Deutsch (1997), David, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes - and its Implications, Allen Lane Penguin Press 1997 Jacket: 'Quantum physics, evolution, computation and knowledge - these four strands of scientific theory and philosophy have, until now, remained incomplete explanations of the way the universe works. . . . Oxford scholar DD shows how they are so closely intertwined that we cannot properly understand any one of them without reference to the other three. . . .' 
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Everett III (1973), Hugh, and Bryce S Dewitt, Neill Graham (editors), The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1973 Jacket: 'A novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed in brief form by Hugh Everett in 1957, forms the nucleus around which this book has developed. The volume contains Dr Everett's short paper from 1957, "'Relative State' formulation of quantum mechanics" and a far longer exposition of his interpretation entitled "The Theory of the Universal Wave Function" never before published. In addition other papers by Wheeler, DeWitt, Graham, Cooper and van Vechten provide further discussion of the same theme. Together they constitute virtually the entire world output of scholarly commentary on the Everett interpretation.' 
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Hughes (1993), Ted, Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, Faber & Faber 1993 ' Synopsis In this momentous adventure in criticism, one of the leading poets writing in English argues that our profound response to Shakespeare's great late plays is prompted by a mythic, symbolic structure that inheres in each of them, and indeed binds the entire Shakespearean corpus into one huge, complex, ever-evolving work. Ted Hughes sees Shakespeare's early poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece as embodying two great myths of the archaic world, that of the hero who rejects the love of the Goddess and is killed in revenge by a boar; and that of the king, or god, whose crime is rape and whose punishment is banishment. These two complexes merge as Shakespeare's work develops into what Hughes calls the Tragic Equation, a flexible formula through which the poet was able to tap into the innate power of these myths to enliven his own imagination - and through him the imagination of Elizabethan England, in which the conflicts between Catholicism and Protestantism in the "living myth" of the English Reformation never lay far from the bloody surface of events. With his characteristic mixture of erudition and immediacy, Ted Hughes traces this idea in a close reading of Shakespeare's entire work. This text originally grew out of correspondence with dramatists, and anyone for whom intimate attention to the plays is important - scholar, student, actor, or common reader - will profit greatly from Hughes's loving, intensive, engrossing, and radical analysis of the greatest writing in the language.' 
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Kaku (2021), Michio, The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, Doubleday 2021 ' This is the story of a quest: to find a Theory of Everything. Einstein dedicated his life to seeking this elusive Holy Grail, a single, revolutionary 'god equation' which would tie all the forces in the universe together, yet never found it. Some of the greatest minds in physics took up the search, from Stephen Hawking to Brian Greene. None have yet succeeded. In The God Equation, renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku takes the reader on a mind-bending ride through the twists and turns of this epic journey: a mystery that has fascinated him for most of his life. He guides us through the key debates in modern physics, from Newton's law of gravity via relativity and quantum mechanics to the latest developments in string theory.  
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Piketty (2020), Thomas, Capital and Ideology, Harvard University Press 2020 The politics of identity.
Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new "participatory" socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.'  
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Wilczek (2008), 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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Art Jipson & Paul Becker (2025_09_18), Right-wing extremist violence is more frequent and more deadly than left-wing violence − what the data shows, ' But policymakers and the public need reliable evidence and actual data to understand the reality of politically motivated violence. From our research on extremism, it’s clear that the president’s and Miller’s assertions about political violence from the left are not based on actual facts.
Based on our own research and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism. [. . .]
Politically motivated violence is a small fraction of total violent crime, but its impact is magnified by symbolic targets, timing and media coverage. In the first half of 2025, 35% of violent events tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted U.S. government personnel or facilities – more than twice the rate in 2024. Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence in recent years. Based on government and independent analyses, right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities, amounting to approximately 75% to 80% of U.S. domestic terrorism deaths since 2001. [. . .]
By contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those tied to anarchist or environmental movements, have made up about 10& to 15% of incidents and less than 5% of fatalities.[. . .]
Trump and members of his administration are threatening to target whole organizations and movements and the people who work in them with aggressive legal measures – to jail them or scrutinize their favorable tax status. But research shows that the majority of political violence comes from people following right-wing ideologies.' back

Dirac equation - Wikipedia, Dirac equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. In its free form, or including electromagnetic interactions, it describes all spin-1⁄2 massive particles such as electrons and quarks, for which parity is a symmetry, and is consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity, and was the first theory to account fully for special relativity in the context of quantum mechanics. It accounted for the fine details of the hydrogen spectrum in a completely rigorous way.' back

