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Auyang, Sunny Y., How Quantum Theory is possible, Oxford University Press 1995 Jacket: 'Quantum field theory (QFT) combines quantum mechanics with Einstein's special theory of relativity and underlies elementary particle physics. This book presents a philosophical analysis of QFT. It is the first treatise in which the philosophies of space-time, quantum phenomena and particle interactions are encompassed in a unified framework.'
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le Carre, John, The Night Manager, Ballantine Books 1984 Kirkus Reviews 'Le Carr‚ returns to the same subject as his disappointingly episodic The Secret Pilgrim--the fate of espionage in the new world order--but now looks forward instead of backward, showing a not-quite innocent mangled between that new order and the old one, whose course le Carr‚ has so peerlessly chronicled for 30 years. Jonathan Pine, night manager at a Cairo hotel, helps Arab playboy Freddie Hamid's mistress Madame Sophie photocopy papers linking him to arms mogul Richard Roper and, while he's at it, makes an extra copy to send to a friend in the Secret Service--only to find that the leak has gotten back to Freddie and that Jonathan's belated, guilty devotion to Sophie can't protect her from a fatal beating. Six months later, Jonathan, now working in Geneva, meets Roper in person and, vowing revenge, volunteers for Leonard Burr's fledgling government agency as the inside man who can supply actionable details of Roper's next arms- for-drugs deal. With the help of Whitehall mandarin Rex Goodhew, Burr sets up a plausibly shady dossier for Jonathan and stages the kidnapping of Roper's son so that Jonathan can foil the snatch and get invited aboard Roper's yacht. But even as Jonathan, still grieving for Sophie, finds himself attracted to Roper's bedmate Jed Marshall and overriding Burr's orders to stay out of Roper's papers, the boys in Whitehall--divided between independents like Goodhew, who want the old agencies broken up, and his cold-warrior nemesis Geoffrey Darker, who insists on maintaining centralized authority--are squabbling over control of the mission, with dire results for Jonathan, whose most dangerous enemies turn out to be his well-meaning masters back home. Despite the familiarity of the story's outlines, le Carr‚ shows his customary mastery in the details--from Jonathan's self-lacerating momentum to the intricacies of interagency turf wars--and reveals once again why nobody writes espionage fiction with his kind of authority.'
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight : A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding'
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Peacock, John A, Cosmological Physics, Cambridge University Press 1999 Nature Book Review: 'The intermingling of observational detail and fundamental theory has made cosmology an exceptionally rich, exciting and controversial science. Students in the field — whether observers or particle theorists — are expected to be acquainted with matters ranging from the Supernova Ia distance scale, Big Bang nucleosynthesis theory, scale-free quantum fluctuations during inflation, the galaxy two-point correlation function, particle theory candidates for the dark matter, and the star formation history of the Universe. Several general science books, conference proceedings and specialized monographs have addressed these issues. Peacock's Cosmological Physics ambitiously fills the void for introducing students with a strong undergraduate background in physics to the entire world of current physical cosmology. The majestic sweep of his discussion of this vast terrain is awesome, and is bound to capture the imagination of most students.' Ray Carlberg, Nature 399:322
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Papers

t'Hooft, Gerard, "Gauge theories of the forces between elementary particles", Scientific American, 242, 6, June 1980, page 90. 'All the basic forces of nature are now described by theories of this kind. The properties of the forces are deduced from the symmetries or regularities apparent in the laws of physics.'. back

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AFP in Paris, Universe has 2 trillion galaxies, astronomers say, 'There are a dizzying 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, up to 20 times more than previously thought, astronomers reported on Thursday. The surprising finding, based on 3D modeling of images collected over 20 years by the Hubble Space Telescope, was published in the Astronomical Journal. . . . “It boggles the mind that over 90% of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied,” commented Christopher Conselice of the University of Nottingham, who led the study. “Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we observe these galaxies with the next generation of telescopes?” he said in a statement.' back

