiped too much you’d have an iron cage placed around your head that forced iron into your mouth

    • If you talked iron would cut you

      • Cuz gossip was believed to be the devil’s tool

        • So you were a witch if you gossiped

    • Could attach mask to a hook or something too

  • Also called brank or scold’s bridle

  • Commonly used to control slaves in Virginia in 18th century

  • Case Study

    • Bessie Tailiefeir, who allegedly slandered a person called Baillie Hunter regarding the use of false measurements in a land dispute.

EPISODE 3: WHO LIVES DEEP IN THE OCEAN?

CAILEY'S NOTES:

  • 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans (Pacific covers 30% of Earth’s surface, Atlantic 21% of Earth’s surface, Indian 14% of Earth’s surface)

  • 80% of ocean is unmapped/unexplored/unobserved according to US National Ocean Service

 

Ocean Floor

  • Continental shelf (epipelagic zone/sunlight zone) - continental slope (bathypelagic zone/midnight zone), continental rise (abyssopelagic zone/the abyss), abyssal plain - trench (hadalpelagic zone (the trenches) - volcanic island, submarine ridge

    • Sunlight zone = surface to 200 m

    • Midnight zone = 1,000 m to 4,000 m, 5,850 pounds/ square inch pressure, sperm whales dive down that deep, bioluminescence

    • Abyss = 4,000 m to  6,000 m, near freezing, no light, invertebrates, ¾ ocean floor ends here, deepest fish ever discovered found in Puerto Rico Trench at 8,372 m)

    • Trenches = 6,000 m to unknown, 8 tonnes/ square inch pressure (weight of 48 Boeing 747 jets), invertebrates like tube worms and starfish

  • Shape of ocean floor determines weather patterns (creation of tsunamis), regulating temperature, locations of fisheries/food, transportation routes, habitat to living organisms which impacts everybody

  • Ocean crust = dense, dark, more iron and magnesium that continental crust

  • Solid rock = basement (floor of ocean)

    • Basement made of volcanic rock called basalt

    • Blanket over basement = pelagic ooze from accumulation of silica and calcium remains of animals and plants that sink to seafloor

 

Mariana Trench

  • 2010 US Centre for Coastal and Ocean Mapping measured deepest known area of Earth’s oceans is the Challenger Deep in Mariana Trench (10,994 meters below sea level of plus/minus 40 meters) in the western Pacific Ocean

    • Mt. Everest is 8,850 meters above sea level

    • First depth measurement (8,184 meters) was made by British royal navy survey ship HMS Challenger in 1873 - over time more and more ships/scientists have made measurements

  • Located at a convergent plate boundary (Philippine Plate and Pacific Plate)

  • 2009 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution deepest five by unmanned robotic vehicle (Nereus) in Challenger Deep to 10,902 meters

 

How to Map

  • Old school way by sounding (weighted lines lowers to reach sediment, one at a time, by boat only)

  • We can see most large features more than 5 km using satellite tech (height of sea surface)

  • Ocean is big, deep, and impermeable to laser altimeter (used to map neighbor planets) - still used not super accurate

    • Specs: satellite, global coverage, low res 2-5 km, vertical accuracy of 200-300 m (radio waves do not travel well though good electrical conductors like salt water)

      • Ocean Survey Topography Mission on Jason-2 satellite (1992)

      • GOES-16 first geostationary (altitude close to 35,786 km directly above equator at 3.07 km/s) Operational Environmental Satellite by NASA (2016)

      • Suomi NPP Polar-orbiting weather satellite (2011)

      • Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite (2009)

  • New school way by multibeam bathymetry systems (sensors send sound waves, measures time it takes for them to bounce back)

    • Specs: multiple echo soundings, map 2-10 km sections, AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) ships = expensive, good res 0.5 m (normal sci ships 25-10 m), vertical accuracy 1-2 m

  • 10% of global ocean floor has been precisely mapped using modern sonar tech, 35% of ocean/coastal waters of US have been mapped by new methods

