Barrow, John D., and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford University Press 1996 'This wide-ranging and detailed book explores the many ramifications of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, covering the whole spectrum of human inquiry from Aristotle to Z bosons. Bringing a unique combination of skills and knowledge to the subject, John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler - two of the world's leading cosmologists - cover the definition and nature of life, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the interpretation of the quantum theory in relation to the existence of observers.' 
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Chaitin, Gregory J, Information, Randomness & Incompleteness: Papers on Algorithmic Information Theory, World Scientific 1987 Jacket: 'Algorithmic information theory is a branch of computational complexity theory concerned with the size of computer programs rather than with their running time. . . . The theory combines features of probability theory, information theory, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, and recursive function or computability theory. ... [A] major application of algorithmic information theory has been the dramatic new light it throws on Goedel's famous incompleteness theorem and on the limitations of the axiomatic method. . . .' 
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Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene , Oxford UP 1976 Amazon: Editorial review: 'Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since.' Rob Lightner 
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Dawkins, Richard, Climbing Mount Improbable, W. W. Norton & Company 1997 Amazon editorial review: 'How do species evolve? Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most eminent zoologists, likens the process to scaling a huge, Himalaya-size peak, the Mount Improbable of his title. An alpinist does not leap from sea level to the summit; neither does a species utterly change forms overnight, but instead follows a course of "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants" -- a course that Charles Darwin, Dawkins's great hero, called natural selection. Illustrating his arguments with case studies from the natural world, such as the evolution of the eye and the lung, and the coevolution of certain kinds of figs and wasps, Dawkins provides a vigorous, entertaining defense of key Darwinian ideas.' 
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Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, Houghton Mifflin 2006 Amazon Editorial Review From Publishers Weekly 'The antireligion wars started by Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris will heat up even more with this salvo from celebrated Oxford biologist Dawkins. For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. But Dawkins, who gave us the selfish gene, anticipates this criticism. He says it's the scientist and humanist in him that makes him hostile to religions—fundamentalist Christianity and Islam come in for the most opprobrium—that close people's minds to scientific truth, oppress women and abuse children psychologically with the notion of eternal damnation. While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: the biblical Yahweh is "psychotic," Aquinas's proofs of God's existence are "fatuous" and religion generally is "nonsense." The most effective chapters are those in which Dawkins calms down, for instance, drawing on evolution to disprove the ideas behind intelligent design. In other chapters, he attempts to construct a scientific scaffolding for atheism, such as using evolution again to rebut the notion that without God there can be no morality. He insists that religion is a divisive and oppressive force, but he is less convincing in arguing that the world would be better and more peaceful without it.' Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 
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Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Reader's Digest 1992 Afterword: Orson Welles once called Sherlock Holmes "the man who never lived — and will never die"; and with each new generation of Holmes fans, it becomes more evident that this supersleuth is among the most durable literary characters. Sherlock Holmes lives in our imaginations in the pantheon of immortal literary heroes, right alongside King Arthur, Robin Hood and the Count of Monte Christo.' 
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Einstein, Albert, and Translated by Alan Harris , Einstein's Essays in Science, Philosophical Library / Dover 1934, 2009 'His name is synonymous with "genius," but these essays by the renowned physicist and scholar are accessible to any reader. In addition to outlining the core of relativity theory in everyday language, Albert Einstein presents fascinating discussions of other scientific fields to which he made significant contributions. The Nobel Laureate also profiles some of history's most influential physicists, upon whose studies his own work was based. Assembled during Einstein's lifetime from his speeches and essays, this book marks the first presentation to the wider world of the scientist's accomplishments in the field of abstract physics. Along with relativity theory, these articles examine the methods of theoretical physics, principles of research, and the concept of scientific truth. Einstein's speeches to audiences at Columbia University and the Prussian Academy of Science appear here, along with his insightful observations on such giants of science as Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, and others.' 
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Feynman (1988), Richard, QED: The Strange Story of Light and Matter, Princeton UP 1988 Jacket: 'Quantum electrodynamics - or QED for short - is the 'strange theory' that explains how light and electrons interact. Thanks to Richard Feynmann and his colleagues, it is also one of the rare parts of physics that is known for sure, a theory that has stood the test of time. . . . In this beautifully lucid set of lectures he provides a definitive introduction to QED.' 
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Gatlin, Lila L, Information Theory and the Living System, Columbia University Press 1972 Chapter 1: 'Life may be defined operationally as an information processing system -- a structural hierarchy of functioning units -- that has acquired through evolution the ability to store and process the information necessary for its own accurate reproduction. The key word in the definition is information. This definition, like all definitions of life, is relative to the environment. My reference system is the natural environment we find on this planet. However, I do not think that life has ever been defined even operationally in terms of information. This entire book constitutes a first step towar dsuch a definition.' 
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Gould, Stephen Jay, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, Ballantine 1999 'Just as science has its limitations, so has religion.If life's evolutionary history cannot resolve the riddle of life's meaning, so the religious belief concerning the creation of the world in six days, taken literally, cannot dictate or interfered with the factual conclusions in the empirical realm of cosmology. Science and religion, then, embody two logically distinct magisteria, each having its own style of enquiry, its own set of standards and norms, and its own test of legitimacy. Neither of them encompasses all enquiry. Into this framework comes Gould's core declaration: science and religion occupy two equally important but uttelry different Non-Overlapping Magisteria, or NOMA.' S Nomanul Haq, Nature, 400: 830-31, 26 August 1999back