Eigenvalues and eigenvectors - Wikipedia, Eigenvalues and eigenvectors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In linear algebra, an eigenvector or characteristic vector of a linear transformation is a nonzero vector that changes at most by a scalar factor when that linear transformation is applied to it. The corresponding eigenvalue, often denoted by λ, is the factor by which the eigenvector is scaled. Geometrically, an eigenvector, corresponding to a real nonzero eigenvalue, points in a direction in which it is stretched by the transformation and the eigenvalue is the factor by which it is stretched. If the eigenvalue is negative, the direction is reversed. Loosely speaking, in a multidimensional vector space, the eigenvector is not rotated.' back

Equivalence principle - Wikipedia, Equivalence principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In the physics of general relativity, the equivalence principle is any of several related concepts dealing with the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass, and to Albert Einstein's assertion that the gravitational "force" as experienced locally while standing on a massive body (such as the Earth) is actually the same as the pseudo-force experienced by an observer in a non-inertial (accelerated) frame of reference.' back

Graviton - Wikipedia, Graviton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In theories of quantum gravity, the graviton is the hypothetical quantum of gravity, an elementary particle that mediates the force of gravity. There is no complete quantum field theory of gravitons due to an outstanding mathematical problem with renormalization in general relativity. . . . If it exists, the graviton is expected to be massless because the gravitational force is very long range and appears to propagate at the speed of light. The graviton must be a spin-2 boson because the source of gravitation is the stress–energy tensor, a second-order tensor (compared with electromagnetism's spin-1 photon, the source of which is the four-current, a first-order tensor).' back

Holly Chik (2025_09_16), China’s first emperor really did send quest to Tibet in search of immortality: scientists, ' A stone inscription found on the Tibetan Plateau recording a hitherto unknown expedition sent by China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang in 210BC is genuine, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration has concluded.
The carving had triggered a heated debate about its authenticity after its discovery was announced in June. Sceptics suggested it may be a modern forgery and questioned if it was possible to travel to the plateau given the generally harsh conditions.
But Deng Chao, an official from the state heritage body, said the inscription had been authenticated after a field investigation in the Kunlun Mountains that used advanced equipment to study the carving, which was found at a site 4,300 metres (14,000 feet) above sea level near Gyaring Lake near the source of the Yellow River.
The carving, written in the ancient small seal script, read: “The emperor commanded level five grand master Yi to lead a group of alchemists here to collect yao.”
Yao is a term that could refer to herbs, animals or minerals with healing power – but it could also mean the elixir of life.
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Jean Mackenzie (2025_09_12), North Korea executing more people for watching foreign films and TV, UN finds, ' The dictatorship, which remains largely cut off from the world, is also subjecting its people to more forced labour while further restricting their freedoms, the report added. The UN Human Rights Office found that over the past decade the North Korean state had tightened control over "all aspects of citizens' lives". "No other population is under such restrictions in today's world," it concluded, adding that surveillance had become "more pervasive", helped in part by advances in technology. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said that if this situation continued, North Koreans "will be subjected to more of the suffering, brutal repression and fear that they have endured for so long". back

Jeffrey Nicholls (2025_09_14), e01 Quantocracy: The universal quantum mechanical foundations of democracy and freedom, ' I.1: Abstract: We construct a very simple model of the universe, beginning with Darwinian evolution and exploiting a series of ancient and modern philosophical, theological and scientific ideas to highlight the political role of quantum mechanics in forming the social network structure of the universe. We go deeper than modern field theory, written in Minkowski space, to the underlying Hilbert space to reveal the initial quantum mechanical and gravitational nature of the universe.
The symmetry of quantum mechanics with respect to complexity repeats this initial structure at all scales from elementary particles to the universe as a whole.
The first part of this essay outlines this scenario; the second part draws on the notions of symmetry which lie at the root of modern physics to point out how the human political consequences of quantum theory support freedom and democracy at all scales. It explains our relationship to the divine universe we inhabit.
This approach contests the picture of the natural world promoted by the Populist Right as described by Quinn Slobodian. Quinn Slobodian (2025): Hayek's Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right. back

John J. Hopfield (2024_12_08), Nobel Lecture: Physics is a point of view, ' John J. Hopfield delivered his Nobel Prize lecture "Physics is a point of view" on 8 December 2024 at the Aula Magna, Stockholm University. He was introduced by Professor Ellen Moons, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics. … back

