Premier of Quebec Jean Charest is refusing to stop exporting chrysotile asbestos, despite a growing international outcry accusing Canada of hypocrisy in promoting the sale of a known carcinogen. On a trade mission in February to India — the largest buyer of asbestos from Quebec — protests greeted Charest at two of his stops, including a summit on sustainable development in Delhi. Members of the...

»When does human life begin?« is not one question, but three. The first question is, »When does human biological life begin?,« and is a scientific question. A brief review of embryology is provided to answer this question. The second question is, »When do obligations to protect human life begin?,« and is a question of general theological and philosophical ethics. A brief review of major world r...

Gender analysis of video games has increased its public visibility through the Gamergate controversy. We examine several casual art games in order to explore the diversity of both conventional and counter-stereotypical gender representations. We find significant reliance on stereotypical presentations, especially in ‘sketchy wife’ characters. Such tropes may offer rhetorical resources to commun...

Over the past few years, online aggression and abusive behaviors have occurred in many different forms and on a variety of platforms. In extreme cases, these incidents have evolved into hate, discrimination, and bullying, and even materialized into real-world threats and attacks against individuals or groups. In this paper, we study the Gamergate controversy. Started in August 2014 in the onlin...

In this paper, we use mixed methods to study a controversial Internet site: The Kotaku in Action (KiA) subreddit. Members of KiA are part of GamerGate, a distributed social movement. We present an emic account of what takes place on KiA: who are they, what are their goals and beliefs, and what rules do they follow. Members of GamerGate in general and KiA in particular have often been accused of...

The paper “Critical remarks on the Italian research assessment exercise VQR 2011–2014” (Franceschini & Maisano, 2017) nalyzed some vulnerabilities of the recently concluded Italian assessment exercise. Some apical (former and current) embers of ANVUR promptly commented on our criticisms through a letter to the editor (Benedetto, Checchi, Graziosi, & algarini, 2017). We believe that this letter,...