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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Kolmogorov, Andrey Nikolaevich, and Nathan Morrison (Translator) (With an added bibliography by A T Bharucha-Reid), Foundations of the Theory of Probability, Chelsea 1956 Preface: 'The purpose of this monograph is to give an axiomatic foundation for the theory of probability. . . . This task would have been a rather hopeless one before the introduction of Lebesgue's theories of measure and integration. However, after Lebesgue's publication of his investigations, the analogies between measure of a set and mathematical expectation of a random variable became apparent. These analogies allowed of further extensions; thus, for example, various properties of independent random variables were seen to be in complete analogy with the corresponding properties of orthogonal functions . . .' 
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding' 
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Pais, Abraham, 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford UP 1982 Jacket: In this . . . major work Abraham Pais, himself an eminent physicist who worked alongside Einstein in the post-war years, traces the development of Einstein's entire ouvre. . . . Running through the book is a completely non-scientific biography . . . including many letters which appear in English for the first time, as well as other information not published before.' 
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Popper, Karl Raimund, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972 Preface: 'The way in which knowledge progresses, and expecially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests.' [p viii]  
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Veltman, Martinus, Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics, World Scientific 2003 'Introduction: The twentieth century has seen an enormous progress in physics. The fundamental physics of the first half of the century was dominated by the theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of gravitation and the theory of quantum mechanics. The second half of the century saw the rise of elementary particle physics. . . . Through this development there has been a subtle change in point of view. In Einstein's theory space and time play an overwhelming dominant role. . . . The view that we would like to defend can perhaps best be explaned by an analogy. To us, space-time and the laws of quantum mechanics are like the decor, the setting of a play. The elementary articles are the actors, and physics is what they do. . . . Thus in this book the elementary particles are the central objects.' 
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Weyl, Hermann, and translated by H P Robertson, The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics, Dover 1950 Jacket: 'This book is devoted to the consistent and systematic application of group theory to quantum mechanics. Beginning with a detailed introduction to the classical theory of groups, Dr Weyl continues with an account of the fundamental results of quantum physics. There follows a rigorous investigation of the relations holding between the mathematical and physical theories.' 
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Wilczek, Frank, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, Basic Books 2008 ' In this excursion to the outer limits of particle physics, Wilczek explores what quarks and gluons, which compose protons and neutrons, reveal about the manifestation of mass and gravity. A corecipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, Wilczek knows what he’s writing about; the question is, will general science readers? Happily, they know what the strong interaction is (the forces that bind the nucleus), and in Wilczek, they have a jovial guide who adheres to trade publishing’s belief that a successful physics title will not include too many equations. Despite this injunction (against which he lightly protests), Wilczek delivers an approachable verbal picture of what quarks and gluons are doing inside a proton that gives rise to mass and, hence, gravity. Casting the light-speed lives of quarks against “the Grid,” Wilczek’s term for the vacuum that theoretically seethes with quantum activity, Wilczek exudes a contagious excitement for discovery. A near-obligatory acquisition for circulating physics collections.' --Gilbert Taylor  
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Active intellect - Wikipedia, Active intellect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The active intellect (also translated as agent intellect, active intelligence, active reason, or productive intellect) is a concept in classical and medieval philosophy. The term refers to the formal (morphe) aspect of the intellect (nous), in accordance with the theory of hylomorphism.' back

