Dirac (1983), P A M, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (4th ed), Oxford UP/Clarendon 1983 Jacket: '[this] is the standard work in the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, indispensible both to the advanced student and the mature research worker, who will always find it a fresh source of knowledge and stimulation.' (Nature)  
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Greene (2012), Roland, and Cushman, Cavanagh, Ramanzi & Rouzer (editors), The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics (Fourth edition), Princeton UP 2012 ' Poetics, the theoretical and practical study of poetry is among the oldest disciplines in the West, one of those founded by Aristotle along with ethics, logic and political science. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics is the comprehensive guide to this rich field. . . . The Encyclopedia includes five kinds of entries: terms and concepts; genres and forms; periods, schools and movements; the poetries of nations, regions and languages; and poetry in relation to other cultural forms, disciplines and social practices such as linguistics, religion and science.' 
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Nicholls (2025), Jeffrey, Cognitive Cosmogenesis: a systematic integration of theology and physics, Austin Macauley 2025 ' The core idea of the top down theology devised by the Christian bishops for the Emperor Constantine is that the omnipotent and omniscient creator totally controls every moment of every event in the world. The imperial picture. Here we work from the bottom up. A key to the connection of physics and theology is symmetry with respect to complexity.
Although the difference in scale between fundamental particles and the people of an ideal democratic polity is immense, they are formally quite similar. Both democratic politics and quantum electrodynamics work in Hilbert space. Voting is linear, a form of superposition distributed by parties. Individuals and political parties are characterized by their directions in political space which may be modelled by vectors in a Hilbert space.
We may imagine a space with a basis vector for every person. Their sums in various combinations present us with a comprehensive picture of the political directions in an electorate. Such ideal democratic political systems have natural quantum mechanical support which gives us insight into the nature of the world.' 
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Saul (1993), John Ralston, Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, Vintage / Random House 1993 What flaw in Western democracies leaves so many of their citizens feeling frustrated and disempowered? How did the arms trade become the single largest industry in a world that is essentially at peace. Why have Washington, Wall Street and Hollywood all failed?
These are just come of unnerving questions that John Ralston Saul poses in Voltaire's Bastards, a phosphorescenty intelligent search-and destroy mission against the foundations of contemporary civilization. In an argument that takes in Chinese eunuchs and Henry Kissinger, the rationalized torture of the Inquisition and the scientifically managed debacle in Vietnam, medieval saints and modern-day newscasteres Saul shows how the West's love affair with the ideology of pure reason has made us cripplingly dependent on process-minded experts — "Voltaire's Bastards" — whose rational systems are bereft of both meaning and morality. The result is a learned and devastating critique of our political, economic and cultural establishments.' 
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von Neumann (2018), John, and Nicholas A. Wheeler (editor), Robert T Beyer (translator), The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 2018 ' Quantum mechanics was still in its infancy in 1932 when the young John von Neumann, who would go on to become one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, published Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics--a revolutionary book that for the first time provided a rigorous mathematical framework for the new science. Robert Beyer's 1955 English translation, which von Neumann reviewed and approved, is cited more frequently today than ever before. But its many treasures and insights were too often obscured by the limitations of the way the text and equations were set on the page. In this new edition of this classic work, mathematical physicist Nicholas Wheeler has completely reset the book in TeX, making the text and equations far easier to read. He has also corrected a handful of typographic errors, revised some sentences for clarity and readability, provided an index for the first time, and added prefatory remarks drawn from the writings of Léon Van Hove and Freeman Dyson. The result brings new life to an essential work in theoretical physics and mathematics.' 
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Albert Einstein (1915), The Field Equations of Gravitation, ' In two recently published papers I have shown how to obtain field equations of gravitation that comply with the postulate of general relativity, i.e., which in their general formulation are covariant under arbitrary substitutions of space-time variables. [. . .] With this, we have finally completed the general theory of relativity as a logical structure. The postulate of relativity in its most general formulation (which makes space-time coordinates into physically meaningless parameters) leads with compelling necessity to a very specific theory of gravitation that also explains the movement of the perihelion of Mercury. However, the postulate of general relativity cannot reveal to us anything new and different about the essence of the various processes in nature than what the special theory of relativity taught us already. The opinions I recently voiced here in this regard have been in error. Every physical theory that complies with the special theory of relativity can, by means of the absolute differential calculus, be integrated into the system of general relativity theory — without the latter providing any criteria about the admissibility of such physical theory' back

