Alex Lo, China’s stockpile of nuclear arms pales in comparison to America’s, ' When Washington accuses someone of doing something nasty, you can be sure it is already doing it, except on an unimaginably worse scale. Last week, the Pentagon said the United States would need to respond to a dramatic increase in China’s nuclear weapons capabilities by modernising its own arsenal and expanding its nuclear umbrella over allies. Fortunately, a new report put out by the Geneva-based International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, offers some much needed perspectives. According to “Wasted: 2022 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending”, the nine nuclear-armed countries last year spent a whopping US$82.9 billion collectively on nuclear weapons. At US$43.7 billion, the US outspent all the others combined: China (US$11.7 billion), Russia (US$9.6 billion), the UK (US$6.8 billion), France (US$5.6 billion), India (US$2.7 billion), Israel (US$1.2 billion), Pakistan (US$1 billion) and North Korea (US$589 million). What’s more, the US is expected to spend more on nukes in the coming years. In 2021, the US Congressional Budget Office estimated that Washington would commit US$634 billion over the next decade to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, a 28 per cent jump over a previous 10-year projection. These include developing a new W76-2 low-yield nuclear warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles and further still, a new nuclear submarine-launched cruise missile.' back

Alex Lo, Late genius of doom shows how frontier violence has always defined America, ' I am no literary critic, but I trust Bloom’s authoritative judgment. I truly admire the totally unflinching depiction of violence at the fluid Mexican-American borders of the early 1850s. Mexicans, white and black Americans, and native Americans – they all shared one common trait of humanity, and that was their savagery and blood lust towards each other. If you want to understand American history, the book is as good a place to start as any; nay, probably better than most non-fiction books on the subject. How ironic, I have long thought, that you need to find reality about America in a novel whose violence is on a mythical, even cosmic scale, while most non-fiction books are actually fiction! ' back

Alexander Stern, On the Clock, A review of Cyril Schäublin’s latest film, Unrest, which captures the efforts of nineteenth-century anarchist watchmakers and dramatizes resistance to tech-reliant, capitalist control. back

Anson Vameron, Like most rewards schemes, the afterlife is bound to disappoint, ' “During the attack we moved along the German front line where I saw one of my best friends sitting at a German artillery position. He called me over and when I got to him he asked me to sit down. I protested, telling him we had better things to do. He said it wouldn’t take long and asked me if I could hear music. I could hear absolutely nothing. He described to me what he could see: The whole sky was opening up. Orchestras were playing, choirs were singing, and all the ancestors were there telling him to come and join them. He held his arms out. ‘There’s my father,’ he says, ‘They’re waiting for me.’ He fell forward and I saw he had no back. A piece of shrapnel had gone through his chest".' back

Gareth Evans, Gareth Evans: the case for recognising Palestine, ' Which leaves us, last but by no means least, with the domestic politics. None of us in any party – not least my own – is oblivious to the formidable lobbying power of the Israeli support organisations in this country, nor of their ability to characterise even the most cautiously expressed critiques of Israel as savouring of unconscionable anti-semitism. But times are changing. Israel’s brand – long gradually diminishing, as its practices in the West Bank have been ever more credibly labelled as apartheid by internationally credible observers, from Jimmy Carter to Human Rights Watch – has been badly tarnished in recent times, here as elsewhere, by the extreme, overtly racist, right-wing extremism of the Netanyahu government. . . .. Within the Jewish community here, as in the US, new and more balanced voices are emerging – like the New Israel Fund. And the voices in Australian politics that have been most visibly arguing for recognition, such as former New South Wales premier and foreign minister Bob Carr, are hardly fringe dwellers outside the respectable mainstream. . . . .. Bob Hawke, an early very passionate friend of Israel, made abundantly clear as prime minister that it should accept the reality of Palestine’s aspirations to statehood. And, in his later years, he made equally clear his view that Australia should not hold back on recognition. . . . .. Maybe recognising Palestine statehood will put at risk some of our strongest traditional sources of party fundraising. But sometimes those considerations just have to take second place to decency. It is not a bad principle in politics – when in doubt – to do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do. This article was delivered as an address to Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, Parliament House, Canberra, June 13 2023. back

Jackson Lears, A Connoisseur of Uncertainty: John Maynard Keynes and the limits of numbers, ' The assumption that investors behaved like calculating “economic men” required overlooking the true nature of financial markets: what really made them hum was investors’ willingness to make bets on a largely unknown future. As Keynes wrote, the investor “will be affected, as is obvious, not by the net income which he will actually receive from his investments in the long run, but by his expectations. These will often depend upon fashion, upon advertisement, or upon purely irrational waves of optimism or depression".' back

Katie McCormick, A New Experiment Casts Doubt on the Leading Theory of the Nucleus, ' To test the strong nuclear force, physicists turned to the helium-4 nucleus, which has two protons and two neutrons. When helium nuclei are excited, they grow like an inflating balloon until one of the protons pops off. Surprisingly, in a recent experiment, helium nuclei didn’t swell according to plan: They ballooned more than expected before they burst. A measurement describing that expansion, called the form factor, is twice as large as theoretical predictions. “The theory should work,” said Sonia Bacca, a theoretical physicist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and an author of the paper describing the discrepancy, which was published in Physical Review Letters. “We’re puzzled".' back