Adam Davidson, The V.C.s of B.C., ' In general, we know few details about economic life before roughly 1000 A.D. But during one 30-year period — between 1890 and 1860 B.C. — for one community in the town of Kanesh, we know a great deal. Through a series of incredibly unlikely events, archaeologists have uncovered the comprehensive written archive of a few hundred traders who left their hometown Assur, in what is now Iraq, to set up importing businesses in Kanesh, which sat roughly at the center of present-day Turkey and functioned as the hub of a massive global trading system that stretched from Central Asia to Europe. Kanesh’s traders sent letters back and forth with their business partners, carefully written on clay tablets and stored at home in special vaults. Tens of thousands of these records remain. One economist recently told me that he would love to have as much candid information about businesses today as we have about the dealings — and in particular, about the trading practices — of this 4,000-year-old community.' back

Al Jazeera & Agencies, 'A momentous milestone': Africa now free from wild polio virus, ' Health authorities have declared Africa free of the wild polio virus after decades of efforts, a major step in the campaign to eradicate the crippling viral disease worldwide. Tuesday's historic announcement by the African Regional Certification Commission for Polio Eradication during a World Health Organization (WHO) event came four years after the continent's last case was reported in northern Nigeria.' back

Andrew Dickson, Jon Ronson: How the response to Operation Fortitude shows the power of social media, 'The author of a book about public shaming on social media says today's response to Border Force's plans to check people's visas on the streets of Melbourne shows how Twitter and other platforms can also be used to positive ends. Jon Ronson's book So You've Been Publicly Shamed is about how social media can become an instrument of control and how public shaming on forums like Twitter can have a devastating effect on people's lives.' back

Anselm of Canterbury - Wikipedia, Anselm of Canterbury - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 21 April 1109) was a Benedictine monk, an Italian medieval philosopher, theologian, and church official who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. Called the founder of scholasticism, he is famous in the West as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God. In 1720, Anselm was recognized as a Doctor of the Church by Pope Clement XI. back

Anthropic principle - Wikipedia, Anthropic principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The anthropic principle (from Greek anthropos, meaning "human") is the philosophical consideration that observations of the universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it. Some proponents of the anthropic principle reason that it explains why the universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. As a result, they believe it is unremarkable that the universe's fundamental constants happen to fall within the narrow range thought to be compatible with life.' back

Australian Government, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 'NOW THEREFORE We do, by these Our Letters Patent issued in Our name by Our Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia on the advice of the Federal Executive Council and under the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, the Royal Commissions Act 1902 and every other enabling power, appoint you to be a Commission of inquiry, and require and authorise you, to inquire into institutional responses to allegations and incidents of child sexual abuse and related matters, and in particular, without limiting the scope of your inquiry, the following matters: . . . ' back

Baruch Spinoza, de Renati Des Cartes principiorum philosophiae pars I. et II. , ' Defintiones: I Cogitatiinis nomine complector omne id quod in nobis est, et cuius immediate conscii sumus. Ita omnes voluntatis, intellectus, imaginationis, et sensuum operationes sunt cognitationes. Sed addidi immediate ad excludenda ea, qua ex iis consequuntur, ut motus voluntarius cognitationem quidem pro principio habet, sed ipse tamen non est cognitatio. II. . . . ' back

Bong et al, A string no-go theorem on the Wigner's friend paradox, ' Does quantum theory apply at all scales, including that of observers? New light on this fundamental question has recently been shed through a resurgence of interest in the long-standing Wigner’s friend paradox. This is a thought experiment addressing the quantum measurement problem—the difficulty of reconciling the (unitary, deterministic) evolution of isolated systems and the (non-unitary, probabilistic) state update after a measurement. Here, by building on a scenario with two separated but entangled friends introduced by Brukner, we prove that if quantum evolution is controllable on the scale of an observer, then one of ‘No-Superdeterminism’, ‘Locality’ or ‘Absoluteness of Observed Events’—that every observed event exists absolutely, not relatively—must be false. We show that although the violation of Bell-type inequalities in such scenarios is not in general sufficient to demonstrate the contradiction between those three assumptions, new inequalities can be derived, in a theory-independent manner, that are violated by quantum correlations. This is demonstrated in a proof-of-principle experiment where a photon’s path is deemed an observer. We discuss how this new theorem places strictly stronger constraints on physical reality than Bell’s theorem. back

Codec - Wikipedia, Codec - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder-decoder or, less commonly, compressor-decompressor.' back

