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Brandt, Siegmund, and Hans Dieter Dahmen, The Picture Book of Quantum Mechanics, Springer-Verlag 1995 Jacket: 'This book is an introduction to the basic concepts and phenomena of quantum mechanics. Computer-generated illustrations are used extensively throughout the text, helping to establish the relation between quantum mechanics on one side and classical physics . . . on the other side. Even more by studying the pictures in parallel with the text, readers develop an intuition for notoriously abstract quantum phenomena . . .'
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Cantor, Georg, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers (Translated, with Introduction and Notes by Philip E B Jourdain), Dover 1955 Jacket: 'One of the greatest mathematical classics of all time, this work established a new field of mathematics which was to be of incalculable importance in topology, number theory, analysis, theory of functions, etc, as well as the entire field of modern logic.'
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Dalrymple, William, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium, Flamingo" Harper Collins 1997 Amazon reader reiew: 'From the Holy Mountain deserves to be put along side such other classics of the genre as the Road to Oxiana and a Time of Gifts. It is erudite, witty, scholarly & compassionate in its treatment of the subject of Christian Minorities in the Middle East. This book means so much to me as I travelled in the very same areas covered at approximately the same time the research for the book was undertaken. I can confirm the total accuracy of the authors assessments. The book both confirmed and provided illumination as to what I had seen with my own eyes and heard from the communities depicted. This remarkably accomplished work deserves to be read by everyone with an interest in the Middle East.' Anthony
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Diamond, Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Viking Adult 2004 'As suggested by its title, this book is about societal collapses - past, present and future - and the factors that cause human societies to fail. ... [Diamond's] primary mission is to determine the ecological, political and cultural conditions that lead to collapse and to contrast these with the conditions that favour success. ... Collapse is based on a series of detailed case studies. ... Diamond then provides a fuller exploration of the many rich parallels between these historic cases and select modern societies. ... What emerges most clearly from [his] analysis is the central role played by environmetnal decay in undermining human societies. ... In the end, [his] painstaking toil in the deep mines of history rewards him with sufficient nuggets of hope that he emerges 'cautiously optimistic' about the human prospect. ... The most important lesson to be drawn from Collapse is that resilient societies are nimble ones, capable of long term planning and of abandoning deeply entrenched but ultimately destructive core values and beliefs. This, in turn, requires a well informed public, inspired leadership and the political will to go against the established order of things. ... ' William Rees, Nature 433:15, 6 January 2005.
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Grossman, David, Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2008 From Publishers Weekly 'Peace activist and vocal advocate for relinquishing the Territories and ending the Occupation, Israeli novelist Grossman is unafraid of controversy; these six essays, however, address these concerns more obliquely, through the lens of literature. Books That Have Read Me merges the young reader's discovery that books are the place in the world where both the thing and the loss of it can be contained with the older writer's urge to describe contemporary political reality in a language that is not the public, general, nationalized idiom. Grossman's passions are two—an Israel at peace with its neighbors and a citizenry restored to dignity through the individual language of literature, which can bring us together with the fate of those who are distant and foreign. Grossman lays claim to an acquired naïveté in his hopefulness; how welcome and enlightening it is.' Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Kreyszig, Erwin, Introductory Functional Analysis with Applications, John Wiley and Sons 1989 Amazon: 'Kreyszig's "Introductory Functional Analysis with Applications", provides a great introduction to topics in real and functional analysis. This book is part of the Wiley Classics Library and is extremely well written, with plenty of examples to illustrate important concepts. It can provide you with a solid base in these subjects, before one takes on the likes of Rudin and Royden. I had purchased a copy of this book, when I was taking a graduate course on real analysis and can only strongly recommend it to anyone else.' Krishnan S. Kartik
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Sprott, Walter John Herbert, Human Groups, Penguin books 1970 Jacket: This book deals with 'face-to-face relationships. These occur in relatively permanent groups, such as the family, the village ad the neighbourhood. Some of the studies which have been made of such groups are described. There has alsobeen agreat deal of experimental work done on the way in which eople behave in artificial groups set up in the psychological laboratory, and a general review is given of such work and of the principal findings in the study of 'group dynamics'. An account is also given of groups of a more temporary nature, such as crowds, prison communities and brain-washing meetings. These studies are relevant to the meaning of the expression 'Man is a social animal'. The author shows that man derives his specifically human nature from his social relationships, and discusses the present-day problem of satisfying social needs in a world of impersonal contacts. The dangers of over-socialization are also pointed out.'
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Tanenbaum, Andrew S, Computer Networks, Prentice Hall International 1996 Preface: 'The key to designing a computer network was first enunciated by Julius Caesar: Divide and Conquer. The idea is to design a network as a sequence of layers, or abstract machines, each one based upon the previous one. . . . This book uses a model in which networks are divided into seven layers. The structure of the book follows the structure of the model to a considerable extent.'
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Taylor, Marjorie, Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create them, Oxford University Press 1999 'Very well written, very scholarly; Dr. Taylor lovingly describes this fantastic aspect of children's lives; full of lively examples and in depth analysis; we strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in imagination.' A Reader, Amazon.com
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Papers