Allegory of the cave - Wikipedia, Allegory of the cave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Plato's allegory of the cave is an allegory presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic (514a–520a, Book VII) to compare "the effect of education (παιδεία) and the lack of it on our nature". It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates and is narrated by the latter. The allegory is presented after the analogy of the Sun (508b–509c) and the analogy of the divided line (509d–511e).' back

Amos Harel (2025_09_19), Analysis IDF Chief Takes Rare Stance as Netanyahu's Promised Quick Win in Gaza City Falters, ' The current stage of the war in Gaza is unfolding far differently than U.S. President Donald Trump likely envisioned.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu persuaded him to back an escalation of fighting in Gaza City through a broad Israel Defense Forces ground incursion, promising quick results. In practice, however, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir – who opposes the campaign – is directing troops to advance slowly and cautiously to minimize casualties and reduce risks to soldiers and hostages. [. . .]
Contrary to the impression Netanyahu and his mouthpieces try to convey, the chances of a successful rescue of hostages or Hamas' total surrender haven't improved. It's therefore difficult to imagine a scenario in which an IDF operation heroically frees most of the hostages.
Israeli defense officials are, in fact, increasingly concerned that Hamas may execute some of the hostages or that they could be killed in the IDF's heavy bombings currently underway in Gaza, which are intended to weaken Hamas' defenses ahead of the deepening of the ground incursion.[. . .]
Zamir is taking an extremely unusual stance: He opposes the operation and has made sure the public knows it, yet he remains in his position out of a sense of responsibility for his troops and the outcome of the campaign. There's no guarantee he'll continue to act this way indefinitely. [. . .]
Over time, the combination of endless war, corruption and efforts to entrench an autocratic regime is already transforming Israel beyond recognition.' back

Andrea Carson & Jutin Phillips (2025_09_24), Facebook data reveal the devastating real-world harms caused by the spread of misinformation, ' Take the example of the false claims that antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine was a viable COVID treatment.
In Australia, as in the United States, political figures and media played leading roles in the spread of this idea. Mining billionaire and then leader of the United Australia Party, Clive Palmer, actively promoted hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment. In March 2020 he announced he would fund trials, manufacture, and stockpile the drug. [. . .]
To put the real-world harm in perspective, public health studies estimate hydroxychloroquine use was linked to at least 17,000 deaths worldwide, though the true toll is likely higher. Finally, the study shows that fact-checking, while valuable, is not a silver bullet. Combating misinformation requires a multi-pronged approach, including counter-messaging by trusted civic leaders, media and digital literacy campaigns, and public restraint in sharing unverified content.' back

Aquinas, Summa I, 25, 3, Is God omnipotent?, '. . . God is called omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible absolutely; which is the second way of saying a thing is possible. For a thing is said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according to the relation in which the very terms stand to one another, possible if the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sits; and absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject, as, for instance, that a man is a donkey.' back

Aquinas, Summa: I, 14, 1, Is there knowledge in God?, ' I answer that, In God there exists the most perfect knowledge. . . . it is clear that the immateriality of a thing is the reason why it is cognitive; and according to the mode of immateriality is the mode of knowledge. Hence it is said in De Anima ii that plants do not know, because they are wholly material. But sense is cognitive because it can receive images free from matter, and the intellect is still further cognitive, because it is more separated from matter and unmixed, as said in De Anima iii. Since therefore God is in the highest degree of immateriality as stated above (Question 7, Article 1), it follows that He occupies the highest place in knowledge.' back