Continuous function - Wikipedia, Continuous function - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'IIn mathematics, a continuous function is a function for which, intuitively, "small" changes in the input result in "small" changes in the output. Otherwise, a function is said to be a "discontinuous function". A continuous function with a continuous inverse function is called "bicontinuous".' back

Cosmological constant problem - Wikipedia, Cosmological constant problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In cosmology, the cosmological constant problem or vacuum catastrophe is the disagreement between measured values of the vacuum energy density (the small value of the cosmological constant) and the zero-point energy suggested by quantum field theory. Depending on the assumptions[which?], the discrepancy ranges from 40 to more than 100 orders of magnitude, a state of affairs described by Hobson et al. (2006) as "the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics." ' back

Divine grace - Wikipedia, Divine grace - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Broadly, divine grace refers to God's gifts to all humankind, including life, creation, and salvation. More narrowly but more commonly, grace describes the means by which humans are granted salvation (and to some, saved from original sin). Grace is of central importance in the theology of Christianity, as well as one of the most contentious issues in Christian sectarianism.' back

Elvis: That's The Way It Is - Wikipedia, Elvis: That's The Way It Is - Wikipedia, the free encyclopeida, ' Elvis: That's the Way It Is is a 1970 American documentary film directed by Denis Sanders. The film documents American singer Elvis Presley's Summer Festival in Las Vegas during August 1970. It was his first non-dramatic film since the beginning of his film career in 1956, and the film gives a clear view of Presley's return to live performances after years of making films. The film was released simultaneously with Presley's similarly titled twelfth studio album, That's the Way It Is. ' back

Emma Goldberg, Pediatrics Group Offers 'Long Overdue" Apology for Racist Past, ' Dr. Roland B. Scott was the first African-American to pass the pediatric board exam, in 1934. He was a faculty member at Howard University, and went on to establish its center for the study of sickle cell disease; he gained national acclaim for his research on the blood disorder. But when he applied for membership with the American Academy of Pediatrics — its one criteria for admission was board certification — he was rejected multiple times beginning in 1939. The minutes from the organization’s 1944 executive board meeting leave little room for mystery regarding the group’s decision.' back

Eric Calvacanti, A new quantum pardox throws the foundations iobserved reality into question, ' Take a look at these three statements: 1. When someone observes an event happening, it really happened. 2. It is possible to make free choices, or at least, statistically random choices. 3. A choice made in one place can’t instantly affect a distant event. (Physicists call this “locality”.) These are all intuitive ideas, and widely believed even by physicists. But our research, published in Nature Physics, shows they cannot all be true' back

Fall of Man - Wikipedia, Fall of Man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In Christian doctrine, the fall of man, or simply the fall, was the transition of the first humans from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience to God. Though not named in the Bible, the concept for the Fall comes from Genesis chapter 3. Adam and Eve live at first with God in a paradise, but the serpent tempts them into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God forbade. After doing so they become ashamed of their nakedness and God consequently expelled them from paradise. Many Christian denominations believe that the fall corrupted the entire natural world, including human nature, causing people to be born into original sin, a state from which they cannot attain eternal life without the gracious intervention of God.' back

Fast Fourier transform - Wikipedia, Fast Fourier transform - Wikipedia, 'A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an efficient algorithm to compute the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and its inverse. There are many distinct FFT algorithms involving a wide range of mathematics, from simple complex-number arithmetic to group theory and number theory; this article gives an overview of the available techniques and some of their general properties, while the specific algorithms are described in subsidiary articles linked below.' back

Feynman diagram - Wikipedia, Feynman diagram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In theoretical physics, Feynman diagrams are pictorial representations of the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles. The scheme is named after its inventor, American physicist Richard Feynman, and was first introduced in 1948. The interaction of sub-atomic particles can be complex and difficult to understand intuitively. Feynman diagrams give a simple visualization of what would otherwise be an arcane and abstract formula. As David Kaiser writes, "since the middle of the 20th century, theoretical physicists have increasingly turned to this tool to help them undertake critical calculations", and so "Feynman diagrams have revolutionized nearly every aspect of theoretical physics".' back

Fiction - Wikipedia, Fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Fiction describes people, places, events, and/or complete narrative works derived from imagination, in addition to, or rather than, from history or fact.' back