Alan Finkel, Electric Future - Wiring for Progress, 'Change is very rarely convenient. It’s not linear and it’s never unopposed. There will be mistakes and failed attempts along the way, as we branch off down all the paths where transformational technologies might go. Perhaps the legendary American architect and designer Buckminster Fuller said it best: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” The confronting question is, what do we want that change to be?' back

Bonnie Mappin, James Watson, Sarah Chapman and Stephen Kearney, Four environmental reasons why fast-tracking the Carmichael coal mine is a bad isea, 'Given the clear environmental impacts this mine will have, not just for the region but for the whole planet, we question the effectiveness of Australia’s current environmental laws that have allowed it to be approved. We believe it is time to place the entire social and environmental costs and benefits of this mine on the public table, and ask the question of the politicians who are meant to make decisions in our best interest: is the short-term profit of selling some coal worth it?' back

Carl Rhodes and Peter Bloom, Both Trump and Clinton would see the US run like a corporation , 'This new ideal of the state is one that stresses competitiveness, productivity and growth at all costs. It desires its public services to be streamlined and cut back to the bare minimum in order to enhance the financial bottom line. Not surprisingly, akin to a corporation, this type of governance lends itself both formally and informally to political cultures of authoritarianism. Philosopher Jacques Rancière pulls no punches when he argues that this turn to authoritarian politics is tantamount to a “hatred of democracy”. Corporations are not democratic institutions. They are controlled and managed unilaterally for the express purposes of their owners. To run government this way eschews the core democratic ideals of equality, participation and community.' back

Centre for Policy Development, New legal opinion and business roundtable on climate risks and directors’ duties, 'CPD has released a new legal opinion on the extent to which Australian corporate law permits (and indeed requires) company directors to take climate change into account when making decisions about company strategy, performance and risk disclosure. The opinion was commissioned by CPD in partnership with the Future Business Council, and provided by Noel Hutley SC and Sebastian Hartford-Davis on instruction from Sarah Barker and Maged Girgis of Minter Ellison Lawyers.' back

Cherian George, The curious power of hate propaganda in open societies, 'Today, demagogues don’t actually need to silence or censor their opponents. It turns out their followers are quite happy to succumb to wilful blindness, believing what they want to believe even as contradictory evidence stares them in the face. One result of this is open societies remain surprisingly susceptible to misinformation that instigates intimidation, discrimination and violence against vulnerable groups. Untruths doled out in hate campaigns find ready buyers even in a free marketplace of ideas.' back

Courtland Milloy, Some see a nightmare with a Trump loss, but they may be looking at the wrong bodeyman, 'What many of the post-Trump stories miss is the villain that lurks in the shadows. Former labor secretary Robert Reich has been one of the few who dare to call it out: “The real problem isn’t globalization or technological change per se,” Reich wrote in “What Trump Will Do When He Loses,” an opinion piece published in Newsweek in August. “It’s that America’s moneyed interests won’t finance policies necessary to reverse their consequences — such as a first-class education for all the nation’s young, wage subsidies that bring all workers up to a livable income, a massive ‘green’ jobs program and a universal basic income.” ' back

Covariant derivative - Wikipedia, Covariant derivative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'IIn mathematics, the covariant derivative is a way of specifying a derivative along tangent vectors of a manifold. Alternatively, the covariant derivative is a way of introducing and working with a connection on a manifold by means of a differential operator, to be contrasted with the approach given by a principal connection on the frame bundle – see affine connection.' back

Danny Hakim, Doubt About Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops, ;Twenty years ago, Europe largely rejected genetic modification at the same time the United States and Canada were embracing it. Comparing results on the two continents, using independent data as well as academic and industry research, shows how the technology has fallen short of the promise. . . . Twenty years ago, Europe largely rejected genetic modification at the same time the United States and Canada were embracing it. Comparing results on the two continents, using independent data as well as academic and industry research, shows how the technology has fallen short of the promise.' 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

E J Dionne Jr, The costs of Comey's appeasement, 'The evidence suggests that FBI Director James B. Comey is a decent man. The evidence also suggests that he has been intimidated by pressure from Republicans in Congress whose interest is not in justice but in destroying Hillary Clinton. On Friday, a whipsawed Comey gave in. Breaking with FBI precedent and Justice Department practice, he weighed in on one side of a presidential campaign.' back