Atomic nucleus - Wikipedia, Atomic nucleus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The nucleus of an atom is the very small dense region of an atom, in its centre consisting of nucleons (protons and neutrons). The size (diameter) of the nucleus is in the range of 1.6 fm (10⁻¹⁵ m) (for a proton in light hydrogen) to about 15 fm (for the heaviest atoms, such as uranium). These dimensions are much smaller than the size of the atom itself by a factor of about 23,000 (uranium) to about 145,000 (hydrogen). Almost all of the mass in an atom is made up from the protons and neutrons in the nucleus with a very small contribution from the orbiting electrons.' back

Avigail Sperber (2025_09_10) , Opinion | Thank You for Boycotting Me: As an Israeli Filmmaker, Here's Why Global Pressure Amid Gaza Matters, ' This week, a letter signed by thousands of my international colleagues in the film industry appeared in The Guardian calling for a boycott of Israeli filmmakers, film festivals and Israeli films over the war in Gaza. I am a documentary film maker who has been working in Israel for over 30 years. This boycott would affect me and my colleagues. But following my defensive reaction, I understood the truth. What we Israelis need most from the world is to boycott us. [. . .]
Atrocities are being committed in our name, with our tax money, by the government that represents us on the world stage. This is proof that we are not doing enough. The simple, painful truth is that what happens in Gaza and the West Bank is our responsibility too. [.. .]
Avigail Sperber is an Israeli cinematographer, film and television director. She is founder and owner of Pardes Film Productions. Sperber is also a social activist, and the founder of Bat Kol, a religious organization for lesbian Orthodox Jews.' back

Bloch sphere - Wikipedia, Bloch sphere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopdia, ' The Bloch sphere is a unit 2-sphere, with antipodal points corresponding to a pair of mutually orthogonal state vectors. The north and south poles of the Bloch sphere are typically chosen to correspond to the standard basis vectors | 0 ⟩ and | 1 ⟩, respectively, which in turn might correspond e.g. to the spin-up and spin-down states of an electron. This choice is arbitrary, however. The points on the surface of the sphere correspond to the pure states of the system, whereas the interior points correspond to the mixed states.' back

Branden Lee, Patrick Kramer, Sara Sandri, et. al. , Early Recalls and Clinical Validation Gaps in Artificial Intelligence–Enabled Medical Devices, ' Among 950 AIMDs [Artificial intelligence–enabled medical devices], 60 (6.3%) were associated with 182 recall events (mean [SD] recalls per device, 3.0 [4.3]) Diagnostic or measurement errors accounted for 109 recalls encompassing 935 063 units, followed by functionality delay (44 recalls, 755 647 units), physical hazards (14 recalls, 8192 units), and biochemical hazards (13 recalls, 76 257 units). Of these recalls, 79 (43.4%) occurred within the first 12 months of device clearance (Figure 1B), approximately double the rate reported for all 510(k) devices. Notably, 108 recalls (59.3%) remained unresolved at the study end date, with 20 recalls remaining unresolved for more than 3 years. Overall, recall-free survival was 96.6% at 1 year, 93.5% at 3 years, and 91.8% at 5 years.' back

Brouwer fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, Brouwer fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Among hundreds of fixed-point theorems] Brouwer's is particularly well known, due in part to its use across numerous fields of mathematics. In its original field, this result is one of the key theorems characterizing the topology of Euclidean spaces, along with the Jordan curve theorem, the hairy ball theorem, the invariance of dimension and the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. This gives it a place among the fundamental theorems of topology.' back

Charles Darwin - Wikipedia, Charles Darwin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Charles Robert Darwin FRS FRGS FLS FZS JP (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science.' back

Feynman, Leighton and Sands FLP II_02, Chapter 2: Differential Calculus of Vector Fields, ' Ideas such as the field lines, capacitance, resistance, and inductance are, for such purposes, very useful. So we will spend much of our time analyzing them. In this way we will get a feel as to what should happen in different electromagnetic situations. On the other hand, none of the heuristic models, such as field lines, is really adequate and accurate for all situations. There is only one precise way of presenting the laws, and that is by means of differential equations. They have the advantage of being fundamental and, so far as we know, precise. If you have learned the differential equations you can always go back to them. There is nothing to unlearn.' back