Fine-structure constant - Wikipedia, Fine-structure constant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In physics, the fine-structure constant, also known as Sommerfeld's constant, commonly denoted by α (the Greek letter alpha), is a fundamental physical constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles. . . . While there are multiple physical interpretations for α it received its name from Arnold Sommerfeld introducing it (1916) in extending the Bohr model of the atom: α quantifies the gap in the fine structure of the spectral lines of the hydrogen atom, which had been precisely measured by Michelson and Morley' back

French Film Festival, We'll End Up Together, ' Handsomely mounted and music-fuelled, We’ll End Up Together - the second highest-grossing French film of 2019 - is a story of long-term bonds and the joy of friendship, but also of suppressed emotions, personal and professional resentments, and the many ways having children can both fracture and cement social circles. Get your own friends together, and be dazzled by this raucous slice of rollicking, all-star fun.' back

Gauge theory - Wikipedia, Gauge theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, a gauge theory is a type of field theory in which the Lagrangian is invariant under a continuous group of local transformations. . . . The term gauge refers to redundant degrees of freedom in the Lagrangian. The transformations between possible gauges, called gauge transformations, form a Lie group—referred to as the symmetry group or the gauge group of the theory. Associated with any Lie group is the Lie algebra of group generators. For each group generator there necessarily arises a corresponding field (usually a vector field) called the gauge field.' back

Harriet Alexander, 'What are you planning to say?' Pope quizzed whistleblower priest, book says, ' concealing child sexual abuse was mysteriously summoned to the Vatican before he was due to testify and allegedly quizzed by the Pope about what he was planning to say in court. . . . The explosive claim about the papal meeting, contained in The Altar Boys, indicates that the pressure brought to bear on priests who betray the brotherhood extends right up to the Vatican, and has prompted calls for a police investigation. back

Hungry Ghosts (TV series) - Wikipedia, Hungry Ghosts (TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Hungry Ghosts is a character-driven ghost story that explores the lives of three generations of Vietnamese Australian families all haunted by the traumatic events of the Vietnam War and the literal ghosts of their past. Set in contemporary Melbourne, Australia, the story begins when a power amulet is broken and Quang (Vico Thai), a vengeful spirit, is unleashed from his tomb and wreaks havoc across the Vietnamese diasporic communities bringing other spirits along with him.[3] The turn of events threatens to unleash these families' deepest fears and expose secrets long buried.' back

Jacob Lemieux et al, Phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV=2 in the Boston area highlights the role of recurrent importtiton and superspreading events, ' Abstract SARS-CoV-2 has caused a severe, ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 in Massachusetts with 111,070 confirmed cases and 8,433 deaths as of August 1, 2020. To investigate the introduction, spread, and epidemiology of COVID-19 in the Boston area, we sequenced and analyzed 772 complete SARS-CoV-2 genomes from the region, including nearly all confirmed cases within the first week of the epidemic and hundreds of cases from major outbreaks at a conference, a nursing facility, and among homeless shelter guests and staff. The data reveal over 80 introductions into the Boston area, predominantly from elsewhere in the United States and Europe. We studied two superspreading events covered by the data, events that led to very different outcomes because of the timing and populations involved. One produced rapid spread in a vulnerable population but little onward transmission, while the other was a major contributor to sustained community transmission, including outbreaks in homeless populations, and was exported to several other domestic and international sites. The same two events differed significantly in the number of new mutations seen, raising the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 superspreading might encompass disparate transmission dynamics. Our results highlight the failure of measures to prevent importation into MA early in the outbreak, underscore the role of superspreading in amplifying an outbreak in a major urban area, and lay a foundation for contact tracing informed by genetic data. 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

Michael Jeffrey, Australia cannot remain secure in a food and water insecure world, 'History has shown on many occasions that when food supplies fail, governments fall and people fight. The opposite is also true: a well-fed world is a more peaceful world. Most of the instability today is in those regions where soils and water are scarce and food supplies unreliable: well-fed places such as North America, Europe and Australasia are far more peaceable. Hunger is one of the underlying triggers for division and conflict.' back

Michael Salter, Why does it take victims of child sexual abuse so long to speak up?, 'The paradox is that, in order to detect sexual abuse, we depend on abused children to speak out, but they are often in environments in which they can’t rely on support or understanding. In this impossible situation, non-disclosure is a way that victims of abuse protect themselves from further betrayal and harm. Extricating themselves from unsupportive environments and finding opportunities to speak about their abuse is a complex and fragile process that can take many years. It seems that the pertinent question in “historical” abuse allegations is not: Why didn’t victims say something at the time? Rather, it should be: Why do abuse victims have to wait so long to speak and be heard?' back

