VII Notes

2010

Notes

[Sunday 21 November 2010 - Saturday 27 November 2010]

[Notebook: DB 70 Mathematical Theology]

[page 123]

Sunday 21 November 2010

[page 127]

Monday 22 November 2010

Brouwer

Due process ==> Rule of Law
Dynamics ==> Statics
Democracy ==> Consistent Law

McGregor page 12: '. . . in the modern Chinese state . . . still runs on Soviet hardware. Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, designed a system according to which the ruling party shadows and stalks the state by penetrating it at all levels. Lenin

[page 128]

presented himself as the saviour f the working class but the structure he devised was ferociously and brutally elitist. McGregor

McGregor page 20: '"You need a new dictionary to understand what Chinese leaders mean when they talk about democracy." '

2005 White Paper on democracy: ' "Democratic government is the Chinese Communist Party governing itself on behalf of the people." '

page 22: 'Over time the Party's secrecy has gone beyond habit and become essential to its survival by shielding it from the reach of the law and the wider citizenry.'

Mystery /infallibility / secrecy / eternity / continuity / markless

He Weifang: ' "As an organization the Party sits outside, and above the law. It should have a legal identity,in other words a person to sue, but it is not even registered as an organiztion. The Party exists outside the legal system altogether." '

page 3: Party official: ' "You call it interference [in your court rulings]. We call it leadership." '

Eternity: the root of all evil (?)
Action: the root of all good.

Media and marketing: every message is a force moving us in a certain direction, maybe toward brand x

NATURAL RELIGION — REALITY RULES

[page 129]

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Thursday 25 November 2010

McGregor page 37: Chen Yuan: ' "Listen, Mr Robinson . . . we are the Communist Party and we will define what communism is." '

Friday 26 November 2010

Saturday 27 November 2010

A letter to US Archbishop Dolan United States Conference of Catholic Bishops - Wikipedia

I was born and raised a Roman Catholic in a small community dominated by Irish Catholic immigrants. I trained for the priesthood (appropriate for an eldest son) in an ancient and conservative religious organization , the Order of Preachers. Despite my best intentions, my career was cut short because I was held to have opinions contrary to some of the twenty four theses decreed by Pope Pius X, through the Sacred Congregation of Studies on 27 July 1914. Pope Pius X I have since given up my religion and turned to natural religion (naturaltheology.net). You may be able to lean something from my reasons for disaffection.

McGregor page 41: Deng Xaoping: "The single biggest mistake the leadership made in the eighties, he said in a pep talk to the troops, has not been the opening of the economy, as many of his critics have begun to argue forcibly, but a lack of ideological and political education to go with it. "We must make sure that no adverse trend is allowed to reach that point [4 June, Tienanmin Square] again.

[page 130]

McGregor page 42: ' "On economic matters, relaxed controls; for political matters, tight controls." ;

paghe 44: ' "grasp the big, let go of the small" ' Zhu Rongji.

page 51: Caijing, a financial magazine famous for pushing journalistic boundaries in China. Caijing Magazine

Copyright:

You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.

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Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

le Carre, John, The Honourable Schoolboy, Pocket Books 2000 Amazon: 'John le Carré's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him - and his hero, British Secret Service agent George Smiley - unprecedented worldwide acclaim. In The Honourable Schoolboy, George Smiley is made leader of the Circus (the British Secret Service) in the wake of a demoralizing infiltration by a Soviet double agent. Devising a counterattack, Smiley puts his own hand-picked operative into action. His point of attack: the Far East -- a burial ground of French, British, and American colonial cultures, and fabled testing ground of patriotic allegiances.'   Amazon   back

Leigh, G J, The World's Greatest Fix: A History of Nitrogen and Agriculture, Oxford University Press 2004 Preface: 'In the current world, knowledge is rarely valued for itself, and much more often for its commercial potential. Nevertheless, for nearly 30 years my colleagues and I had the immense privilege of studying a challenging problem with a minimum of bureaucratic interference. During this time I became aware that we were all members of a long line of investigators that stretched back for thousands of years. Each of us saw the problem of soil fertility, expressed for us as the conundrum of biological nitrogen fixation, in a different way, and each of us added a small brick to the imposing edifice of modern agricultural science. I have attempted to show in this book how human beings have solved the problems relating to soil fertility, using imagination, ingenuity and understanding of how the world works. ... '  Amazon   back