Fermion - Wikipedia, Fermion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, fermions are particles with a half-integer spin, such as protons and electrons. They obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics and are named after Enrico Fermi. In the Standard Model there are two types of elementary fermions: quarks and leptons. . . . In contrast to bosons, only one fermion can occupy a quantum state at a given time (they obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle). Thus, if more than one fermion occupies the same place in space, the properties of each fermion (e.g. its spin) must be different from the rest. Therefore fermions are usually related with matter while bosons are related with radiation, though the separation between the two is not clear in quantum physics. back

Gay Alcorn, Less talk, more action: why Victoria is the progress state, 'The government’s latest initiative is the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships program that will be mandatory for all school levels in government and Catholic schools from next year. Independent schools can use it if they wish. That the government scrapped religious instruction in state schools in favour of a respectful relationship curriculum took some chutzpah. The program was recommended by Victoria’s royal commission into family violence, which itself was a bold inquiry, followed up by considerable government funding.' back

Geoffrey Robertson, If you think the High Court is interfering in democracy, the you don't understand how Britain works, 'The Lord Chief Justice of England has stopped the UK’s Prime Minister from trying to overturn the result of the Civil War. That war, from 1642 to 1646 and which left one in 10 Englishmen dead in muddy fields, established the sovereignty of Parliament, which Theresa May’s Attorney General sought to circumvent by using an arcane power called the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50. As he should have known, this power cannot be used to repeal an existing law; the 1972 statute by which Parliament took us into the common market can only be repealed by Parliament itself. If the Government can be so woefully ignorant of our constitutional history, perhaps it is time to adopt a written constitution to serve as a reminder. ' back

Giles Hamm et al, Cultural inovation and megafauna interction in the early settlement of arid Australia, 'Elucidating the material culture of early people in arid Australia and the nature of their environmental interactions is essential for understanding the adaptability of populations and the potential causes of megafaunal extinctions 50–40 thousand years ago (ka). Humans colonized the continent by 50 ka1, 2, but an apparent lack of cultural innovations compared to people in Europe and Africa3, 4 has been deemed a barrier to early settlement in the extensive arid zone2, 3. Here we present evidence from Warratyi rock shelter in the southern interior that shows that humans occupied arid Australia by around 49 ka, 10 thousand years (kyr) earlier than previously reported2. The site preserves the only reliably dated, stratified evidence of extinct Australian megafauna5, 6, including the giant marsupial Diprotodon optatum, alongside artefacts more than 46 kyr old. We also report on the earliest-known use of ochre in Australia and Southeast Asia (at or before 49–46 ka), gypsum pigment (40–33 ka), bone tools (40–38 ka), hafted tools (38–35 ka), and backed artefacts (30–24 ka), each up to 10 kyr older than any other known occurrence7, 8. Thus, our evidence shows that people not only settled in the arid interior within a few millennia of entering the continent9, but also developed key technologies much earlier than previously recorded for Australia and Southeast Asia8.' back

Hiu Feng, China's currency needs reform at home before gaining more traction iternationally, back

Holland Cotter, 'Painting the Revolution' Offers Mexican Muralist Muscle and Delicate Beauty, 'Organized with the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, where it will travel in February, the show focuses on pioneers of the Mexican movement for artistic nationalism, following the timeline of revolutionary events. In 1911, the country’s longtime president, Porfirio Díaz, was chased out of office. He had kept peace for decades by pampering the elite, enriching the army, and treating the poor, which meant practically everyone else, like dirt. Finally, dirt said no, and everything changed, including art.' back

Janet Street-Porter, The Young Pope is a hit with Catholics - so why is the Vatican so silent about it, 'The most compelling and challenging drama series on television at the moment is The Young Pope, showing on Sky Atlantic. Jude Law gives the performance of his life as a newly elected Pius XIII: right-wing, chain-smoking, deeply cynical and ultra-political. Machiavelli operating in the 21st century.' back

