Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing, HarperOne 2004 Book Description 'Written by an anonymous English monk during the late fourteenth century, The Cloud of Unknowing is a sublime expression of what separates God from humanity and is widely regarded as a hallmark of Western literature and spirituality. A work of simplicity, courage, and lucidity, it is a contemplative classic on the deep mysteries of faith. "Lift up your heart to God with a humble impulse of love and have himself as your aim, not any of his goods ... Set yourself to rest in this darkness, always crying out after him whom you love. For if you are to experience him or to see him at all, insofar as it is possible here, it must always be in this cloud and in this darkness." –– The Cloud of Unknowing' 
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Berger, Peter, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, Anchor/Doubleday 1990 'This book deals with the state of theological and religious thought in the modern world, where the availability of several options for individuals to think and believe has caused a challenge to theological thought and religious institutions. He makes the case that a complete understanding of this is important for both religious and non-religious individuals, and also for theologians and scholars of religion.' Roland 
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Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man, Collins 1965 Sir Julian Huxley, Introduction: 'We, mankind, contain the possibilities of the earth's immense future, and can realise more and more of them on condition that we increase our knowledge and our love. That, it seems to me, is the distillation of the Phenomenon of Man.'  
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Waugh, Evelyn, Letters of Evelyn Waugh, Phoenix 2009 Amazon customer review: By D J Kuznetzov 'Waugh's Letters are the pinnacle of 20th century reflections on war, friendship, change and disappointment. They will, almost certainly, never be matched. Their style is impeccable. How fortunate to have been the recipient of those wonderful paragraphs.' 
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Weinberg, Steven, The Quantum Theory of Fields Volume I: Foundations, Cambridge University Press 1995 Jacket: 'After a brief historical outline, the book begins anew with the principles about which we are most certain, relativity and quantum mechanics, and then the properties of particles that follow from these principles. Quantum field theory then emerges from this as a natural consequence. The classic calculations of quantum electrodynamics are presented in a thoroughly modern way, showing the use of path integrals and dimensional regularization. The account of renormalization theory reflects the changes in our view of quantum field theory since the advent of effective field theories. The book's scope extends beyond quantum elelctrodynamics to elementary partricle physics and nuclear physics. It contains much original material, and is peppered with examples and insights drawn from the author's experience as a leader of elementary particle research. Problems are included at the end of each chapter. ' 
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Alison Kyra Carter, Angkor Wat archaeologicsl dig yields new clues to its civilization's decline, ' Cambodia’s famous temple of Angkor Wat is one of the world’s largest religious monuments, visited by over 2 million tourists each year. It was built in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II, one of the most famous kings of the Angkorian civilization that lasted from approximately the ninth to 15th centuries. The structure is so strongly associated with Cambodian identity even today that it appears on the nation’s flag.' back

Alliance for Journalists' Freedom, AJF White Paper plots law reform pathway for Press Freedom, ' The Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom has released a White Paper that provides seven recommendations for legislative change to strengthen press freedom in Australia. The recommendations include a framework underpinned by a Media Freedom Act that balances press freedom and national security interests, protecting journalists engaged in their work from unwarranted prosecution or civil liability. Each of the White Paper’s recommendations are designed to support journalistic investigation, research and reporting by ensuring transparency and accountability – a cornerstone of democracy.' back

Anne Applebaum, Want to decretly, legally send money to Jred Kushner? Here's how to do it., ' It’s perfectly possible that Kushner, who has not commented on the Guardian report, himself has no idea who put this large sum of money in his company’s opaque offshore vehicle, which is what Goldman Sachs is claiming. But it’s also possible that, privately, he has a pretty good idea.' back

Anne Pender, Friday Essay: Barry Humphries' humour is now history - that's the fate of topical, satirical comedy, ' Barry Humphries pioneered topical, referential satirical comedy in Australia in the 1950s. Carol Raye, Max Gillies, John Clarke, The Chaser and others developed it and brought innovation to satire in their characters and programs. The flipside of topical satire and its comic immediacy is that the work dates immediately.' back