Michael Salter, Jimmy Savole, Gary Glitter and the paedophine rings, 'Some of Savile’s associates have linked his behaviour to the “hedonistic culture” of the 1960s and 1970s, where teenage girls supposedly “threw” themselves at famous men. These men, in turn, “never asked for anybody’s birth certificate”. This suggests that sexual abuse is a situation in which adult men are sexually targeted by minors rather than the other way around. These inversions of responsibility are common among sex offenders. However, they circulate in the wider community as well, and victims of sex offences are often held responsible for their own victimisation.' back

Nick O'Malley, Australia's Chief Scientist is wrong on gas, say leading experts, ' "We are making a definite and profound statement that the advice the Chief Scientist is giving is in opposition to the evidence the Australian scientific community has gathered about the climatic system and the way it is changing," Professor Will Steffen, the founding director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, said of the decision to write the letter.' back

Passive intellect - Wikipedia, Passive intellect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Aristotle gives his most substantial account of the passive intellect (nous pathetikos) in De Anima (On the Soul), Book III, chapter 4. In Aristotle's philosophy of mind, the passive intellect "is what it is by becoming all things."[1] By this Aristotle means that the passive intellect can potentially become anything by receiving that thing's intelligible form. The active intellect (nous poietikos) is then required to illuminate the passive intellect to make the potential knowledge into knowledge in act, in the same way that light makes potential colors into actual colors. The analysis of this distinction is very brief, which has led to dispute as to what it means.' back

Patrick Wintour, Outcry in Iran at nin-year sentence for man who beheaded daughter, ' The father – who in Iran is considered the “guardian” of his daughter – had filed a complaint, and the girl, once summoned by the police, had begged the judge not to send her home because she knew her father would try to kill her. According to an interview following the girl’s death, it emerged that the father had repeatedly asked his wife to make Romina kill herself for having dishonoured the family. She was murdered with a scythe on 21 May after the father said he felt ashamed that she had run away without his permission. . . . In some Iranian provinces, as many as 20% of murders are classified as “honour” killings.' back

Paul Krugman, A Moveable Glut, 'But these aren’t just a series of unrelated accidents. Instead, what we’re seeing is what happens when too much money is chasing too few investment opportunities. . . . What’s causing this global glut? Probably a mix of factors. Population growth is slowing worldwide, and for all the hype about the latest technology, it doesn’t seem to be creating either surging productivity or a lot of demand for business investment. The ideology of austerity, which has led to unprecedented weakness in government spending, has added to the problem. And low inflation around the world, which means low interest rates even when economies are booming, has reduced the room to cut rates when economies slump' back

Perturbation theory - Wikipedia, Perturbation theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Perturbation theory comprises mathematical methods that are used to find an approximate solution to a problem which cannot be solved exactly, by starting from the exact solution of a related problem. Perturbation theory is applicable if the problem at hand can be formulated by adding a "small" term to the mathematical description of the exactly solvable problem.' back

Proslogion - Wikipedia, Proslogion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Proslogion, (also spelled Proslogium; English translation of title - Discourse on the Existence of God), written in 1077-1078, was an attempt by the medieval cleric Anselm to outline the attributes of God and understand how God can have all of his qualities which often seem contradictory.' back

Rachel Browne, 'Some popes gave out the wrong message' retired bishop tells sex abuse inquiry, 'A retired Catholic bishop told a royal commission that the Vatican failed to show leadership on the issue of sexual abuse and Cardinal George Pell had "destroyed" a unified Australian response to victims. Geoffrey Robinson, former auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney, gave a scathing assessment of the Catholic Church's response to victims of sexual abuse committed by clergy, in his evidence at a royal commission. . . . "The messages the popes have been giving out have been very important and I think that some popes gave out the wrong message ... and some archbishops too," he said.' back

Rolf Landauer, Information is a Physical Entity, 'Abstract: This paper, associated with a broader conference talk on the fundamental physical limits of information handling, emphasizes the aspects still least appreciated. Information is not an abstract entity but exists only through a physical representation, thus tying it to all the restrictions and possibilities of our real physical universe. The mathematician's vision of an unlimited sequence of totally reliable operations is unlikely to be implementable in this real universe. Speculative remarks about the possible impact of that on the ultimate nature of the laws of physics are included.' back