Jimi Hendrix, Solo Little Wing, 'A Rare instrumental version of my Favourite Jimi Hendrix song! http://chrisadams.tv Video edited by Hagit Kastel!' back

Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust:Eine Tragödie, 'Geschrieben steht: »Im Anfang war das Wort!« Hier stock ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort? Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen, Ich muß es anders übersetzen, Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin. Geschrieben steht: Im Anfang war der Sinn. Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile, Daß deine Feder sich nicht übereile! Ist es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft? Es sollte stehn: Im Anfang war die Kraft! Doch, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe, Schon warnt mich was, daß ich dabei nicht bleibe. Mir hilft der Geist! Auf einmal seh ich Rat Und schreibe getrost: Im Anfang war die Tat!' back

Jon Henley, Greenand's receding icecap to expose to-secret US nuclear project, 'At the height of the cold war, as the US and the USSR were engaged in a terrifying standoff over the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba, the US army was considering the construction of a vast subterranean extension of Camp Century. A system of about 4,000 kilometres of icy underground tunnels and chambers extending over an area around three times the size of Denmark were to have housed 600 ballistic missiles in clusters six kilometres apart, trained on Moscow and its satellites. Eventually the engineers realised Iceworm would not work. The constantly moving ice was too unstable and would have deformed and perhaps even collapsed the tunnels.' back

Kim Webster and Zuleyka Zevallon, Study confirms intimate partner violence leading health risk factor for women, 'Among women 18 to 44 years, it was the biggest single risk factor when violence in all intimate relationships was included, bigger than smoking, alcohol use or being overweight or obese. When considering only violence by live-in partners, in this age group, partner violence ranked second only to alcohol use. The study found there had been no change in the burden since 2003.' back

Laurie Goodstein, Pope Francis Says Ban on Female Priests Is Likely to Endure, 'The Roman Catholic Church’s teaching that women cannot be ordained as priests is likely to last forever, Pope Francis said on Tuesday as he flew back to Rome from Sweden. Pope Francis had traveled to Sweden for a historic ceremony commemorating the year leading up to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. He was welcomed by the primate of the Church of Sweden, Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who is a woman.' back

List of the Catholic Bishops of the United States - Wikipedia, List of the Catholic Bishops of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The following is the List of the Catholic bishops of the United States. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States, informally known as the American Catholic Church, comprises 195 dioceses led by residential bishops. Auxiliary bishops serve in association with the residential bishops in larger dioceses. Dioceses led by archbishops are called archdioceses. There are thirty-two archbishops who serve as metropolitan bishops of their respective ecclesiastical provinces. As of March 2007, nine of these metropolitans have been designated Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church.' back

Lovin' Spoonful, Darling Be Home Soon, 'From the 1967 movie soundtrack "You're A Big Boy Now", "Darling Be Home Soon" also was released as a single that year and climbed to #15 on U.S record charts.' back

Matthew 23:33, You snakes, you brood of vipers!, '33 “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.' back

Minkowski space - Wikipedia, Minkowski space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematical physics, Minkowski space or Minkowski spacetime is a combination of Euclidean space and time into a four-dimensional manifold where the spacetime interval between any two events is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which they are recorded. Although initially developed by mathematician Hermann Minkowski for Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, the mathematical structure of Minkowski spacetime was shown to be an immediate consequence of the postulates of special relativity.' back

Noel Hutley SC and Sebasian Hartford-Davis, Memorandum of Opinion: Climate Change and Directors' Duties, back

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer - Wikipedia, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is a sonnet by English Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) written in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment at reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer as freely translated by the Elizabethan playwright George Chapman. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien.' back

Paul Krugman, Who Broke Politics?, 'As far as anyone can tell, Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House — and the leader of what’s left of the Republican establishment — isn’t racist or authoritarian. He is, however, doing all he can to make a racist authoritarian the most powerful man in the world. Why? Because then he could privatize Medicare and slash taxes on the wealthy. And that, in brief, tells you what has happened to the Republican Party, and to America.' back

