Over the Moon: Festival marks 50 years since that one small step
Edinburgh Science Festival launches its 2019 programme themed around Frontiers, taking inspiration from the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing. The festival takes over 31 venues around Edinburgh from 6-21 April. Emma Bodiam, from the festival’s team, wears a replica of Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit.
Donald Trump’s sanity is to be explored on stage in Edinburgh – with the help of his notorious Twitter feed.
Experts will explore what can be read into the American president’s use of the network at an Edinburgh Science Festival event in April.
Psychiatrist Dr Raj Persaud and psychologist Rebecca Mcguire-snieckus will lead a test of “how the public make decisions about a politician’s mental health”.
Organisers said the talk, On the Frontiers of Sanity, will be a “fun audience experiment” inspired by the questions raised by experts about Mr Trump’s state of mind.
The festival will also look at theworldwideriseandimpact of “Twitterbots” – fake Twitter accounts controlled by software systems – and examine how tweets are being used to map public health and monitor responses to natural disasters.
The two-week event will reveal some of the regular phrases used by online predators as well as tackle the future risks artificial intelligence could pose.
Meanwhile, the festival has announced it will honour one of the world’s leading climate change experts as well as bring together scientists and industry figures to look at the latest plans to battle soaring temperatures around the world.
Christiana Figueres, the United Nations’ former chief climate diplomat who was one of the chief architects of the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, will follow Sir David Attenborough and Professor Peter Higgs in receiving the prestigious Edinburgh Medal.
The honour is awarded annually to someone in the fields of science and technology who has made “a significant contribution to the understanding and well-being of humanity”.
The festival, which will run from 6-21 April, has also lined up an outdoor photography exhibition at the Scottish Parliament looking at the impact of human activity on the planet, as well as events exploring what is needed to halt the prospect of catastrophic climate change, whether overpopulation is the biggest threat to the world’s future and the “silent problem” of air pollution.
The festival will mark the 50th anniversary of the Moon landings by showcasing some of the firms helping to make Scotland the “space technology capital” of Europe.
It will also honour the “Edinburgh Seven” – Britain’s first undergraduate female students, in 1869 – by celebrating the modern-day women breaking through barriers in the medical profession.
omeday the Fake News Media will turn honest & report that Donald J. Trump was actually a GREAT Candidate!” “The Dems are trying to win an election in 2020 that they know they cannot legitimately win!” “I probably work more hours than almost any past President.”
Just three recent snippets from the Twitter feed of US president @realdonaldtrump that may or may not be used to assess how the public make decisions “about a politician’s mental health” at Edinburgh Science Festival.
All speak to the mindset of someone whose self-regard is not confined by the bounds of reality. He cannot possibly know his workrate surpasses all others, but he makes the claim anyway with the smallest caveat of “probably”. The Democrats do not “know they cannot legitimately win” the 2020 election. It is possible for an “honest” assessment of pretty much anyone at all to conclude they are not “great”.
However, such comments are part of his “showman’s braggadocio” – his business model. The alarming thing about all this is Trump is “probably” quite sane, as are the people who fall for this nonsense.