Gregor Mendel - Wikipedia, Gregor Mendel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Gregor Johann Mendel, OSA was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brünn (Brno), Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today's Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favour certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.' back

Hamas - Wikipedia, Hamas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Hamas movement was founded by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. It emerged from his 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya Islamic charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.[32] Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state.[33][34] In the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, Hamas secured a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council by campaigning on promises of a corruption-free government and advocating for resistance as a means to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation.[35][36] In the Battle of Gaza, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from rival Palestinian faction Fatah,[37][38] and has since governed the territory separately from the Palestinian National Authority. After Hamas's takeover, Israel significantly intensified existing movement restrictions and imposed a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip.[39] Egypt also began its blockade of Gaza at this time. This was followed by multiple wars with Israel, including those in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, 2021, and an ongoing one since 2023, which began with the October 7 attacks.' back

International Criminal Court, Trying individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression, ' The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. As a court of last resort, it seeks to complement, not replace, national Courts. Governed by an international treaty called the Rome Statute.' back

International Criminal Court, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, ' The text of the Rome Statute reproduced herein is an informal consolidated version incorporating all amendments adopted by the Assembly of States Parties. This version has been included in this publication for ease of reference in an attempt to reflect the normative regime that would be applicable to States Parties which have ratified all the amendments.
The table of contents is not part of the text of the Rome Statute adopted by the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court on 17 July 1998. It has been included in this publication for ease of reference.
Article 7: Crimes Against Humanity (k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.' back

Jabberwocky - Wikipedia, Jabberwocky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' "Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The book tells of Alice's adventures within the back-to-front world of the Looking-Glass world. In an early scene in which she first encounters the chess piece characters White King and White Queen, Alice finds a book written in a seemingly unintelligible language. Realising that she is travelling through an inverted world, she recognises that the verses on the pages are written in mirror writing. She holds a mirror to one of the poems and reads the reflected verse of "Jabberwocky". She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as the odd land she has passed into, later revealed as a dreamscape. "Jabberwocky" is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English. Its playful, whimsical language has given English nonsense words and neologisms such as "galumphing" and "chortle". ' back

Lewis Carroll (1871), Jabberwocky, ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

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Nelson Mandela: African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's Address to a rally in Cape Town on his release from prison, '11 February 1990
Friends, comrades and fellow South Africans.
I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all.
I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.'
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Nicole Precel (2025_09_24), Non-binary teacher takes Catholic school group to court over refusal to use preferred pronouns, ' A non-binary teacher at a Melbourne Catholic school says they will take a fight to have their preferred pronouns used in the workplace all the way to the High Court.
The teacher’s union, which represents 75,000 educators from Australian religious schools, says the case could open the floodgates to gender and sex discrimination disputes around the country.
Myka Sanders, a teacher at Sacred Heart Girls’ College in Oakleigh, asked the school two years ago to remove the title “Mr” and use their preferred pronouns on timetables, emails and correspondence at the school. The Melbourne Archdiocese of Catholic Schools (MACS) intervened and refused the request, the Independent Education Union (IEU) said.
Sanders has lodged a dispute at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal with the backing of the union.
But MACS, the largest Catholic employer in the state, deployed a jurisdictional argument, claiming the state legislation that was relied on in the application to VCAT was overridden by federal law, so it could not be heard by the Victorian tribunal.
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Proton - Wikipedia, Proton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, the proton (Greek proton = first) is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit . . . , a diameter of about 1.65 x 10^-15 m, and a mass of 938.27231(28) MeV/c2 (1.6726 X 10 ^{- 27} kg), 1.007 276 466 88(13) u or about 1836 times the mass of an electron. Protons are spin 1/2 fermions and are composed of three quarks, making them baryons. The two up quarks and one down quark of the proton are held together by the strong force, mediated by gluons' back

