Degrees in aspects of popular culture are sometimes criticised by those outside higher education but given their vast popularity and legacy, it would surely be churlish to criticise a master’s degree on The Beatles. That is what is on offer at the University of Liverpool’s music department, where students will be able to spend a year exploring the impact the Fab Four have had on heritage, culture and tourism, particularly in their home city, Mail Online reported. Students will have a chance to visit and explore local sites synonymous with the band as part of the MA, entitled “The Beatles: Music Industry and Heritage”. The course will also look at whether the kind of legacy achieved by the band could be replicated elsewhere in the world in different contexts and industries.
The question of whether or not we are living in a computer-simulated model is not new, but after the past year it may seem more plausible than before. Luckily, academics in Canada have done the research and concluded that, no, it is unlikely we are living in a Matrix-style simulation. Researchers from the University of Montreal and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research integrated a wider range of factors than in previous literature into a mathematical model and found “that we are more likely to be real”, according to a paper published this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society A. Their reasons include the high cost of convincingly simulating a civilisation’s environment and the unavoidably imperfect efficiency of any computation. However, the authors do show that, if we are indeed in a simulation, there are no secrets we could keep from our simulators, which potentially provides an explanation as to why we have yet to detect extraterrestrial civilisations, they say.
He may be most famous for baggy trousers and his 1990 hit U Can’t Touch This, but that hasn’t stopped MC Hammer showing his academic credentials on Twitter. Responding to a tweet that had suggested philosophy was inferior to science because it was a “flirtation with ideas” rather than a “commitment to truth”, the singer insisted both disciplines should be seen as complementing each other rather than in opposition, The Independent reported. “Elevate your Thinking and Consciousness. When you measure include the measurer,” he added, before revealing that philosopher Michel Foucault was on his reading list. This could pit him against UK government minister Liz Truss, who seemed to blame Foucault’s ideas for some of society’s ills in a speech last year. We look forward to that debate very soon.
Rows over academic freedom and free speech in universities continue to rumble on around the globe, and in France plans for an investigation into “Islamo-leftism” looks set to ramp them up. Hundreds of academics have called for the resignation of higher education minister Frédérique Vidal since she announced a probe into the alleged phenomenon, accusing her of attacking academic freedom and pandering to the far right. But while Ms Vidal admitted the term “has no scientific definition”, she insisted that it “corresponds to a feeling of our fellow citizens”. More than 600 scholars, including the economist Thomas Piketty, wrote in Le Monde that the minister had “defamed” academics in a move reminiscent of the actions of authoritarian governments in Hungary, Brazil or Poland.
An academic project that involved sending emails to politicians purporting to be from constituents has been criticised by MPs and the speaker of the House of Commons. According to The Guardian, researchers sent emails to every MP’s inbox from invented characters including a cleaner and lawyer asking what politicians were going to do to improve financial support during the Covid crisis. MPs from both the main parties condemned the messages and said it placed unnecessary pressure on hard-working staff in MPs’ offices. Rosie Campbell, professor of politics at King’s College London, said that a similar project was taking place in Germany and the Netherlands and thought the emails would not be too “burdensome”. But she said that the project “sincerely apologised” if others did not take the same view, adding that it had been “absolutely not our intention to waste MPs’ valuable time”. The speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has meanwhile written to King’s and its ethics committee to complain, the BBC reported.