Hawking, Steven W, and G F R Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge UP 1975 Preface: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity . . . leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to our universe. Our discussion is principally aimed at developing these two results.' 
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Neuenschwander, Dwight E, Emmy Noether's Wonderful Theorem, Johns Hopkins University Press 2011 Jacket: A beautiful piece of mathematics, Noether's therem touches on every aspect of physics. Emmy Noether proved her theorem in 1915 and published it in 1918. This profound concept demonstrates the connection between conservation laws and symmetries. For instance, the theorem shows that a system invariant under translations of time, space or rotation will obey the laws of conservation of energy, linear momentum or angular momentum respectively. This exciting result offers a rich unifying principle for all of physics.' 
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Rieke, Fred, and David Warland, Rob de Ruyter van Steveninck and William Bialek, Spikes: Exploring the Neural Code, MIT Press 1997 ' This book is about the way in which the nervous system represents or encodes sensory signals. Our approach to the problem of neural coding is motivated by a desire for quantitative analysis. In partcular we would like to describe the performance of neurons on an absolute scale, msking precise the intuitive notion that these cells are telling the brain something about the sensory world' 
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Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random House 2007 Amazon editorial review From Booklist 'In business and government, major money is spent on prediction. Uselessly, according to Taleb, who administers a severe thrashing to MBA- and Nobel Prize-credentialed experts who make their living from economic forecasting. A financial trader and current rebel with a cause, Taleb is mathematically oriented and alludes to statistical concepts that underlie models of prediction, while his expressive energy is expended on roller-coaster passages, bordering on gleeful diatribes, on why experts are wrong. They neglect Taleb's metaphor of "the black swan," whose discovery invalidated the theory that all swans are white. Taleb rides this manifestation of the unpredicted event into a range of phenomena, such as why a book becomes a best-seller or how an entrepreneur becomes a billionaire, taking pit stops with philosophers who have addressed the meaning of the unexpected and confounding. Taleb projects a strong presence here that will tempt outside-the-box thinkers into giving him a look.' Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved 
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Adam Serwer, Trump Gave Police Permission to Be Brutal, ' When the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin dug his knee into the back of George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes while Floyd pleaded for help, he was merely following the president’s advice. “Please don’t be too nice,” Donald Trump told an audience of police officers on Long Island in 2017, in a speech largely focused on the MS-13 gang. The audience laughed. “When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’” ' back

Alex Lo, America has never been a champion of democracy, ' The history of America’s foreign aggression has been rather the opposite, that is, it either directly overthrew or helped in the overthrow of democratically elected leaders or otherwise popular governments in favour of military juntas or dictatorships. The list is long, so I will only cite a few lesser known – to Hong Kong people anyway – but horrifying episodes. ● “In 1965 and 1966, the American government assisted in the murder of approximately 1 million Indonesian civilians,” wrote Vincent Bevins, author of the newly published The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anti-communist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. “The US-backed military [led by Suharto] used a failed uprising as a pretext to crush the Indonesian left.” ' back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7, Is God altogether simple?, 'I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His "suppositum"; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple. . . . ' back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 37, 1, Is "Love" the proper name of the Holy Spirit?, ' It follows that so far as love means only the relation of the lover to the object loved, "love" and "to love" are said of the essence, as "understanding" and "to understand"; but, on the other hand, so far as these words are used to express the relation to its principle, of what proceeds by way of love, and "vice versa," so that by "love" is understood the "love proceeding," and by "to love" is understood "the spiration of the love proceeding," in that sense "love" is the name of the person and "to love" is a notional term, as "to speak" and "to beget." ' back

Becky Alexis-Martin, The devastating atomic history of Christmas Island, ' Between May 1957 and September 1958, the British government tested nine thermonuclear weapons on Kiritimati for Operation Grapple. Then, in 1962, the UK cooperated with the US on Operation Dominic, undertaking a further 31 detonations on Kiritimati. About 20,000 British servicemen, 524 New Zealand soldiers and 300 Fijian soldiers were deployed to Christmas Island from 1956 to 1962. These men were unwittingly placed in harsh conditions with limited resources, while undertaking the work that would cement Britain’s place in history as a thermonuclear power. back

