Portside

It wasn’t until almost a century after Boole’s pioneering work that the world caught up. Both Victor Shestakov at Moscow State University in 1935 and Claude Shannon at MIT in 1937 proposed using Boolean logic to design electrical switches, the latter’s work paving the way for a major shift in electrical engineering in the USA. By late 1948, Shannon had introduced what we now know as information theory, and digital computers soon followed.

Encouraged by the most extreme elements in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, ultra-rightist organizations are demanding Israel extend its control over the Temple Mount or Noble Sanctuary, the compound that is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The continuing Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and rightist efforts to change the status of the mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, has spurred violent confrontations between Israelis and Palestinians.

The Obama administration’s new rhetoric on testing shows the tide may be turning against corporate education reformers.

On November 12, thousands of college students in nearly 100 cities are walking out of class to demand tuition-free public college, a cancellation of all student debt, and a $15/hour minimum wage for campus workers across the US. The protest has been dubbed the “Million Student March.”

"A lot of what we do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA." Alan Weinstein, one of the founders of the National Endowment for Democracy

Bidhya Devi Bhandari is deputy leader of the ruling Communist party and campaigned to secure women's rights under the new constitution.

This may be the most relevant legacy of Franz Kafka’s tale. It is a reminder that in a world dominated by capital, terror is so commonplace as to be almost hidden in plain sight. And in so being, it is capable of turning the human condition into something unspeakable.

Since Obama first announced the bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria in 2014, critics have warned that such tactics would likely lead to "mission creep" in the two countries. As the number of troops in Iraq has steadily grown over the last year and a half, this will be the first acknowledged presence of U.S. soldiers in Syria—a country against which the U.S. has not officially declared war.

Vampire bats, unlike werewolves and ghosts, are real critters, and at this time of the year they get lots of mentions. But their image, research shows, doesn't really do them justice. Vampire bats do drink blood, but they are also the most social of bats, cuddling and grooming each other at far higher rates than other bats. And this may be the surprising reason that they're so social.

The victory for Sanders' legions in all probability won’t be putting Bernie in the White House, but creating a surging and enduring left. That, in turn, requires them to give as much thought to forming or joining autonomous post-campaign organizations, and envisioning post-campaign mobilizations, as they now do to advancing Sanders’s candidacy. Indeed, they need to start forming such organizations today, while they are together campaigning for Sanders.