Ayelett Shani, Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done With Facebook, ' What is psychological warfare?Actually, there isn’t really such a thing. “Psychological warfare” is a deceptive term that’s intended to blur the true meaning: propaganda. Here in Israel in particular, the word “propaganda” is crushing and loaded. Since the end of World War II, we have seen all kinds of variations on this term, with “psychological warfare” emerging as the prevailing one in the West. In any event, it’s a newspeak term. Psychological warfare, or propaganda, essentially conflicts with liberal democratic values. Totalitarian states and terrorist organizations don’t spend time conceptualizing: They just do it.' back

Chris Patten, Britain has a duty to help Hong Kong out of this dark moment, ' This is the background to the current row over a law that would allow extradition to the mainland of those Beijing does not like. Why is this such a fundamental issue? The answer is simple. It demolishes the firewall between the rule of law in Hong Kong and what passes for the law in China, where there are no independent courts and where the law is basically whatever the Communist party wishes it to be.' back

Hamming distance - Wikipedia, Hamming distance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In information theory, the Hamming distance between two strings of equal length is the number of positions at which the corresponding symbols are different. Put another way, it measures the minimum number of substitutions required to change one string into the other, or the number of errors that transformed one string into the other.' back

Hedwig Eisenbarth, Martina Testori and Rebecca Hye, Why too many fearless people on a team make collaboration less likely, ' The overall group behaviour seems to be more than the sum of its parts. Group composition had an effect on cooperation over and above the effect of the individuals’ own level of psychopathic traits. Group members with low levels of psychopathic traits behaved less cooperatively and more “psychopathically” when in groups with more people who had high levels of psychopathic traits.' back

Henry Saker-Clark, PwC fined £4.5m for 'serious lack of competence' in botched audit of IT firm, ;Britain's accounting watchdog has slapped PwC with a £4.5m fine for failing to challenge management at IT firm Redcentric, where a £15m black hole was later uncovered in its books. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) handed the Big Four auditing firm the fine after it showed a “serious lack of competence” in its work. It said that partners at the firm Jaskamal Sarai and Arif Ahmad committed a number of policy breaches relating to their “failure to exercise professional scepticism”. back

International Centre for Prison Studies, World Prison Populations, ' Half of the world's prison population of about nine million is held in the US, China or Russia. Prison rates in the US are the world's highest, at 724 people per 100,000. In Russia the rate is 581. At 145 per 100,000, the imprisonment rate of England and Wales is at about the midpoint worldwide.' back

Laura Reiley, The new plan to remove s trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: Bury it., ' It sounds like an idea plucked from science fiction, but the reality is that trees and plants already do it, breathing carbon dioxide and then depositing it via roots and decay into the soil. That’s why consumers and companies often “offset” their carbon emissions by planting carbon-sucking trees elsewhere in the world.. . . By promoting techniques that increase the potential of agricultural land to suck in carbon, the backers of Indigo AG believe they can set the foundation for a major effort to stem climate change. On Wednesday, the company announced a new initiative with the ambitious goal of removing 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by paying farmers to modify their practices.' back

Michael J. I. Brown, Why old-school climate denial has had its day, ' The Coalition has been re-elected to government, and after six years in office it has not created any effective policies for reducing greenhouse emissions. Does that mean the Australian climate change debate is stuck in 2013? Not exactly. . . . The debate has moved away from the basic science, and on to the economic and political ramifications. And if advocates for reducing greenhouse emissions don’t fully recognise this, they risk shooting themselves in the foot.' back

Peter Greste, To protect press freedom, we need more outrag = and an overhaul of our laws, ' A few days ago, Waleed Aly asked a not-so-rhetorical question in The Sydney Morning Herald. He wondered how many Australians were worried about the fact that the Australian Federal Police had spent a good portion of this week raiding the offices and homes of journalists who’ve published stories clearly in the public interest. . . . My organisation, the Alliance for Journalists Freedom, has published a white paper that offers a better way of balancing those two crucial elements of our democracy - national security and press freedom.' back

