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Collins, Wilke, The Woman in White, Penguin Classics 2003 Review 'Novel by Wilkie Collins, published serially in All the Year Round (November 1859-July 1860) and in book form in 1860. Noted for its suspenseful plot and unique characterization, the successful novel brought Collins great fame; he adapted it into a play in 1871. This dramatic tale, inspired by an actual criminal case, is told through multiple narrators. Frederick Fairlie, a wealthy hypochondriac, hires virtuous Walter Hartright to tutor his beautiful niece and heiress, Laura, and her homely, courageous half-sister, Marian Halcombe. Although Hartright and Laura fall in love, she honors her late father's wish that she marry Sir Percival Glyde, a villain who plans to steal her inheritance. Glyde is assisted by sinister Count Fosco, a cultured, corpulent Italian who became the archetype of subsequent villains in crime novels. Their plot is threatened by Anne Catherick, a mysterious fugitive from a mental asylum who dresses in white, resembles Laura, and knows the secret of Glyde's illegitimate birth. Through the perseverance of Hartright and Marian, Glyde and Fosco are defeated and killed, allowing Hartright to marry Laura.' -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
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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.
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Pawel, Ernst, The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka, Collins Harvill 1988 'Dr Franz Kafka, a German writer who lived in Prague, died the day before yesterday in the Kierling Sanatorium at Klosterneuberg near Vienna. Few knew him, for he was a loner, a recluse wise in the ways of the world and frightened by it. For years he had been suffering from a lung disease, which he cherished and fostered even while accepting treatment. . . . It endowed him with a delicacy of feeling that bordered on the miraculous, and with a spiritual purity uncompromising to the point of horror. . . . He wrote the most significant works of modern German literature; their stark truth makes them seem naturalistic even where they speak in symbols. They reflect the irony and prophetic vision of a man condemned to see the world with such blinding clarity that he found it unbearable and went to his death.' Milena Jesenska, Narodny Listy 5 June 1924 (Pawel page 447)
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Quinlan, Michael, and Tanya Ogilvie-White (editor), On Nuclear Deterrence - The Correspondence of Sir Michael Quinlan, Internsional Institute for Strategic Studies 2011 'This timely book, published in the lead up to the 2012-14 decision on Trident renewal, makes available for the first time the late Sir Michael Quinlan’s private correspondence on nuclear deterrence. It shows why Sir Michael, as Policy Director and then Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence during the last years of the Cold War, became known as the ‘high priest of deterrence’: his unparalleled grasp of nuclear strategy, contribution to nuclear doctrine in the UK and NATO, and deep and genuine concern with defence ethics earned him respect and admiration around the world. . . . '
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Papers

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Raine, Derek, "Book Review: Relative beginners", Nature, 437, 7059, 27 October 2005, page 1237. Review of

Merman, N David, Its About Time: Understanding Einstein's Relativity, Princeton University Press 2005 '... Relativity can be summed up in a phrase that Einstein used when reflecting on the origin of the theory: "At last it came to me that time itself was suspect." It is the way that this statement is unpacked that distinguishes the many exposition of the subject. David Merman brings to the task a lifetime of experience in making relativity accessible to the non-specialist student without simplifying more than Einstein's well known dictum will allow.' Derek Raine, Nature 437:1237.
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Links

Action (physics) - Wikipedia, Action (physics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, action is an attribute of the dynamics of a physical system. It is a mathematical functional which takes the trajectory, also called path or history, of the system as its argument and has a real number as its result. Action has the dimension of energy × time, and its unit is joule-seconds in the International System of Units (SI). Generally, the action takes different values for different paths. Classical mechanics postulates that the path actually followed by a physical system is that for which the action is minimized, or, more strictly, is stationary. The classical equations of motion of a system can be derived from this principle of least action. The stationary action formulation of classical mechanics extends to quantum mechanics in the Feynman path integral formulation, where a physical system follows simultaneously all possible paths with amplitudes determined by the action.' back

Andrew Weisburd, Clint Watts and JM Berger, Trolling for Trump: How Russia is trying to destroy our democracy, 'But most observers are missing the point. Russia is helping Trump’s campaign, yes, but it is not doing so solely or even necessarily with the goal of placing him in the Oval Office. Rather, these efforts seek to produce a divided electorate and a president with no clear mandate to govern. The ultimate objective is to diminish and tarnish American democracy. Unfortunately, that effort is going very well indeed.' back

Glenn Greenwald, Trump willhave vast powers. He can thank the Democrats for them., 'Yet, beginning in his first month in office and continuing through today, Obama not only continued many of the most extreme executive-power policies he once condemned, but in many cases strengthened and extended them. His administration detained terrorism suspects without due process, proposed new frameworks to keep them locked up without trial, targeted thousands of individuals (including a U.S. citizen) for execution by drone, invoked secrecy doctrines to shield torture and eavesdropping programs from judicial review, and covertly expanded the nation’s mass electronic surveillance.' back

Madelaine Teahan, Donald Trump to Catholic leaders: 'I will fight for you'., 'In his letter he said: “Catholics in the United States of America are a rich part of our nation’s history. The United States was, and is, strengthened through Catholic men, women, priests and religious Sisters, ministering to people, marching in the civil rights movement, educating millions of children in Catholic schools, creating respected health care institutions, and in their founding and helping the ongoing growth of the pro-life cause. I have a message for Catholics: I will be there for you. I will stand with you. I will fight for you.” ' back

Mark Hudson, Australiato ratify Paris climate deal, under a large Trump-shaped shadow, 'Australia’s government has announced that it is to ratify the Paris climate agreement, which was struck 11 months ago and entered into force last Friday.' back

Oleg Kashin, The Making of a Modern Russian Hero, 'Russians love the phrase “information war.” Usually, it refers to the use of news and ideas to fight enemies. But with Motorola, the words took on a literal meaning. The Russian news media prefer not to talk about Russian troops’ participation in the war in Ukraine. Early in 2015, President Vladimir V. Putin claimed that the men fighting against the Ukrainian Army in Donetsk and the surrounding areas were local miners and tractor drivers. The truth, of course, is that amid Russian tank operators and infantrymen, tractor drivers and miners have been few and far between.' back

Planck constant - Wikipedia, Planck constant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Classical statistical mechanics requires the existence of [Planck's constant] ℏ (but does not define its value). Eventually, following upon Planck's discovery, it was recognized that physical action cannot take on an arbitrary value. Instead, it must be some multiple of a very small quantity, the "quantum of action", now called the Planck constant. Classical physics cannot explain this fact. In many cases, such as for monochromatic light or for atoms, this quantum of action also implies that only certain energy levels are allowed, and values in between are forbidden.' back

Svenja J Kratz, Scientists ponder the evolutionary desire to create - but where are the women?, back

The Artstor Blog, Surface beauty: neoclassicism and Napoleon's scandalous sister, 'Antonio Canova began working on Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix in 1805, the same year that Pope Pius VII appointed him Inspector General of Fine Arts and Antiquities for the Papal State. By this point, Canova’s reliance upon classical sources, idealized perfection of the forms, fluidity of line, graceful modeling, and exquisitely refined detail had solidly established his reputation as the preeminent sculptor in Europe.' back

Yanis Varoufakis, Trump's victory comes with a silver lining for the world's progressives, back

vol VII: Notes

2016

Notes

Sunday 31 October 2016

Monday 1 November 2016

Tuesday 2 November 2016

Wednesday 3 November 2016

Thursday 4 November

Friday 5 November 2016

Saturday 6 November 2016

Further reading

Books

Papers

Links