Qubit - Wikipedia, Qubit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A quantum bit, or qubit . . . is a unit of quantum information. That information is described by a state vector in a two-level quantum mechanical system which is formally equivalent to a two-dimensional vector space over the complex numbers. Benjamin Schumacher discovered a way of interpreting quantum states as information. He came up with a way of compressing the information in a state, and storing the information on a smaller number of states. This is now known as Schumacher compression. In the acknowledgments of his paper (Phys. Rev. A 51, 2738), Schumacher states that the term qubit was invented in jest, during his conversations with Bill Wootters.' back

Rodney Tiffen (2025_09_26) , Friday essay: new revelations of the Murdoch empire’s underbelly – from The Hack’s real-life journalist , ' This is the humblest day of my life, declared Rupert Murdoch to a parliamentary committee on July 19, 2011. This was at the height of what the newspaper historian Roy Greenslade called “the most astonishing 14 days in British press history, with daily shock heaped upon daily shock”.
These dramatic events are now the subject of a series on Stan. Journalist Nick Davies recounted them in his 2014 book, Hack Attack: How the Truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch. That book has now been reissued with a new afterword, exploring the developments and revelations over the last decade. I have read the new chapter, and it casts yet more light on the Murdoch company’s extraordinary behaviour. It began on July 5 2011, when Davies published an article in the Guardian saying Murdoch’s Sunday paper, the News of the World, had tapped teenage murder victim Milly Dowler’s phone. The scandal had been building – very slowly and far from surely – for almost five years, since August 2006, when a News of the World reporter and a private investigator were arrested for having tapped the phones of Princes William and Harry, and their entourages. [. . .]
Although the scandal largely disappeared from news coverage, it has had a very expensive afterlife. The main venue for that afterlife was in the civil actions by those claiming the paper had used criminal means to invade their privacy. Davies’ afterword details that afterlife and the revelations that have come since.
More than 1,200 people have sued the Murdoch company over the years. On 13 different occasions, they had grouped together and prepared a trial. However, on each occasion the claimants had accepted an offer of money, rather than further pursuing their case in a trial, because Murdoch’s lawyers had made each of them a “part 36 offer”. [. . .]
n every case, the Murdoch lawyers offered a much larger sum than was ever likely to be given by the court, always without admitting any liability, and always with a confidentiality condition. It cost the Murdoch company something like 1.2 billion pounds in legal fees and settlements. [. . .]
The most recent such settlement, in January this year, was the biggest and most newsworthy. “Murdoch had made one particularly dangerous enemy Prince Harry, a man who had every reason to blame the tabloids for the death of his mother and the cruel bullying of his wife.” With him was former Labour MP Tom Watson, a long-time foe of the Murdochs. He now sat in the House of Lords, and with that bipartisan British fondness for silly names, had become Baron Watson of Wyre Forest. [. . .]
Instead, predictably, a delay was requested. The next morning, the lawyer for Harry and Watson announced the case had been settled.[. . .]
There has never been a media scandal in Britain or Australia remotely resembling the phone hacking scandal of 2011. Probably no major players in Britain – in politics or in the press – has an appetite for reviving it.
So the new edition of the book by Nick Davies – whose investigative work was central to the whole affair – is unlikely to have major repercussions. Nevertheless, the revelations in the book’s afterword add considerably not only to our knowledge of developments over the last decade, but to a deeper understanding of the politics and culture of the Murdoch empire.
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Ronald W. Pruessen (2025_09_21), ‘We want to be offensive too’ — Trump’s Department of War move shows his flimsy grasp of history, ' Explaining his move to rename the United States Department of Defense the Department of War, as it was known prior to 1949, President Donald Trump explained it had “a stronger sound.”
It offered better messaging too. “Defense is too defensive; we want to be offensive too,” he said.
The once and future Department of War would revive the spirit of the years when “we won everything.”
Trump’s language — and the logic behind it — demonstrates how little America’s current leaders have learned from the clear failures of their predecessors across 70 years.