Knill, E, "Quantum computing with realistically noisy devices", Nature, 434, 7029, 3 March 2005, page 39-44. 'In theory, quantum computers offer a means of solving problems that would be intractable on conventional computers. Assuming that a quantum computer could be constructed, it would in practice be required to function with noisy devices called 'gates'. These gates cause decoherence of the fragile quantum states that are central to the computer's operation. The goal of so-called 'fault tolerant quantum computing' is therefore to compure accurately, even when the error probability per gate (EPG) is high. Here we report a simple architecture for failt-tolerant computing, providing evidence that accurate quantum computing is possible for EPGs as high as three per cent. Such EPGs have been experimentally demonstrated, but to avoid excessive resource overheads required by the necessary architecture, lower EPGs are needed. Assuming the availability of quantum resources comparable to the digital resources available in today's computers, we show that non-trivial quantum computations at EPGs of as high as one percent could be implemented.' . back

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Aquinas 30, Is goodness divided into the virtuous [honestum] the useful [utile] and the pleasant [delectabile]?, 'I answer that, This division properly concerns human goodness. But if we consider the nature of goodness from a higher and more universal point of view, we shall find that this division properly concerns goodness as such. For everything is good so far as it is desirable, and is a term of the movement of the appetite; the term of whose movement can be seen from a consideration of the movement of a natural body. Now the movement of a natural body is terminated by the end absolutely; and relatively by the means through which it comes to the end, where the movement ceases; so a thing is called a term of movement, so far as it terminates any part of that movement. Now the ultimate term of movement can be taken in two ways, either as the thing itself towards which it tends, e.g. a place or form; or a state of rest in that thing. Thus, in the movement of the appetite, the thing desired that terminates the movement of the appetite relatively, as a means by which something tends towards another, is called the useful; but that sought after as the last thing absolutely terminating the movement of the appetite, as a thing towards which for its own sake the appetite tends, is called the virtuous; for the virtuous is that which is desired for its own sake; but that which terminates the movement of the appetite in the form of rest in the thing desired, is called the pleasant.' back

Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin - Wikipedia, Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin took place on November 4, 1995 (12th of Marcheshvan, 5756 on the Hebrew Calendar) at 21:30, at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv. The assassin, Yigal Amir, a far-right-wing religious Zionist strenuously opposed Rabin's peace initiative and particularly the signing of the Oslo Accords.' back

Athanasius of Alexandria, Vita S. Antoni, '[Text here is from Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, Volume IV of NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS, Series II, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, editors. The pagination of this edition has been preserved here for citation purposes.] ' back

Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, National Pain Strategy, 'The intended audiences for the National Pain Strategy are state and federal governments, funders, clinicians, consumers, researchers and research funders. The recommendations contained in this Strategy have been developed through an independent process, including discussion at the National Pain Summit in March 2010. The process included health professionals, consumers, funders and industry. It was led by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, Faculty of Pain Medicine, Australian Pain Society, and Chronic Pain Australia in collaboration with inaugural supporters, the MBF Foundation and the University of Sydney Pain Management Research Institute.' back

Barbara Ellen, Cold sexual contempt rives too many men, 'Sex cases seem never far from the news. But, in part because I’m trying to avoid landing in hot water – thank you dear lawyers – I don’t intend to write about any court cases at all. Instead, if you’ll indulge me, my concern is more about sex in society, more about casual sex, sexual manners, inebriation and sobriety. It’s also about people who, for whatever reason, give themselves “permission” to treat a sexual partner differently, less respectfully, more degradingly, than they might treat another. And how the people who do this might be genuinely bewildered at being criticised – holding a sincere belief that they’ve done absolutely nothing wrong because, playing by their rules, they feel as if they haven’t. back

CERN, Large Hadron Collider, 'The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It first started up on 10 September 2008, and remains the latest addition to CERN’s accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way.' back

Christian persecution of paganism under Theodosius I - Wikipedia, Christian persecution of paganism under Theodosius I - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Christian persecution of paganism under Theodosius I began in 381, after the first couple of years of his reign as co-emperor in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. In the 380s, Theodosius I reiterated Constantine's ban on pagan sacrifice, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, pioneered the criminalization of magistrates who did not enforce anti-pagan laws, broke up some pagan associations and destroyed pagan temples. . . . In 392 he became emperor of the whole empire (the last one to be so). From this moment until the end of his reign in 395, while pagans remained outspoken in their demands for toleration,[4][5] he authorized or participated in the destruction of many temples, holy sites, images and objects of piety throughout the empire[6][7][8][page needed][9][page needed][10] in actions by Christians against major pagan sites.' back