Robert Mickens, Letter from Rome: 'Rigidity is Not a Gift from God', 'These are interesting times for the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family. In the thirty-five years since the now-sainted Polish pope established the specialized faculty at Rome’s Lateran University in 1981, bishops in eleven more countries (in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania) have set up affiliated sections of this academic center. And during these three-and-a-half decades, these pontifical faculties have been the training ground of some of the staunchest and most inflexible proponents of the church’s traditional (and some would say, outdated) teaching on marriage and human sexuality.' back

Shaun Walker, Ukraine stunned as vast cash reserves of political elite are made public, 'The prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, declared $1.2m (£980,000) and €460,000 (£410,000) in cash, as well as a collection of luxury watches. Many other officials declared hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cash. “Everyone is amazed that there is so much cash in our country,” said Kristina Berdynskykh, an investigative journalist who has written extensively on corruption among the elite.' back

Susan Schulman, The $100bn gold mine and the West Papuans who say they are counting the cost, 'Since the Suharto dictatorship annexed the region in a 1969 UN referendum largely seen as a fixed land grab, an estimated 500,000 West Papuans have been killed in their fight for self-rule. Decades of military and police oppression, kidnapping and torture have created a long-standing culture of fear. Local and foreign journalists are routinely banned, detained, beaten and forced to face trial on trumped-up charges. Undercover police regularly trail indigenous religious, social and political leaders. And children still in primary school have been jailed for taking part in demonstrations calling for independence from Indonesia. back

The Onion , God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule, '"I'm talking to all of you, here!" continued God, His voice rising to a shout. "Do you hear Me? I don't want you to kill anybody. I'm against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? Don't kill each other anymore—ever! I'm fucking serious!" Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept.' back

Tom Keneally, Celibacy and the modern priest: Tom Kineally on his new book Crimes of the Father, 'What I would argue, following Connor and Sipe, is that in enforcing celibacy, the Church too easily creates an atmosphere for heterosexual seminarians in which 51 per cent of the human race represent a sea of danger, and in which one of the mechanisms for dealing with this threat is for the seminarian simply not to grow up emotionally.' back

United States Senate, Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, 'In the fall of 2008, America suffered a devastating economic collapse. Once valuable securities lost most or all of their value, debt markets froze, stock markets plunged, and storied inancial firms went under. Millions of Americans lost their jobs; millions of families lost their homes; and good businesses shut down. These events cast the United States into an economic recession so deep that the country has yet to fully recover. This Report is the product of a two-year, bipartisan investigation by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into the origins of the 2008 financial crisis. The goals of this investigation were to construct a public record of the facts in order to deepen the understanding of what happened; identify some of the root causes of the crisis; and provide a factual foundation for the ongoing effort to fortify the country against the recurrence of a similar crisis in the future.' back

Wajahat Ali, The Khizr Khan Voters, 'As this ghoulish, absurd spectacle of an election sputters to the finish line, we can confidently say there is one winner: American Muslims. We are asserting our rights with swagger and demanding to be treated with fairness instead of being used as political props, the “eyes and ears” you can plug in to be a front-line defense against the Islamic State. We’re not Mr. Potato Head counterterrorism experts. We are Americans, and alienating us could prove to be politically costly.' back

Wojciech Hubert Zurek, 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. In quantum Darwinism, they are the progenitors of multiple copies spread throughout the environment -- the fittest quantum states that not only survive decoherence, but subvert it into carrying information about them -- into becoming a witness.' back

Zeynep Tufecki, WikiLeaks Isn't Whistleblowing, 'Data dumps by WikiLeaks have outed rape victims and gay people in Saudi Arabia, private citizens’ emails and personal information in Turkey, and the voice mail messages of Democratic National Committee staff members. Dissent requires the right to privacy: to be let alone in our vulnerabilities and the ability to form our thoughts and share them when we choose. These hacks undermine that crucial right.' back

vol VII: Notes

2016

Notes

Sunday 30 October 2016

Monday 31 October 2016

Tuesday 1 November 2016

Wednesday 2 November 2016

Thursday 3 November 2016

Friday 4 November 2016

Saturday 5 November 2016

Further reading

Books

Papers

Links