"natural theology > notes > 2016 > Sunday 13 November"

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Papers

Calder, Alan, "Constructive Mathematics", Scientific American, 241, 4, October 1979, page 134-143. 'This approach is based on the belief that mathematics can have real meaning only if its concepts can be constructed by the human mind, an issue that has divided mathematicians for over a century.'. back

Kogut, John B, "Lattice gauge theory approach to quantum chromodynamics", Reviews of Modern Physics, 55, 3, 3 July 1983, page 775-836. back

Wilson, Kenneth G, "Problems in physics with many scales of length", Scientific American, 241, 2, August 1979, page 140-157. 'Physical systems as varied as magnets and fluids are alike in having fluctuations in structure over a vast range of sizes. A novel method called the renormalisation group has been invented to explain them'. back

Links

Abu Bakr Nazi (Translated by William McCants), The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass, 'The management of savagery is the next stage that the Umma will pass through and it is considered the most critical stage. If we succeed in the management of this savagery, that stage (by the permission of God) will be a bridge to the Islamic state which has been awaited since the fall of the caliphate. If we fail – we seek refuge with God from that – it does not mean end of the matter; rather, this failure will lead to an increase in savagery!!' [page4] back

Andrew J. Bacevich, The Failure of American Liberalism, 'Now that Trump has won, however, the pre-election hyperbole might actually prove justified. The United States finds itself suddenly adrift in uncharted waters. As of January of next year, the captain on the bridge will be unlicensed and unqualified. We may hope that he masters his responsibilities before running the ship aground. In the meantime, the rough seas ahead might provide an incentive for liberals and conservatives alike to give a fresh look to some of those ideological alternatives that we just might have discarded prematurely.' back

Cathy Freeman, If I'd known my parents' story, who knows how much faster I could have run, 'I remember the emotion that came over me when Mum and I sat down to talk about this letter of rejection. I just remember my whole body swelled with this energy that only athletes know all too well, just before they’re doing a workout or competing, or go out to race and win. Competition and performance is often driven by emotion, no doubt. So I wish I’d known about this back when I was competing. Who knows how much faster I could have run!' back

Darren Curnoe, Humans are still evolving but in ways that might surprise you, 'But most surprising of all was the finding that the genes for blonde hair and blue eyes have been under selection over the last two millenia. In this case, it seems that sexual selection rather than natural selection has been driving an increase in the number of people carrying the genes for this combination. In the UK at least, it seems that gentlemen really do prefer blondes, well at least for the last 2,000 years anyway.' back

E J Dionne Jr., Against Trumpian Triumphalism, 'Obama’s base was made up of Americans of color, the young, and whites from the large metropolitan areas. But he was put over the top, as some of us insisted at the time, by securing a significant share of the white working-class vote, particularly in the Midwestern states where in 2012 he won 40 percent or more from whites without a college degree. In Wisconsin, for example, Obama won 45 percent of those voters; Clinton was backed by only 34 percent of them this year. And Clinton lost Wisconsin by just 27,000 votes.' back

Management of Savagery - Wikipedia, Management of Savagery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Islamic Nation Will Pass . . . also translated as Administration of Savagery, is a book by the Islamist strategist Abu Bakr Naji, published on the Internet in 2004. It aimed to provide a strategy for al-Qaeda and other extremists whereby they could create a new Islamic caliphate. The real identity of Abu Bakr Naji is claimed by the Al Arabiya Institute for Studies to be Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah.His known works are this piece and some contributions to the al-Qaeda online magazine Sawt al-Jihad. National Public Radio has described Naji as a "top al-Qaida insider" and characterized the work as "al-Qaida's playbook".' back

James Carroll, The Moral Weakness of Pope Benedict's "Last Testament", 'It seems impolite to say so, given Pope Benedict XVI’s chastened retreat to the shadows of the Vatican, back in 2013, but his papacy was a failed one. For nearly eight years, he led the Catholic Church in the broad collapse of its moral authority, from the crisis of criminal priests to the further alienation of women to the blatant dysfunction of the Church’s own bureaucracy. Still, there is one sense in which Benedict succeeded. After a career spent railing against relativism, he relativized the world’s last divine-right office, becoming the first Pope since 1415 to resign and giving his successor, Francis, the sway that he so astonishingly exploits today. At the end, the self-styled Pope Emeritus, still dressed in his white robes, lifted off from the Vatican in a white helicopter, which took him to Castel Gandolfo, the papal vacation palace on a lake outside Rome. He assumed the quiet, cloistered existence of a retired prelate. Today, he has broken his silence with “Last Testament,” a late-in-life attempt at personal reckoning that amounts, instead, to a reiteration of the ethical detachment that undercut him from the start.' back

Katharine McFarlane, Nothing to see here? The abuse and neglect of children in care is a centruy-old story in Australia, 'On average, there has been a major inquiry into aspects of the child welfare system every three years since then. The abuse suffered by children in care is exposed regularly. Every time, it’s met with the same excuses and promises. The children are presented as damaged, rather than the systems that are failing them. Agencies hide behind their professed best intentions and talk about “difficult” children.' back

Katharine Murphy, Gillian Triggs: I won't be cowed by political attacks, '“When my term is up and I’m digging in my garden, hopefully smelling a rose or two, I couldn’t live with any failure on my part to raise the critical human rights of the day – whether it’s the use of steel restraint chairs in juvenile detention centres, the indefinite detention in dangerous conditions of children, indefinite detention of those with cognitive disabilities, the world’s worst levels of detention of Indigenous people, and the failure to respond adequately to the deaths of women, children and some men in domestic violence, and of course the growing problem of homelessness.” ' back