  • Most mapping actually comes from looking for wreckage = Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in Indian Ocean

 

Seabed 2030

  • Map 140 million square miles (362 million square km) of the sea floor

  • Recruiting 100 ships to sail around the world for 13 years

  • Led by non-profit group General Bathymetric Chart of Oceans (received 18.5 million dollars USD from the Nippon Foundation (NPO loans) and many other donations)

 

Dangers/Implications of Mapping the Ocean

  • USS San Francisco crashed into uncharted mountain in 2005

  • Mapping may aid mining industries in finding previously unattainable locations on the seabed (precious metals - diamonds, rare elements, oil)

    • 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that governs deep ocean’s resources (most mining is done not in deep sea international waters) states that deep sea life must be protected and revenue made from mining must be shared with international community

    • We don’t really know how to moderate or regulate deep sea mining yet cause it hasn’t happened… yet

  • It’s expensive = Martin Jakobsson (prof of marine geology/ geophysics at Stockholm U) - “People have been so excited about going to different planets, but we haven’t been able to bring the attention to our own Earth in the same way as Mars. It hasn’t been easy to rally the whole world behind us”

AYMAN'S NOTES:

Deep Sea Creatures’ Biology

  • Have evolved to survive extreme pressures of sub-photic zones

    • Sub-photic

      • Photic zone = ocean water thats got exposure to sun

      • Sub-photic = below that, most deep sea = aphotic zone cuz like no sun

    • To survive this pressure, many undergo deep-sea gigantism

      • tendency for species of invertebrates and other deep-sea dwelling animals to be larger than their shallower-water relatives.

        • For crustreans, they think this happens cuz bigger size = lower temperature = increased cell size + increased life span --> increase in maximum body size (Bergman’s rule)

        • Another theory is that bigger animals are more efficient so evolution (Kiebler’s rule)

      • Example: Japanese Spider crab

        • Fucking huge and gross = 12m from claw to claw

  • Lack of light

    • Big eyes, and nice sense of smell

    • To eliminate stress of finding a mate, lots are hermaphrodites

  • To eat

    • Eat other animals that have eaten food

      • Get nutrients through chemosynthesis (transferring chemical energy into food energy)

Bioluminesce

  • Happens when creatures oxidize organic compounds

  • Light emitting molecule + enzyme

    • Enzyme catalyzes the oxidation of the molecule  

  • Uses

    • Attraction

    • Defence

    • Warning

    • Communication

    • Mimicry

    • Camouflage

EPISODE 4: DOES NATURE AND NURTURE IMPACT PERSONALITY?

CAILEY'S NOTES:

Basic biology:

  • In every nucleus in each cell in your body there are 23 pairs of chromosomes

  • Each pair comes from father and mother

  • Chromosomes made up of DNA and DNA is grouped into segments called genes

  • Genes transmits characteristics from one generation to next (humans have estimated 20,000-25,000 genes, Human Genome Project revealed 20,500)

  • DNA in human genes are 99.9% the same as DNA in every other person

  • Common genetic structures lead same species individuals to be born with behaviours that come naturally/ instinct (ex. We instinctively learn to walk and speak)

  • The degree or aptitude of these instincts vary… 0.1% of genes in humans vary

 

Personality according to the American Psychological Association: individual differences in characteristic, patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving

  • Personality considered unique, what makes up personality = expression of genes, ironically everybody is genetically similar, so can personality be really that unique?