Boson - Wikipedia, Boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, bosons are particles with an integer spin, as opposed to fermions which have half-integer spin. From a behaviour point of view, fermions are particles that obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics while bosons are particles that obey the Bose-Einstein statistics. They may be either elementary, like the photon, or composite, as mesons. All force carrier particles are bosons. They are named after Satyendra Nath Bose. In contrast to fermions, several bosons can occupy the same quantum state. Thus, bosons with the same energy can occupy the same place in space.' back

Chris Richards, Bob Dylan holds a mirror up to America and sees himself, ' So if you think Dylan’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways” sounds timely in this tumultuous summer, please go outside and see whether you can find anyone listening to it while they yank down a statue. At best, these bluesy lullabies might feel timeless — meaning that Dylan is still doing his work in the realm of the American imagination, still singing oblique lyrics about real-world injustices that never got solved, still holding up his mirror to our busted republic, showing us how cruel and absurd we’ve always been.' back

Fermion - Wikipedia, Fermion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, fermions are particles with a half-integer spin, such as protons and electrons. They obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics and are named after Enrico Fermi. In the Standard Model there are two types of elementary fermions: quarks and leptons. . . . In contrast to bosons, only one fermion can occupy a quantum state at a given time (they obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle). Thus, if more than one fermion occupies the same place in space, the properties of each fermion (e.g. its spin) must be different from the rest. Therefore fermions are usually related with matter while bosons are related with radiation, though the separation between the two is not clear in quantum physics. back

Frank Pasquale, Socialism or Feudalism: Review Thomas Piketty: 'Capitalism and Ideology', 'When the rate of return on investment consistently outpaces economic growth, the rich get richer far faster than the rest. In 2018, Jeff Bezos accumulated roughly $150,000 per minute, as his net worth grew by $78.5 billion that year. . . . Piketty’s latest book, Capitalism and Ideology, is a prolix yet engaging effort both to contextualize and to defamiliarize agonizing figures like these. The context is an exhaustive survey of the history of inequality and its justifications. Analysis of slavery, feudalism, casteism, colonialism, and far more is balanced with a synthesis that compares these diverse methods of assuring that some human beings permanently enjoy more privileges and power than others. ' back

Gareth Evans, Pressing the pause button on Sinophobia, ' Anti-China sentiment is careering out of control in Australia, and it’s time to press the pause button. Fast. China is an authoritarian state, and an increasingly assertive one, and there are many grounds for concern about its recent behaviour, both externally and internally. But there are ways of expressing that concern that are not counterproductive to our national interests, or to those whom we want to help. Too many on both sides of national politics, in the national security community, and in the media seem to have forgotten or never learned them.' back

Gavin Mudd, Expensive, dirty and dangerous: why we mus fight mines' push to fast-track uranium mines, ' Ultimately, uranium remains an element with immense potential for misuse - as seen with North Korea and other rogue nuclear states. Federal oversight of uranium mining must remain. After all, the price of peace is eternal vigilance.' back

George Monbiot, The Pope can see what many atheist greens will not, 'Such claims are factual, but they are also dishonest: we pretend that this is what animates us, when in most cases it does not. The reality is that we care because we love. Nature appealed to our hearts, when we were children, long before it appealed to our heads, let alone our pockets. Yet we seem to believe we can persuade people to change their lives through the cold, mechanical power of reason, supported by statistics.' back

Gillian Triggs, Australia and the Magna Carta: how the Coalition and Labout agree on laws that violate our freedoms, 'Particularly since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 on the United States, Australian parliaments have passed scores of laws that infringe our common law freedoms of speech, association and movement, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition on arbitrary detention. These new laws undermine a healthy, robust democracy, especially when they grant discretionary powers to executive governments in the absence of meaningful scrutiny by our courts.' back