Cistercian Publication (translator Sister Benedicta Ward), Selections from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 'Anthony the Great, called 'The Father of Monks' was born in central Egypt about AD the son of peasant farmers who were Christian. In c. 269 he heard the Gospel read in church and applied to himself the words. 'Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and come . . .’ He devoted himself to a life of asceticism under the guidance of a recluse near his village.' back

Confession (religion) - Wikipedia, Confession (religion) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Confession, in many religions, is the acknowledgment of one's sins (sinfulness) or wrongs.' back

David Conn, Hillsborough disaster: deadly mistkes and lies that lsted decades, 'As the longest inquest in British legal history unfolded, a picture emerged of a callously negligent police force led by an inexperienced commander whose actions directly led to the deaths of 96 people. It was a year into these inquests, and 26 years since David Duckenfield, as a South Yorkshire police chief superintendent, took command of the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, that he finally, devastatingly, admitted his serious failures directly caused the deaths of 96 people there.' back

Entropy - Wikipedia, Entropy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when converting energy to work. During this work, entropy accumulates in the system, but has to be removed by dissipation in the form of waste heat.' back

F Heylighen and C Joslyn, The Law of Requisite Variety , 'Control or regulation is most fundamentally formulated as a reduction of variety: perturbations with high variety affect the system's internal state, which should be kept as close as possible to the goal state, and therfore exhibit a low variety. So in a sense control prevents the transmittion of variety from environment to system. Thjis is the opposite of information transmission, where the purpose is to manimally conserve vareity.' back

Graeco-Roman Museum - Wikipedia, Graeco-Roman Museum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Graeco-Roman Museum of Alexandria in Egypt was created in 1892. It was first built in an five-room apartment, inside one small building in Rosetta Street (later Avenue Canope and now Horriya). In 1895, it was transferred to another, larger building near Gamal Abdul Nasser Street. The museum contains several pieces from the 3rd century BC, such as a sculpture of Apis in black granite, the sacred bull of the Egyptians, mummies, sarcophagus, tapestries, and other objects offering a view of Greco-Roman civilization in contact with Egypt.' back

Heather Phillips, The Great Library of Alexandria?, 'Ancient Alexandria – a city founded by Alexander the Great as a showplace “metropolis linking Greece and Egypt” – was a city in which wonders abounded. The city featured wide boulevards laid out in a grid, and buildings constructed of granite and marble. Some say that Alexander himself had a hand in planning this great city. One of the most notable wonders of the city was the Great Library of Alexandria (hereinafter Great Library or Library), an institution which has assumed legendary proportions in the mythos of western civilization.' back

Heather Saul, Sheena Shirani: What its really like to be a female TV anchor in Iran, 'Up until three months ago, Sheena Shirani was a prominent journalist living in Iran, where she worked as a newscaster at the state-funded, English-speaking Press TV news network. . . . In her role as an anchor, Ms Shirani found herself exposed to criticism from a society where a woman’s position is expected to be one focused on submission, domesticity and servitude to the family. She was also a divorced single mother in a country where oppressive laws ensure women remain firmly under the control of the men in their family. For women, studying and even leaving the country can require the permission of their spouse.' back

Hypatia - Wikipedia, Hypatia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Hypatia (Greek: Ὑπατίᾱ Hupatíā; born c. 350–70; died 415),often called Hypatia of Alexandria (Ancient Greek: Ὑπατίᾱ η Αλεξανδρινή), was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Byzantine Empire. She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy. According to contemporary sources, Hypatia was murdered by a Christian mob or by Christian zealots known as Parabalani after being accused of exacerbating a conflict between two prominent figures in Alexandria, the governor, Orestes, and the bishop, Cyril of Alexandria.' back

Jared Owens, Teen boy chrged over Anzac Day terror plot, '“It is of great and ongoing concern that people so young remain susceptible to extremist ideologies and are willing to carry out criminal acts that attract significant penalties,” Mr Keenan, who assists Malcolm Turnbull on terrorism issues, said. “Families, friends and communities play a vital role in helping authorities prevent someone who may be showing signs of radicalisation from doing themselves or others harm.” ' back