McGregor, Richard, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, Harper 2010 Amazon editorial review: From Publishers Weekly 'McGregor, a journalist at the Financial Times, begins his revelatory and scrupulously reported book with a provocative comparison between China™s Communist Party and the Vatican for their shared cultures of secrecy, pervasive influence, and impenetrability. The author pulls back the curtain on the Party to consider its influence over the industrial economy, military, and local governments. McGregor describes a system operating on a Leninist blueprint and deeply at odds with Western standards of management and transparency. Corruption and the tension between decentralization and national control are recurring themes--and are highlighted in the Party™s handling of the disturbing Sanlu case, in which thousands of babies were poisoned by contaminated milk powder. McGregor makes a clear and convincing case that the 1989 backlash against the Party, inexorable globalization, and technological innovations in communication have made it incumbent on the Party to evolve, and this smart, authoritative book provides valuable insight into how it has--and has not--met the challenge. ' Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.  Amazon   back

Napoleoni, Loretta, Modern Jihad: tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks, Pluto Press 2003 Editorial Review from Publishers Weekly: 'No punches are pulled in this alarming study of a $1.5-trillion terrorist economy that is as integral a part of the Western economy as banking or big oil. So compelling is Italian economist and journalist Napoleoni's indictment of the West for the creation and sustenance of international terrorism that she believes this is the reason publication was nixed by her commissioning publisher's board of directors. Napoleoni traces 50 years of Western economic and political dominance in developing Muslim countries backing repressive, corrupt regimes, fighting the Cold War by proxy and blocking the legitimate economic ascendancy of millions. "As in the Crusades," in which Napoleoni finds many modern parallels, "religion is simply a recruitment tool; the real driving force is economics." The only way those left behind by globalization can afford to fight back, the author says, is with the proceeds of crime, drugs, arms, prostitution, gems, smuggling, even slavery, all fueled by the West's addictions and other "poisonous dependencies" and laundered and reinvested by the West's own financial industry. Interviews with former terrorists, intelligence officials and world-class economists enliven this thoughtful and informed analysis, but evidence of the FBI and CIA being prevented by the Clinton and Bush administrations from fully investigating the real (Saudi) sources of Islamist terrorism and of the real motives for the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq could create a political firestorm here and abroad.' Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.  Amazon   back

Papers

Landauer, Rolf, "The Physical Nature of Information", Physica A, 217, 4-5, 15 July 1996, page 188-93. 'Information is inevitably tied to a physical representation and therefore to restrictions and possibilities related to the laws of physics and the parts available in the universe. Quantum mechanical superpositions of information bearing states can be used, and the real utility of that needs to be understood. Quantum parallelism in computation is one possibility and will be assessed pessimistically. The energy dissipation requirements of computation, of measurement and of the communications link are discussed. The insights gained from the analysis of computation has caused a reappraisal of the perceived wisdom in the other two fields. A concluding section speculates about the nature of the laws of physics, which are algorithms for the handling of information, and must be executable in our real physical universe.'. back

Links

Caijing Magazine English - Caijing 'CAIJING Magazine —— China's Most Respected Business Magazine Founded in 1998, the fortnightly CAIJING Magazine has firmly established itself as a news authority and leading voice for business and financial issues in China. CAIJING Magazine closely tracks the most important aspects of China's economic reforms, developments and policy changes, as well as major events in the capital markets. It also offers a broad international perspective through first-hand reporting on international political and economic issues. CAIJING Magazine is China's most widely read business and finance magazine, with a circulation of 225,000 per issue. It boasts top-level readers from government, business and academic circles.' back

Laurie Goodstein A New Leader Confronts Catholics' Disaffection 'Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, elected president of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops last week, said Monday that the bishops faced the urgent task of stopping the huge exodus of Roman Catholics from the church of their birth.' back

Pius X Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Studies, 27 July 1914 back