Jon Richardson (2025_09_17), Since WWII, it’s been taboo to force nations to cede land after war. Russia wants to normalise conquest again, ' Distinct from invasions, there have been many unresolved border disputes that have occasionally flared into armed conflict. Russia, however, had no such dispute with Ukraine before its 2014 takeover of Crimea.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine negotiated a border treaty to delineate their borders in precise detail. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the treaty in 2003 and later affirmed that Russia had no territorial claim against Ukraine.
An overwhelming number of UN members have rejected Russia’s annexation of Crimea and four other regions of southeastern UkraineAs political scientist Tanisha Fazal argues, the norm against territorial conquest risks suffering a “death of a thousand cuts”. Allowing Russia to keep parts of Ukraine could be a terminal blow. [. . .]
The outcome of the war will only be partially about territory. Russia has imposed a brutal occupation on these regions, with widespread allegations of torture, killings, disappearances, population transfers and thefts of Ukrainian businesses and homes. Ukrainian language, culture and identity are being erased under a draconian regime.
Ukraine appears willing to accept an interim ceasefire to stop the bloodshed. But its territorial integrity should be fully supported by making clear to Russia that its invasion and occupation remain illegal and unacceptable.
This would include maintaining economic sanctions, demanding accountability for war crimes, returning property stolen from Ukrainians, and allowing Ukrainians transferred to Russia to return home. Ukraine must also be given the means to defend itself against a renewed Russian attack.
Advocates of anything less would be condoning and normalising flagrant territorial aggression. They would merit neither earthly rewards, such as Nobel Prizes, nor divine blessings.' back

Mattaeo Wong (2025_09_16), Grok’s Responses Are Only Getting More Bizarre, ' Many of Grok’s debacles—the bot insisting that Kirk’s shooting was fake, praising Hitler, and so on—appear in part to result from its tendency to search and cite posts on X, which make it easy to “substantiate” vile claims. Musk has boasted that his bot’s access to X makes it an invaluable source of real-time information and that Grok “will be the best source of truth by far”; in fact, the wealth of misinformation and hatred that Musk has ushered onto X has made his chatbot frequently untruthful, sometimes horrifyingly so. Many generative AI models contain the darkest corners of humanity—these programs are trained on all of the web, good and bad. But not every AI model’s creator inhabits those corners. Grok is what happens when a mercurical man of tremendous wealth and influence builds one of the world’s most powerful AI models and then integrates it into a major social-media platform that has become, under his direction, a hub for white supremacy. As more users on X ask Grok for explanations and input, they continue the cycle, with humans and bots feeding each other distortions, hate, and misogyny. Grok is not only shaped by the world; it is also warping people’s understanding of the world right back.' back

Navi Pillay (2025_09_16), My U.N. Commission’s Finding: Israel Is Committing Genocide, ' Today the United Nations commission that I lead is publishing its legal analysis of Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip. Our conclusion is stark: Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. This finding is based on investigations and extensive evidence into the period between Oct. 7, 2023, when the war began, and July 31, 2025. It has been corroborated by multiple sources and assessed through the rigorous legal framework of the U.N. Genocide Convention of 1948, to which Israel is a party. My organization, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, was established by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council in 2021. It is overseen by appointed experts who are supported by staff from the U.N. secretariat. The Commission reports its findings to the Human Rights Council and General Assembly.
The scale of destruction is devastating. More than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 18,000 children and nearly 10,000 women, according to Gazan health officials. Estimated life expectancy in Gaza has collapsed from 75 years to just over 40 in a single year, one of the steepest declines recorded. Hospitals, schools, churches, mosques and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed. Our analysis found that starvation has been used as a weapon of war and that the medical system has been deliberately destroyed. Maternal health care has been severely undermined. Children have been starved, shot and buried under rubble. According to UNICEF, one child has died every hour in Gaza. These are not the accidents of war. They are acts calculated to bring about the destruction of a people.
' Establishing genocide requires not only the act but also the intent. Here, too, the evidence is clear. Senior Israeli leaders, including the president, the prime minister and the former defense minister, have dehumanized Palestinians. Yoav Gallant, the defense minister at the time of the Oct. 7 attacks, said, “We are fighting human animals,” while President Isaac Herzog proclaimed that the entire Palestinian nation was responsible. Their words have been matched by deeds: indiscriminate bombardment making Gaza uninhabitable, the blocking of humanitarian aid, sexual and gender-based violence and a siege we concluded was designed to starve the population to death. Together these constitute a pattern that demonstrates genocidal intent.' back

Pew Research Center, The Global Religious Landscape, ' Worldwide, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group. A comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life estimates that there are 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children around the globe, representing 84% of the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion. The demographic study – based on analysis of more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers – finds 2.2 billion Christians (32% of the world’s population), 1.6 billion Muslims (23%), 1 billion Hindus (15%), nearly 500 million Buddhists (7%) and 14 million Jews (0.2%) around the world as of 2010.' back