Kirchoff's law of thermal radiation - Wikipedia, Kirchoff's law of thermal radiation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Kirchhoff's law states that: For a body of any arbitrary material, emitting and absorbing thermal electromagnetic radiation at every wavelength in thermodynamic equilibrium, the ratio of its emissive power to its dimensionless coefficient of absorption is equal to a universal function only of radiative wavelength and temperature, the perfect black-body emissive power. back

Nanda Jarosz, Awe can alter our sense of self and open us to new possibilities – could it help save the planet?, back

Nathan Brownlowe, Has a mathematician solved the ‘invariant subspace problem’? And what does that even mean?, ' So that’s an invariant subspace. The invariant subspace problem is a little more complicated: it is about spaces with an infinite number of dimensions, and it asks whether every linear operator (the equivalent of a matrix) in those spaces must have an invariant subspace. More precisely (hold onto your hat): the invariant subspace problem asks whether every bounded linear operator T on a complex Banach space X admits a non-trivial invariant subspace M of X, in the sense that there is a subspace M ≠ {0}, X of X such that T(M) is contained back in M. Stated in this way, the invariant subspace problem was posed during the middle of last century, and eluded all attempts at a solution.' back

Neil Genzlinger, Owen Gingerich, Astronomer Who Saw God in the Cosmos, Dies at 93, ' Owen Gingerich, a noted astronomer who was particularly interested in the history of his field — so much so that he spent years trying to track down every first- and second-edition copy of Nicolaus Copernicus’s revolutionary treatise — and who was not shy about giving God credit for a role in creating the cosmos he loved to study, died on May 28 in Belmont, Mass. He was 93. . . . .. He was not a biblical literalist; he had no use for those who ignored science and proclaimed the Bible’s creation story historical fact. Yet, as he put it in “God’s Universe,” he was “personally persuaded that a superintelligent Creator exists beyond and within the cosmos.” . . . .. Professor Gingerich, who was senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, wrote countless articles over his career in addition to his books. In one for Science and Technology News in 2005, he talked about the divide between theories of atheistic evolution and theistic evolution. “Frankly it lies beyond science to prove the matter one way or the other,” he wrote. “Science will not collapse if some practitioners are convinced that occasionally there has been creative input in the long chain of being".' back

Sarah E. Freidline et al, Early presence of Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia by 86–68 kyr at Tam Pà Ling, Northern Laos, ' The timing of the first arrival of Homo sapiens in East Asia from Africa and the degree to which they interbred with or replaced local archaic populations is controversial. Previous discoveries from Tam Pà Ling cave (Laos) identified H. sapiens in Southeast Asia by at least 46 kyr. We report on a recently discovered frontal bone (TPL 6) and tibial fragment (TPL 7) found in the deepest layers of TPL. Bayesian modeling of luminescence dating of sediments and U-series and combined U-series-ESR dating of mammalian teeth reveals a depositional sequence spanning ~86 kyr. TPL 6 confirms the presence of H. sapiens by 70 ± 3 kyr, and TPL 7 extends this range to 77 ± 9 kyr, supporting an early dispersal of H. sapiens into Southeast Asia. Geometric morphometric analyses of TPL 6 suggest descent from a gracile immigrant population rather than evolution from or admixture with local archaic populations.' back

Secularism in France - Wikipedia, Secularism in France - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Laïcité is the constitutional principle of secularism in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution is commonly interpreted as discouraging religious involvement in government affairs, especially religious influence in the determination of state policies. It also forbids government involvement in religious affairs, and especially prohibits government influence in the determination of religion. Secularism in France includes a right to the free exercise of religion. . . . .. Laïcité relies on the division between private life, where adherents believe religion belongs, and the public sphere, in which each individual should appear as a simple citizen who is equal to all other citizens, not putting the emphasis on any ethnic, religious, or other particularities. According to this concept, the government must refrain from taking positions on religious doctrine and consider religious subjects only for their practical consequences on inhabitants' lives.' back

Sophie Loy-Wilson, A gothic, brilliant success: The Poison of Polygamy brings the first Chinese-Australian novel to the stage after 113 years, ' Prior to digitisation, much of this newsprint sat mildewed in Melbourne and Sydney’s Chinatowns. It took Mei-fen’s tenacity in 2006 to discover The Poison of Polygamy in the pages of the Chinese Times, which was published in Melbourne for a national readership. The novel was translated by Ely Finch and published by Sydney University Press in 2019. Playwright Anchuli Felicia King read the novel and rightly saw it as an “Australian classic” and a “lost piece of our cultural heritage”. She wanted to stage a production “which spoke directly to our ancestors”. . . . .. The result is a gothic, brilliant success, darkly funny and subversively political. . . . .. This is a triumphant reclamation of an Australia denied to us in monolingual readings of our history.' back

Srinivasa Ramanujan - Wikipedia, Srinivasa Ramanujan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Srinivasa Ramanujan (22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician and autodidact. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.' back