  • We can change personality (borderline personality disorder), but we can’t really change our genes the same way, can we? Comes down to environment

  • Not determined by one gene but by a lot of them together (can’t control, but can predispose or increased/decreased likelihoods)

  • By having a specific pattern of genes doesn’t mean you will develop a particular traits because it depends on the environment

    • (ex. If person has genetic predisposition to develop emphysema from smoking, but never smokes, then the emphysema will most likely not develop)

 

Nature: pre-wiring, influenced by genetic inheritance, focus on genetic, hormonal, and neurochemical explanations of behaviour

  • Extreme biological approach are nativists

  • Characteristics of humans are a product of evolution and individual differences are as a result of everybody’s unique genome

  • Earlier a particular ability appears, the more likely it stems from genetic factors

  • Maturation (as you grow older) governed by attachment in infancy, language acquisition, and cognitive development (nature)

 

Common genetic inheritances:

  • Color of eyes, straight/curly hair, pigmentation of skin, certain diseases like Huntington’s

  • Strongly influenced genetic inheritances: positively correlated between genetically related individuals

  • Height, weight, hair loss in men, life expectancy, vulnerability to specific illnesses like breast cancer in women

​

Theories:

  1. Bowlby 1969 Theory of Attachment: bond between mother and child innate process that ensures survival

  2. Chomsky 1965 Syntactic Structures Theory: proposed language is gained through use of an innate language acquisition device (all children born with instinctive mental capacity that allows them to learn and produce language)

  3. Freud 1939 Psychodynamic Theory: part of it suggested theory of aggression as being innate drive (Thanatos) - unconscious sexual and aggressive drives channeled through defence mechanisms

 

Francis Galton (1874 published in English Men of Science, Their Nature and Nurture) - relative of Charles Darwin, was convinced that intellectual ability was largely inherited

  • GUY WHO ACTUALLY POPULARIZED THE TERM NATURE VS NURTURE

  • Eugenics movement influenced by work of nativists = this is a slippery slope  

    • 1920s American Eugenics society campaigned for the sterilization of men and women in psychiatric hospitals

    • Immigration policies largely skewed to only permit highly educated

    • “Natural superiority” of one race over another in Nazi Germany

  • Could be the case merely getting access to information and material resources could have led to differences in IQ

 

NOT all or nothing - some may say how much is nurture how much is nature?

PROBLEM with the how much question

  • Assumes variables can be expressed in numbers or in a quantifiable way

  • People are complex and things can rarely be quantified in such a way

  • MORE important to research and question how nature and nurture interact (psychopathology = genetic predisposition and environmental triggers, epigenetics = where environment can influence expression of genes)

    • Ex: if child born from people who are tall grows up in deprived environment where they do not get enough nutrients, the child might have not become as tall as they could have if the environment was different

 

Looking Forward:

  • The Human Genome Project of the National Human Genome Research Institute (1990, published in 2003) - Decade of the Brain

  • International and collaborative effort to map and understand human’s genes (info about structure, organization, and function)

  • Jump started concepts like 23andMe, Illumina, Oxford Nanopore Technologies to commercialized gene sequencing (cost per genome in 2001 was approximately 100 million USD, now 100-200 USD)

  • Gene editing?

EPISODE 5: WHAT IS SPACE-TIME?

CAILEY'S NOTES:

Universe has 4 dimensions

  • 3 in space (x,y,z on the cartesian plane)

    • Objects and events have a relative position and direction

  • 1 in time (time moves in one direction)

    • Indefinite and irreversible

 

Ex. Planning a hangout

  • A time by itself means nothing without a place and vice versa

*There are several other competing theories, but Einstein’s is by far the most well known and accepted

 

Einstein:

  1. Theory of Special Relativity - 1905 (explains how an object moving in a straight line at a constant speed is connected to space and time)

E=mc^2

m = mass of a body

c^2 = speed of light in a vacuum squared

E = kinetic energy

 

Energy and mass are the same thing (mass into energy is how much energy is in mass)

  • Related to a constant which is the speed of light (299,792,458 meters/sec)

  • Masses increase with speed

  • Objects moving closer and closer to the speed of light have infinite masses that prevent them from travelling faster than the speed of light

 

The speed of light?

  • Only reason that light travels so fast is the fact that photon (quantum particles that make up light) have a zero mass

 

Black holes?