James Gorman, DNA of 'Irish Pharaoh' Sheds Light on Ancient Tomb Builders, ' A team of Irish geneticists and archaeologists reported Wednesday that a man whose cremated remains were interred at the very heart of Newgrange was the product of a first-degree incestuous union, either between parent and child, or brother and sister. The finding, combined with other genetic and archaeological evidence, suggests that the people who built these mounds lived in a hierarchical society with a ruling elite that considered themselves so close to divine that, like the Egyptian pharaohs, they could break the ultimate taboos.' back

Jane Lyndon, How one photo brings Australian history if colonial violence into focus, ' Over recent years, photos like this have been used widely by Aboriginal people and historians as irrefutable evidence of the brutality of colonialism. In the context of the “truth-telling” demanded by the Uluru Statement from the Heart, they have become key witnesses to history, and an indispensable part of the Australian Black Lives Matter movement. The story of this one image traces a remarkable shift in popular thinking about Australian history — from denial and shame, to an increasing insistence on acknowledgement and truth-telling.' back

John Stanton, Magna Carta at 800: we are still enjoying the freedoms won, 'The catalyst for Magna Carta was the tyrannical rule of King John and, in particular, his imposition of arbitrary taxes upon the barons. The sealing of Magna Carta marked the first time that the notion that an unelected sovereign should be restrained under law was officially recognised. From then on, the idea that citizens should not be subjected to the arbitrary rule of a tyrannical monarch but instead be ruled and governed upon foundations of accepted legal process and law had a legal foundation. This was, in essence, an evolution of the Aristotlean idea of the supremacy of law in preference to the supremacy of man. Such a concept is today known as the rule of law and Magna Carta is widely accepted as being the birth of such rule in the UK constitution.' back

Josh Gernstein & Rebecca Rainey, With LGBT ruling, Supreme court hands liberals a surprise victory, ' Explaining the ruling, Gorsuch said Congress may not have intended to ban discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgender individuals, but that the logic of their protection by the statute was inescapable. "Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees," Gorsuch wrote. "But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands," he continued. "When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit." ' back

Kadir Nelson: New Yorker cover (22 June 2020), Say Their Names, ' A closeup examination of the artist’s latest cover, in which the murder of George Floyd embodies the history of violence inflicted upon black people in America. ' back

Mark Diesendorf, Coal closure gives South Australia the chance to go 100% renewable, 'The South Australian electricity system could be operated entirely on scaled-up, commercially available, renewable energy sources. This is the conclusion of my forthcoming report (to be published next week) to the Conservation Council of South Australia.' back

Marta Vidal, The Portugese rediscover their country's Muslim past, ' It should not be too surprising that Arabic influences can still be found in the Portuguese language. For centuries, the region was ruled by Arabic-speaking Muslims known as Moors. In the 8th century, Muslims sailed from North Africa and took control of what is now Portugal and Spain. Known in Arabic as al-Andalus, the region joined the expanding Umayyad Empire and prospered under Muslim rule. But that legacy has been largely forgotten in the predominantly Catholic country.' back

Metanoia - Wikipedia, Metanoia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Metanoia (from the Greek μετάνοια, metanoia, changing one's mind) in the context of theological discussion, where it is used often, is usually interpreted to mean repentance. However, some people[citation needed] argue that the word should be interpreted more literally to denote changing one's mind, in the sense of embracing thoughts beyond its present limitations or thought patterns (an interpretation which is compatible with the denotative meaning of repentance but replaces its negative connotation with a positive one, focusing on the superior state being approached rather than the inferior prior state being departed from).' back

Middle term - Wikipedia, Middle term - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In logic, a middle term is a term that appears (as a subject or predicate of a categorical proposition) in both premises but not in the conclusion of a categorical syllogism. The middle term (in bold below) must be distributed in at least one premise but not in the conclusion. The major term and the minor terms, also called the end terms, do appear in the conclusion.' back