Peter Ludlow, The Real War on Reality, 'If there is one thing we can take away from the news of recent weeks it is this: the modern American surveillance state is not really the stuff of paranoid fantasies; it has arrived. The revelations about the National Security Agency’s PRISM data collection program have raised awareness — and understandably, concern and fears — among American and those abroad, about the reach and power of secret intelligence gatherers operating behind the facades of government and business.' back

Ray Markey, Setka furore opens division within the labour movement - and there is no easy solution, ' Albanese said Setka “undermines the credibility of the trade union movement through the position he holds and the public views he’s expressed” in relation to Batty. They also provide ammunition for government efforts to increase union regulation. A number of government members have indicated the time is ripe to reintroduce their Ensuring Integrity Bill to ensure unions and registered organisations are run by “fit and proper” persons and can be degistered or placed under administration for industrial lawlessness.' back

Smantha Schmidt, American's view flipped on gay rights. How did minds change to quickly?, ' As recently as 2004, polls showed that the majority of Americans — 60 percent — opposed same-sex marriage, while only 31 percent were in favor, according to the Pew Research Center. Today, those numbers are reversed : 61 percent support same-sex marriage, while 31 percent oppose it. “You can’t find another issue where attitudes have shifted so rapidly,” said Don Haider-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas who has studied public opinion of LGBT rights over the years.' back

Sowing Circle, Blue Letter Bible, 'Back in 1996, in the early days of the World Wide Web and when the Blue Letter Bible first came out, hyperlinks were pretty much always blue in color. Our vision has always been to provide free Bible study software in which the Bible is the center of the experience with study resources that link off of every word in the Bible. With hundreds of thousands of links that were all blue, we decided to call it the Blue Letter Bible as a play on the more commonly referenced red-letter editions of Scripture.' back

Tasha Wibawa, Could China's rise to power really by 'peaceful' and different to anything we have ever seen before, ' China has developed at an unprecedented rate since opening up 40 years ago, lifting some 850 million people out of poverty and has becoming one of the largest contributors to global economic growth. Beijing has long maintained its rise will be "peaceful", yet its exceptional growth as an economic, military and political power is commonly referred to as a "threat", with experts calling its foreign policy "aggressive" and "menacing".' back

Tim Teeman, Adam Rippon reveals his Stonewall 50 message: Continue to speak of the insanity coming from the White House, especially on our trans brothers and sisters. We need to fight back, ' In this special series, LGBT celebrities and public figures talk to Tim Teeman about the Stonewall Riots and their legacy—see more here. Adam Rippon is an Olympic and many other medal-winning figure skater (who retired from competitive figure skating in November 2018), LGBT activist, and TV personality.' back

Yoav Rinon, Neither Isrsael's nor Germany's Slide Into Fascism Was Accidental, ' The essence of Jewish-Israeli identity is prone to degenerate into racism mainly because of its deeply rooted basis in racial convictions. To put it unequivocally, Jewish-Israeli identity is essentially and inevitably a racial one. As a response, first to anti-Semitism and then to the Holocaust, it was intentionally formulated on a racial basis in order to include every Jew, on the sole basis of his or her being racially Jewish, within the national Israeli identity. Moreover, this racial Jewish-Israeli identity was consciously devised as the mirror image of the anti-Semitic, and later the Nazi racist, conception of the Jews, which intended to exclude every Jew from any national identity. The Nazis’ enforcement of this exclusion as the first step toward total extermination of the Jews made the need for them to create an opposite and opposing Jewish identity a matter of life and death. This Jewish identity was at once, by necessity, both the complete opposite of and the same as the identity of the Jew created by the Nazis: The complete opposite – for it opened the same door that the Nazis shut, and the same – for it was based on precisely the same foundation, race.' back