Jonathan Stevenson, Trump's Foreighn 'Policy', 'Might Trump’s handpicked national-security officials not form a countervailing cabal that could outweigh career diplomatic, defense, and intelligence officials? That is essentially what happened in George W. Bush’s administration after 9/11, when Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld steamrollered both the State Department and CIA analysts in marching the United States into Iraq on the pretext of Saddam Hussein’s illusory weapons of mass destruction. In turn, cynical White House lawyers certified forms of “enhanced interrogation” that even a conservative Supreme Court would have found unconstitutional.' back

Masha Bell, Difficulties in learning to read and write English, 'The English spelling system is very different from other alphabetic writing systems. It is more complex, because many of its 44 sounds are spelt differently in different positions of words, such as ‘out – now’ or ‘ship – station’. It is also much more irregular. It uses 205 spellings for its 44 sounds, and many of them are unpredictable and have to be memorised word by word, like those for long /oo/ in ‘blue, shoe, too’ and ‘flew through’. Such unpredictable inconsistencies make learning to write English very time-consuming and much slower than in other languages with comparable writing systems.' back

Mat Drange, The Kentucky gun owner who developed his own count of gun violence in the US, 'More than 13,000 people were shot and killed last year alone, with twice as many injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the not-for-profit group Bryant founded. Since 2014, Bryant’s team has recorded more than 100,000 incidents, including those where a gun is used in public and no one is hurt. Instances of “defensive gun use” – ie a good guy with a gun who made a difference – accounted for less than 3%.' back

Matthew 28: 18-20, 'All power is given to me [Jesus] . . . , '18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” ' back

Michael Slezak, Al Gore attacks CSIRO's climate cuts and praises Labout's proposals, 'Al Gore has said the decision by Australia’s science agency CSIRO to cut climate research should be “re-evaluated at the highest level”, since they limit a source of critical information for the entire world as it attempts to solve the challenges posed by climate change. . . . The comments by Gore, a leading climate change campaigner, were made in a wide-ranging conversation in the latest edition of the Australian literary quarterly the Griffith Review, which has also been published online by Guardian Australia.' back

New York Times Editorial Board, Georgetown and the Sin of Slavery, 'Many people may be startled to learn that the Jesuits were among the largest slaveholders in the nation. But as the historian Craig Steven Wilder notes in the forthcoming book “Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development,” the Catholic Church was fully involved with slavery in the colonial period. Professor Wilder writes that income from slave plantations gave Catholics the resources to resist colonial-era persecution, allowed the church to survive through the American Revolution and underwrote the church’s expansion.' back

Nicole Hasham, Michael Gordon, Papua New Guinea coury finds Australia's detentio of asylum seekers on Manus Island is ilegal, 'Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says about 900 men being held at the Manus Island detention centre will not be brought to Australia after Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court ruled their detention was illegal. . . . The court ruled the detention breached the constitutional right of asylum seekers to personal liberty. It ordered the Australian and PNG governments to immediately cease the "unconstitutional and illegal detention of asylum seekers" at Manus Island, and stop the breach of their human rights.' back

Oxyrhyncus papyri - Wikipedia, Oxyrhyncus papyri - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by archaeologists including Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (28°32′N 30°40′E, modern el-Bahnasa).' back

Pope John Paull II, Catechism of the Catholic Church - The sacrament of Baptism 1213, '1213 Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit (vitae spiritualis ianua), and the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: "Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word." back

Ryan Devereaux, Cora Currier, Pentagon denies war crimes allegations in Kunduz hospital killings, 'Nearly seven months after the first shots were fired, the Pentagon has released its full report detailing the night of chaos and horror that left 42 patients and staffers dead at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. In publishing the highly anticipated account, the military concluded that its attack did not amount to a war crime because its effects were not intentional, a view at odds with certain interpretations of international law.' back

Shuki Sadeh, The belated battle to revive the dying Dead Sea, 'Forty years of wandering from bad decisions to neglect have done terrible damage to the lowest place on earth.' back

Toledot Yeshu - Wikipedia, Toledot Yeshu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, back

Uncertainty principle - Wikipedia, Uncertainty principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle known as complementary variables, such as position x and momentum p, can be known simultaneously.' back

Universe (mathematics) - Wikipedia, Universe (mathematics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, and particularly in set theory and the foundations of mathematics, a universe is a class that contains (as elements) all the entities one wishes to consider in a given situation. There are several versions of this general idea, described in the following sections.' back

Waleed Aly, The monstrous failure of our asylum seeker policy, 'The design flaws of our policy are slowly being exposed. Labor can try to revel if it likes, but let's be abundantly clear: it's revelling in its own failure.' back

vol VII: Notes

2016

Notes

Sunday 24 April 2016

Monday 25 April 2016

Tuesday 26 April 2016

Wednesday 27 April 2016

Thursday 28 April 2016

Friday 29 April 2016

Saturday 30 April 2016

Further reading

Books

Papers

Links