Naureen S Malik & Hailey Waller, Satellite Launch Aims for Increased Scrutiny of Methane Emitters, ' Iris -- a microwave-sized gadget set to be launched into orbit from French Guiana this weekend, weather permitting -- will be able to track methane released from oil and gas wells, coal mines, power plants, farms and factories around the globe, Stephane Germain, chief executive officer of Montreal-based developer GHGSat Inc., said in an interview.' back

Olamide Samuel, The unintended consequences of Trump's nuclear gambit, ' Washington's obvious gambit, [to involve China in New START talks between the US and Ruussia] however, has had an unintended consequence. The suggestion of trilateral negotiations on arms reduction raised much-needed questions about the current state of global arms control. One such question concerns the issue of new advanced conventional weapons, such as hypersonic missiles, anti-satellite weapons, cyber capabilities and artificial intelligence such as machine learning to name a few. These new-found offensive capabilities, which can cause mass destruction without the use of nuclear weapons, challenge the traditional approaches to arms control and disarmament, which separate nuclear weapons from conventional weapons and capabilities.' back

Paul Daley, Colonial Australia's foundation stained with the profits if British slavery, ' A New South Wales governor and a Melbourne mayor, a prominent churchman who established this country’s oldest university, establishment bankers and the owners of vast rural estates, including the legendary Barcaldine in Queensland – birthplace of the Australian Labor Party – came to Australia after they or their families acquired slavery wealth. The revelations, in a new book from political scientist and historian Clinton Fernandes of UNSW, Canberra, are drawn from the Legacies of British Slave-ownership database at the University College London (UCL) – a remarkable resource that aims to publicly record those Britons who profited from slavery.' back

Sarah Posner, Op-Ed: White evangelicals think Trump is divinely ordained. He'll do anything to keep it that way, ' Trump’s photo op last week in front of the historic St. John’s Church, which looked farcical, sacrilegious and even fascistic to many Americans, was spun — and received — as tough and heroic to his defenders. In the pro-Trump media bubble, America is under siege by leftist terrorists, and Trump is the valorous protector of a “Christian nation.” That the president and his attorney general, William Barr, had protesters tear gassed so Trump could walk to the church was a vibrant symbol of his willingness to fight for the soul of the nation. back

SCRAP Weapons, Strategic Concept for the Removal of Arms and Proliferation, ' SCRAP proposes timetables and a draft treaty for consideration at the United Nations General Assembly, which takes place in September every year. Support our efforts to have SCRAP introduced at the UN General Assembly by sending a letter of support to your government. If you are a student organisation or individual interested in working for SCRAP, please send us an email at scrap.weapons@soas.ac.uk.' back

Thalia Anthony & Harry Blagg, Enforcing assimilation, dismantling Aboriginal families: a history of police violence in Australia, ' The experience of one Aboriginal child in Western Australia in 1935 was told to the inquiry: I was at the post office with my Mum and Auntie [and cousin]. They put us in the police ute and said they were taking us to Broome. They put the mums in there as well. But when we’d gone [about ten miles] they stopped, and threw the mothers out of the car. We jumped on our mothers’ backs, crying, trying not to be left behind. But the policemen pulled us off and threw us back in the car. They pushed the mothers away and drove off, while our mothers were chasing the car, running and crying after us. We were screaming in the back of that car. When we got to Broome they put me and my cousin in the Broome lock-up. We were only ten years old. Police still play a role in removing First Nations children from their families today.' back

Time-division multiplexing - Wikipedia, Time-division multiplexing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Time-division multiplexing (TDM) is a method of transmitting and receiving independent signals over a common signal path by means of synchronized switches at each end of the transmission line so that each signal appears on the line only a fraction of time in an alternating pattern.' back

William J. Broad, The Sea's Weirdest Creatures, Now in 'Staggering' Detail , ' On June 3 in Nature magazine, a team of seven scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago described an imaging device for studying these translucent creatures. It emits a thin fan of laser light that scans through the animals, gathers backscattered rays from the inner flows and tissues, and feeds those gleanings into a computer that visually reconstructs the living organisms in subtle detail. The device, called the DeepPIV imaging system, reveals the insides much as CT scans do for human bodies.' back