American policies after the Second World War achieved great things: substantially aiding the reconstruction of devastated Europe and Japan, for instance, while spearheading the building of an integrated global economy that fostered unparalleled growth.
There were also grave flaws in American designs and actions, of course, though they rarely if ever stemmed from a lack of aggressive assertiveness and an appetite for winning. Trump’s failure to diagnose the real roots of real problems portends a worsening of already terrible costs and consequences.
[. . .] Trump seems to believe that, with the Department of War, he’s replacing post-1945 defence policies rather than doubling down on them, meaning he is intensifying the offensive/aggressive approaches without grappling with their flaws. In particular, he has no apparent grasp of what bedevilled the post-1945 American drive for global domination. [. . .]
The magnitude of Trump’s ego (his “I alone” mentality) risks intensifying such a revival — with potentially serious consequences.
Attacks on Venezuelan boats said to be carrying drugs, a failure to rein in Israel’s expanding campaigns in Gaza and the deployment of National Guard forces to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Memphis are strong hints of what may be coming.
Recalling Trump’s speculations about military operations against Greenland and Canada just months ago makes it impossible to dismiss anxiety about his intentions.
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Sage Meredith Goodwin & Oscar Winerg (2025_09_23), Even as Jimmy Kimmel returns to the airwaves, TV networks remain more vulnerable to political pressure than ever before, ' “Is there any way we can screw him?” asked President Richard M. Nixon. [. . .]br> Over 50 years ago, Nixon and his team sought to use the full weight of the federal government – with calls to network executives, Federal Communications Commission complaints, IRS audits and FBI investigations – to silence “The Dick Cavett Show.” [. . .]
. Nixon ultimately failed in his attempt to silence Cavett. ABC executives were committed to independent media, while the broadcasting industry as a whole had garnered the attention and trust of an enormous audience, which insulated them from political pressure.
The apparent appeasement of Trump by network executives shows just how much has changed in both the media and regulatory landscape since Nixon’s time. [. . .]
The rise of cable loosened the networks’ chokehold on TV news and entertainment in the late 20th century. The internet – followed by the advent of podcasts, streaming and social media – merely accelerated this trend. . . .]
In short, late night is no longer the TV crown jewel it once was. As a result, it’s far easier for executives to decide to cut the cord on a Kimmel or a Colbert. [. . .]
Today, Trump’s charges of “liberal bias” or “fake news” galvanize his supporters – and make media executives sweat – because they’re a key part of modern right-wing identity.
But the president’s no-holds-barred approach is unprecedented. By threatening broadcasting licenses, instigating investigations and filing lawsuits – all while declaring the mainstream media “the enemy of the people” – Trump has turned the dial up to 11.

His administration’s success in temporarily getting Kimmel off the air is obviously one more chapter in an ongoing crisis for free speech. Unfortunately, given the trends in the relationship between American media and politics over the past half-century, it likely won’t be the last.' back

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues - Wikipedia, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is a 2025 American mockumentary comedy film directed by Rob Reiner. A sequel to This Is Spinal Tap (1984), the film features Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer reprising their roles as members of the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap who are reuniting after 15 years for one final show. back

Theory of Forms - Wikipedia, Theory of Forms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract (but substantial) forms (or ideas), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form or idea is often capitalized. Plato speaks of these entities only through the characters (primarily Socrates) of his dialogues who sometimes suggest that these Forms are the only true objects of study that can provide us with genuine knowledge; thus even apart from the very controversial status of the theory, Plato's own views are much in doubt. Plato spoke of Forms in formulating a possible solution to the problem of universals.' back

Universe - Wikipedia, Universe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Universe is all of spacetime and everything that exists therein, including all planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the smallest subatomic particles, and all matter and energy. Similar terms include the cosmos, the world, reality, and nature. The observable universe is about 46 billion light years in radius. back

Wojciech Hubert Zurek (2008), 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