Le Carre (1980), John, Smiley's People, Hodder and Stoughton 1980 Jacket: 'Le Carre's best novel . . . more tension and excitement than anything else he has written. A Russian woman in Paris, a murder on Hampstead Heath; an asylum in Switzerland; a refined brothel in Hamburg — the story moves effortlessly around the European chessboard. Smiley probes with his ancient white knights and pawns called back from inactive service, and Karla, deep in his Russian defence, jealously guards the mysterious black queen.' Melvyn Bragg, in the Evening Standard 
Amazon   back

Anna Irfan, Jenin attack created 4,000 new refugees, part of the endless cycle of Palestinian displacement since 1948, ' The Israeli army’s recent attack on Jenin refugee camp resulted in 13 deaths (12 Palestinians, including four children, and one Israeli soldier killed by suspected friendly fire). An additional 143 Palestinians were injured, with 20 in critical condition, and up to 4,000 displaced. While this mass displacement has received less media attention than other aspects of the Israeli operation, it is central to understanding the region’s politics. Forced migration has always been core to the dynamics of modern Palestine and Israel. Most Palestinians are refugees, and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is organised around control of movement. Email Twitter21 Facebook209 LinkedIn Print The Israeli army’s recent attack on Jenin refugee camp resulted in 13 deaths (12 Palestinians, including four children, and one Israeli soldier killed by suspected friendly fire). An additional 143 Palestinians were injured, with 20 in critical condition, and up to 4,000 displaced. While this mass displacement has received less media attention than other aspects of the Israeli operation, it is central to understanding the region’s politics. Forced migration has always been core to the dynamics of modern Palestine and Israel. Most Palestinians are refugees, and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is organised around control of movement. While often framed as a fight over religion and ideology, this is ultimately a struggle around demographics, displacement and mobility. . . . The attack on Jenin may have now ended, but there is no bigger resolution in sight – and no sign that the continual rounds of Palestinian displacement will end any time soon.. back

Assaf Shomer (2008), A pedagogical explanation for the non-renormalizability of gravity, ' We present a short and intuitive argument explaining why gravity is non-renormalizable. The argument is based on black-hole domination of the high energy spectrum of gravity and not on the standard perturbative irrelevance of the gravitational coupling. This is a pedagogical note, containing textbook material that is widely appreciated by experts and is by no means original. . . . The crux of the argument . . . is one line long and here it is: The very-high energy spectrum of any d-dimensional quantum field theory is that of a d-dimensional conformal fieldtheory. This is not true for gravity. back

Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematical set theory, Cantor's theorem is a fundamental result which states that, for any set A , the set of all subsets of A, the power set of A, has a strictly greater cardinality than A itself. For finite sets, Cantor's theorem can be seen to be true by simple enumeration of the number of subsets. Counting the empty set as a subset, a set with n elements has a total of n 2>sup> subsets, and the theorem holds because n2>sup> > nfor all non-negative integers. Much more significant is Cantor's discovery of an argument that is applicable to any set, and shows that the theorem holds for infinite sets also.' back

Francine MG McCarthy et l, , The varved succession of Crawford Lake, Milton, Ontario, Canada as a candidate Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the Anthropocene series, ' Abstract An annually laminated succession in Crawford Lake, Ontario, Canada is proposed for the Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) to define the Anthropocene as a series/epoch with a base dated at 1950 CE. Varve couplets of organic matter capped by calcite precipitated each summer in alkaline surface waters reflect environmental change at global to local scales. Spheroidal carbonaceous particles and nitrogen isotopes record an increase in fossil fuel combustion in the early 1950s, coinciding with early fallout from nuclear and thermonuclear testing – 239+240Pu and 14C:12C, the latter more than compensating for the effects of old carbon in this dolomitic basin. Rapid industrial expansion in the North American Great Lakes region led to enhanced leaching of terrigenous elements by acid precipitation during the Great Acceleration, and calcite precipitation was reduced, producing thin calcite laminae around the GSSP that is marked by a sharp decline in elm pollen (Dutch Elm disease). The lack of bioturbation in well-oxygenated bottom waters, supported by the absence of fossil pigments from obligately anaerobic purple sulfur bacteria, is attributed to elevated salinities and high alkalinity below the chemocline. This aerobic depositional environment, highly unusual in a meromictic lake, inhibits the mobilization of Pu, the proposed primary stratigraphic guide for the Anthropocene. back