Ruben Andersson, The European Union's migrant 'emergency' is entirely of its own making, 'The emergency is not inevitable: we could treat asylum and labour mobility as questions of justice or opportunity, as some European states did in the postwar era. The choice is political. We can keep militarising the borders or bank on mobility. We can opt for ferries, visas and aeroplane tickets instead of sinking rubber boats, squalid detention centres and makeshift camps. Yet we first need to recognise that powerful interests are stacked against such a move. Indeed, confronting these interests must be at the top of the agenda to have a chance of ending Europe’s self-perpetuating migration emergency.' back

Salvation History - Wikipedia, Salvation History - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Salvation History (German Heilsgeschichte) seeks to understand the personal redemptive activity of God within human history to effect his eternal saving intentions.
In the context of Christian theology, this approach understands events such as "the fall" at the beginning of history (Book of Genesis), the covenants established between God and Noah, Abraham, and Moses, the establishment of David's dynasty in the holy city of Jerusalem etc. as seminal moments in the history of humankind and its relationship to God; namely, as necessary events preparing for the salvation of all by Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.' back

Sarah Kaplan & Chris Mooney, Genetic data show how a single superspreading event sent coronavirus across Massachusetts — and the nation, ' But if the new research shows the powerful potential of genomic surveillance to unveil the path of the virus through communities, it’s also an exception in terms of the large volume of data it contains. In the United States, such sophisticated genetic tracking has been “patchy, typically passive, reactive, uncoordinated, and underfunded,” experts at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine wrote in a lengthy report last month. Advocates for the cutting-edge technique say more coordinated and comprehensive sequencing efforts could dramatically improve contact tracing and infection control.' back

Science - Wikipedia, Science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. In an older and closely related meaning, "science" also refers to a body of knowledge itself, of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied. A practitioner of science is known as a scientist..' back

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas: The medieval theological classic online : 'Because the doctor of Catholic truth ought not only to teach the proficient, but also to instruct beginners (according to the Apostle: As unto little ones in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not meat -- 1 Cor. 3:1-2), we purpose in this book to treat of whatever belongs to the Christian religion, in such a way as may tend to the instruction of beginners. We have considered that students in this doctrine have not seldom been hampered by what they have found written by other authors, partly on account of the multiplication of useless questions, articles, and arguments, partly also because those things that are needful for them to know are not taught according to the order of the subject matter, but according as the plan of the book might require, or the occasion of the argument offer, partly, too, because frequent repetition brought weariness and confusion to the minds of readers.' back

Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The unmoved mover (Ancient Greek: ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ, romanized: ho ou kinoúmenon kineî, lit. 'that which moves without being moved'] or prime mover (Latin: primum movens) is a concept advanced by Aristotle as a primary cause (or first uncaused cause) or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the unmoved mover moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. In Book 12 (Greek: Λ) of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: self-contemplation. He equates this concept also with the active intellect. This Aristotelian concept had its roots in cosmological speculations of the earliest Greek pre-Socratic philosophers and became highly influential and widely drawn upon in medieval philosophy and theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, elaborated on the unmoved mover in the Quinque viae. ' back

Virtual particle - Wikipedia, Virtual particle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, a virtual particle is a transient fluctuation that exhibits many of the characteristics of an ordinary particle, but that exists for a limited time. The concept of virtual particles arises in perturbation theory of quantum field theory where interactions between ordinary particles are described in terms of exchanges of virtual particles. Any process involving virtual particles admits a schematic representation known as a Feynman diagram, in which virtual particles are represented by internal lines.' back

Will Saetren, Global outcry against UScall for sanctions 'snapback' on Iran was a long [short?] time coming , ' Under Donald Trump, the US abandoned the deal and sent US foreign policy spiralling. Is it any wonder the US snapback proposal was roundly rejected – by 13 of the 15 Security Council members within 24 hours?' back

Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical, 'Submitted on 17 Mar 2007 (v1), last revised 18 Mar 2008 (this version, v3)) Measurements transfer information about a system to the apparatus, and then further on – to observers and (often inadvertently) to the environment. I show that even imperfect copying essential in such situations restricts possible unperturbed outcomes to an orthogonal subset of all possible states of the system, thus breaking the unitary symmetry of its Hilbert space implied by the quantum superposition principle. Preferred outcome states emerge as a result. They provide framework for the “wavepacket collapse”, designating terminal points of quantum jumps, and defining the measured observable by specifying its eigenstates.' back