  • Gravity is so strong that light can’t travel fast enough to get out (we can’t see them)

  • Made up of a lot of mass

  • With the E=mc^2, mass is energy, so a ton of mass is a ton of energy

  • Energy is so great in the quantum fields that universe folds into itself

 

  1. Theory of General Relativity - 1916 (an extension of special relativity that adds acceleration)

NERD WORDS:

Non-inertial frames of reference - areas that are accelerating with respect to each other

Matter - any substance that has mass and volume

Principle of covariance - no matter where you are, the same laws ability

 

Interaction of matter and space-time into what we perceive as gravity

  • Gravity = bending of space time

  • Objects moving through space follow the straightest path (cause it takes the least amount of energy) along these space-time curves

    • Planets move like this because the Sun bends space time around it

    • Pilot drawing out a start and end point on a flat piece of paper and then put it on a globe, the line you drew isn’t the shortest distance… the imaginary line through the Earth would be the shortest, but that isn’t feasible so we don’t actually travel in a straight line

 

Consequences of Special Relativity: Lorentz Transformations = how relative motion works

 

Time dilation: when time moves slower when moving than at rest (time is relative)

  • Difference in time between two events by observers moving relative to each other

  • Only significant for speeds 1/10 the speed of light

  • Speed of light moves the same speed no matter who observes it?

    • Time slows down to compensate for the increase of speed, so that light remains constant

    • Time is relative to velocity and is malleable (things fall faster towards Earth the closer Earth’s gravitational centre) - this means time moves lower the faster you go (time moves slower higher in Earth’s atmosphere compared to Earth’s surface)

    • Planets have different masses, different gravitational fields, and different rates of acceleration for bodies, different passage of time

 

Length contraction: decreased length by observer that travel at a non-zero velocity relative to that observer

  • Looking out the window of a moving vehicle example

  • Only noticeable at a faction of the speed of light (fast)

 

Relativity of simultaneity: people going different speeds, simultaneous events for one person won’t be the same from another (impossible to say whether two events actually occur at the same time if they are in separate spaces)

  • Events that were either all at the same place or all at the same time get out of alignment with each other when you change to a moving perspective

  • Train ex.

 

NERD WORD:

Kinematics - branch of classical mechanics that describes the motion of points, bodies, and systems without talking about forces that cause motion (geometry of motion)

 

Twin paradox

  • One person on Earth and the other on a spaceship moving at a constant speed away and then back again experience time differently

  • Person on Earth thinks that since the spaceship person moved faster, time went by slower so they should be younger

  • Person on spaceship thinks that the Earth is doing the moving, so they think that the person on the earth should be younger

 

Hafele (physicist)-Keating (astronomer) experiment 1971

  • Four cesium atomic clocks on commercial airliners

  • Flew twice around the world, once east and then west

  • Compared with atomic clocks on the ground

  • All clocks disagreed with one another

  • Time dilation example and was consistent with the predictions of special and general relativity

AYMAN'S NOTES:

Relationship between causation and time,

  • Events that are earlier cause events that are later, not the other way around

  • Only moves forward

 

Time travel

  • Is it metaphysically possible?

  • Go back to kill someone in 1303, but they’re your relative. Meaning when you kill them, that puts into motion events that mean you would never be born meaning you couldn’t travel back in time to kill him, because you never existed, meaning you never kill the guy, and you end up being born later on

    • Or would it create 2 timelines? 1 where he dies with no kids, and therefore you as well, and 1 where he dies, but he had kids already, so you live

    • Or would it be like in Harry Potter? You can travel in in time, but you can’t change anything because of fate and destiny

    • Or, since you shouldn’t exist in 1301, you can’t kill your ancestor because only something that already exists can have an effect on something else time goes forward, so if you go back, it just creates a time loop, still going forward in the end

  • Conclusion: it’s not metaphysically possible

  • Then what is the concept of death? If you go back in time, a time where all the people at that time no longer exist during your time, are alive again, what is death? How is it that they exist at that time even when, historically, they’ve already died?

  • What if you miss? We’re left with no explanation, other than that you are alive

    • Determinism/fatalism

    • D: the ending depends on the events that come before it

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