G. Rajasekaran (2003), The Discovery of Dirac Equation and its Impact on Present-day Physics, ' The major events in the discovery of the Dirac equation and its interpretation are traced. The subsequent role it has played in the development of quantum field theory culminating in the Stan- dard Model of present-day high energy physics is discussed. The relativistic wave equation of the electron ranks among ng the highest achievements of 20th century science. Dirac's two papers on the subject published in 1928 are the following:- P.A.M. Dirac, Proc. Roy. Soc. Al17, 610, 1928 P.A.M. Dirac, Proc. Roy. Soc. Al18, 351, 1928 Dirac himself is supposed to have remarked that the relativistic wave equation of the electron is the basis of all of Chemistry and almost all of Physics.' back

Gerardus 't Hooft (1999), Nobel Lecture 1999: A Confrontation with Infinity, ' Early attempts at constructing realistic models of the weak interaction were offset by the emergence of infinite, hence meaningless expressions when one tried to develop radiative corrections. When models based on gauge theories with Higgs mechanism were discovered to be renormalizable, the bothersome infinities disappeared - they cancelled out. If this success seemed to be due to sorcery, it may be of interest to explain the physical insights on which it is actually based.' back

Hugh Everett III (1957), "Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, ' 1. Introduction The task of quantizing general relativity raises serious questions about the meaning of the present formulation and interpretation of quantum mechanics when applied to so fundamental a structure as the space-time geometry itself. This paper seeks to clarify the foundations of quantum mechanics. It presents a reformulation of quantum theory in a form believed suitable for application to general relativity. . . . The relationship of this new formulation to the older formulation is therefore that of a metatheory to a theory, that is, it is an underlying theory in which the nature and consistency, as well as the realm of applicability, of the older theory can be investigated and clarified.' back

Julia Angewin, The Gatekeepers of Knowledge Don’t Want Us to See What They Know, ' We are living through an information revolution. The traditional gatekeepers of knowledge — librarians, journalists and government officials — have largely been replaced by technological gatekeepers — search engines, artificial intelligence chatbots and social media feeds. Whatever their flaws, the old gatekeepers were, at least on paper, beholden to the public. The new gatekeepers are fundamentally beholden only to profit and to their shareholders. . . .. With key provisions going into effect on Aug. 25, an ambitious package of E.U. rules, the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, is the most extensive effort toward checking the power of Big Tech (beyond the outright bans in places like China and India). . . .. But as it stands, the European Union’s transparency efforts rest on European academics who will apply to a regulatory body for access to data from the platforms and then, hopefully, issue research reports. That is not enough. To truly hold the platforms accountable, we must support the journalists who are on the front lines of chronicling how despots, trolls, spies, marketers and hate mobs are weaponizing tech platforms or being enabled by them.' back

Max Boot (2023_07_14), Opinion: Trump came to Helsinki to kowtow to Putin. Biden came to stand up to him., ' If you want to know the differences on national security between Democrats and MAGA Republicans, it all boils down to one word: Helsinki. Five years ago, on July 16, 2018, President Donald Trump met in the capital of Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There he delivered what Sen. John McCain called “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”. . . .. On Thursday, President Biden visited Helsinki for a very different purpose. He came not to kowtow before Putin but to stand up to him — and not to undermine NATO but to strengthen it. This visit was meant to celebrate Finland’s recent accession to membership in the alliance, and it came shortly after Biden’s attendance at a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the alliance showed greater unity than at any time in recent history. . . .. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t think NATO’s ever been stronger,” Biden said during a meeting with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.' back

Pink Floyd, Time, back

Wave-particle duality - Wikipedia, Wave-particle duality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Wave–particle duality is the concept in quantum mechanics that every particle or quantum entity may be described as either a particle or a wave. It expresses the inability of the classical concepts "particle" or "wave" to fully describe the behaviour of quantum-scale objects. As Albert Einstein wrote: It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do. Through the work of Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Louis de Broglie, Arthur Compton, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger and many others, current scientific theory holds that all particles exhibit a wave nature and vice versa. back