Rachel Fink (2025_09_04), 'Let Her Voice Echo': Hind Rajab Film Receives Record-breaking Standing Ovation at Venice Festival, ' Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania's harrowing drama "The Voice of Hind Rajab" left not a dry eye in the house on Wednesday night, earning over twenty minutes of standing ovation after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. As chants of "Free Palestine" echoed through the packed theater, the applause only grew louder as the lights were dimmed in an apparent attempt to clear the room. Observers say the response set a new film festival record.
Late addition executive producers Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara attended the premiere, joining Ben Hania and the cast in holding a large photo of Rajab as they walked the red carpet. Phoenix, wearing an Artists4Ceasefire pin, appeared visibly moved during the ovation, as did many from the film's team.
At one point, actor Motaz Malhees grabbed a Palestinian flag from the audience and waved it to cheers. The film, one of the most anticipated titles of the festival, had been expected to make a major impact, a prediction confirmed by its rapturous reception Wednesday night. [. . .]
The film tells the true story of five-year-old Hind Rajab, who became a symbol of Palestinian suffering after her family's car was shelled while fleeing Gaza City on January 29, 2024. Trapped among six dead relatives, Hind remained on the phone with the Palestinian Red Crescent for three hours before she too was killed.
Two weeks later, her car – riddled with 335 bullet holes – and the ambulance sent to rescue her were found destroyed, with two medics dead inside. Built around the real audio of Hind's final call, the film was shot in a single location in Tunisia. ' back

Rafeef Ziadah (20125_09_12_, Donald Trump’s vision for Gaza’s future: what a leaked plan tells us about US regional strategy, ' Entire neighbourhoods in Gaza lie in ruins. Hundreds of thousands are crammed into tents, struggling for food, water and power. Despite this devastation, a leaked 38-page document from Donald Trump’s administration – the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation (Great) Trust – proposes to “fundamentally transform Gaza” folding it into the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (Imec). While framed as a reconstruction plan, it outlines “massive US gains,” Imec’s acceleration, and consolidation of an “Abrahamic regional architecture” – a term that refers back to the 2020 Abraham Accords, US-brokered agreements that normalised relations between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. In many respects, the document echoes the “Gaza 2035” plan promoted by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This was the 2024 proposal that envisioned Gaza as a sanitised logistics hub linked to Saudi Arabia’s Neom mega-project and stripped of meaningful Palestinian presence. As my co-authors and I trace in a recent book Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine, this continues a pattern of policies that deny Palestinians political agency and reduce Gaza to an investment opportunity. back

Richard Behiel, Electromagnetism as a Gauge Theory, ' "Why is electromagnetism a thing?" That's the question. In this video, we explore the answer given by gauge theory. In a nutshell, electromagnetism arises from local phase symmetry. But what does that mean, and how exactly does that work? That's what this video is all about!
This video is quite long and technical. Think of it as a video textbook, so you can skip around to different parts if you’d like. But I wanted to err on the side of rigor and thoroughness, to show comprehensively how local U(1) symmetry blossoms into electromagnetism. So the ideas are all there for you, but you don’t have to watch this in one sitting! ' back

Richard Feynman & Steven Weinberg (1986), Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics The1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures, Foreword: John C Taylor: 'Dirac Died in 1984, and St John's College, Cambridge (Dirac's College), very generously endowed an annual lecture to be held at Cambridge University in Dirac's memory. The First two lectures, printed here, are contrasting variations of Dirac's theme of the union of quantum theory and relativity.' back

Tsogtbaatar Chinzorig et. al. (2025_09_17), A domed pachycephalosaur from the early Cretaceous of Mongolia, ' Abstract The dome-headed pachycephalosaurians are among the most enigmatic dinosaurs. Bearing a hypertrophied skull roof and elaborate cranial ornamentation, members of the clade are considered to have evolved complex sociosexual systems1,2,3. Despite their importance in understanding behavioural ecology in Dinosauria, the absence of uncontested early diverging taxa has hindered our ability to reconstruct the origin and early evolution of the clade4,5,6,7. Here we describe Zavacephale rinpoche gen. et sp. nov., from the Lower Cretaceous Khuren Dukh Formation of Mongolia, the most skeletally complete and geologically oldest pachycephalosaurian discovered globally. Z. rinpoche exhibits a well-developed frontoparietal dome and preserves the clade’s first record of manual elements and gastroliths. Phylogenetic analysis recovered Z. rinpoche as one of the earliest diverging pachycephalosaurians, pushing back fossil evidence of the frontoparietal dome by at least 14 Myr and clarifying macroevolutionary trends in its assembly. We found that the earliest stage of dome evolution occurred by means of a frontal-first developmental pattern with retention of open supratemporal fenestra, mirroring proposed ontogenetic trajectories in some Late Cretaceous taxa. Finally, intraskeletal osteohistology of the frontoparietal dome and hindlimb demonstrate decoupling of sociosexual and somatic maturity in early pachycephalosaurians, with advanced dome development preceding terminal body size.' back

Tulip mania - Wikipedia, Tulip mania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels. The major acceleration started in 1634 and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637. It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history. In many ways, the tulip mania was more of a then-unknown socio-economic phenomenon than a significant economic crisis. It had no critical influence on the prosperity of the Dutch Republic, which was one of the world's leading economic and financial powers in the 17th century, with the highest per capita income in the world from about 1600 to about 1720. The term tulip mania is now often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values.' back