Liquan Liu, Bilingual babies are better at detecting musical sounds, research shows, 'Exposure to multiple languages may sharpen infants’ music sensitivity in the first year after birth, new research has found. Compared to infants learning one language (monolinguals), those who grow up with more than one language (bilinguals/multilinguals) are more sensitive to the subtle pitch variations in language. . . . Results showed that infants growing up in bilingual environments are more able to distinguish between two violin notes than their monolingual counterparts.' back

May Bulman, Hundreds of Jewish scholars of Holocaust history call on Americans to 'mibilize in solidarity' against Trump, 'Hundreds of Jewish scholars of the holocaust have signed a statement condemning the “hateful and discriminatory language and threats” against minorities during Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and called on Americans to "resist attempts to place vulnerable groups in the crosshairs of nativist racisms." The statement, signed by more than 250 Jewish professors from across America, expresses the need to “evaluate where the country stands” following the election, and “resist the degradation of rights that Mr Trump’s rhetoric has provoked.” ' back

Michael E. Webber, The Coal Industry Isn't Coming Back, 'Nationwide, coal employment peaked in the 1920s. The more recent decline in Appalachian coal employment started in the 1980s during the administration of Ronald Reagan because of the role that automation and mechanization played in replacing miners with machines, especially in mountaintop removal mining. Job losses in Appalachia were compounded by deregulation of the railroads. Freight prices for trains dropped as a result, which meant that Western coal — which is much cleaner and cheaper than Eastern coal — could be sold to markets far away, cutting into the market share of Appalachian mines. These market forces recently drove six publicly traded coal producers into bankruptcy in the span of a year. Mr. Trump cannot reverse these trends.' back

Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, 'Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction. . . .

that grave errors with regard to this doctrine are being spread among those outside the true Church, and that among the faithful, also, inaccurate or thoroughly false ideas are being disseminated which turn minds aside from the straight path of truth. 9. For while there still survives a false rationalism, which ridicules anything that transcends and defies the power of human genius, and which is accompanied by a cognate error, the so-called popular naturalism, which sees and wills to see in the Church nothing but a juridical and social union, there is on the other hand a false mysticism creeping in, which, in its attempt to eliminate the immovable frontier that separates creatures from their Creator, falsifies the Sacred Scriptures.' . . .

Given at Rome, at St. Peter's on the twenty-ninth day of June, the Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, in the year 1943, the fifth of Our Pontificate.' back

Richard Ackland, The tirade about 18C is a massive piece of fakery, a culture war conceit, 'It is utterly delusional to suggest that speech will be “freerer” in Australia once 18C has been sliced and diced. The tirade about 18C is a massive piece of fakery, a culture war conceit. The proponents of change are not really interested in the wider horizons of free speech, other than loosening inhibitions on bigotry and racial nastiness. back

Robert Manne, The Mind of the Islamic State: An ideology of savagery, 'The most startling section of The Management of Savagery comes at its conclusion, in the section entitled ‘Our Method Is a Mercy to All Beings’. It argues that at the time of Noah’s flood God destroyed all unbelievers. In the early days of Islam, the sword of God smote Arab polytheists, unconverted Jews and Christians, Muslims who sinned against the faith, apostates who abandoned their religion. Through jihad, God “does not give free rein to … people to corrupt the earth”. Jihad provides “a salvation from the fire for coming generations” by ensuring “that people come on the Day of Resurrection, dragged to Paradise in chains”. Jihad is, however, not merely an expression of God’s stern justice. “Despite the blood, corpses, and limbs which encompass it and the killing and fighting which its practice entails”, jihad, Naji tells us, is God’s “greatest mercy to man”. In George Orwell’s imagined totalitarian state, “War Is Peace” and “Slavery Is Freedom”. In Abu Bakr Naji’s blood-soaked Management of Savagery, “Slaughter Is Mercy”.' back

Ron Rash, Appalacia's Sacrifice, 'At a time of such national divisiveness, Americans can find common ground in demanding safe drinking water for all of our citizens. The warning signs remain posted in the rural, almost totally white Kentucky city of Hindman, but the signs also remain up in the largely black Michigan city of Flint. Hindman and Flint are united in their misery. Perhaps safe drinking water can be one of the first issues around which we can begin to reunify our fragmented nation.' back

Shehab Khan, Ted Jeory, Donald Trump to inherit drone assassination programme with no effective rules, 'Donald Trump will inherit a military drone targeted assassination programme for which Barack Obama failed to put any effective rules in place and which has killed up to 4,666 people, including 745 civilians, under his presidency, new figures show.' back

Tilman Ruff, As the world pushes for a ban on nucelar weapons, Australia votes to stay on the wrong side of history, 'On October 27 2016, I watched as countries from around the world met in New York and resolved through the United Nations’ General Assembly First Committee to negotiate a new legally binding treaty to “prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”. It was carried by a majority of 123 to 38, with 16 abstentions. Australia was among the minority to vote “no”.' back

World Medical Association, World Medical Journal, Officieal Journal of the Wpr;d Medical Association
Editor in Chief Dr. Pēteris Apinis, Latvian Medical Association, Skolas iela 3, Riga, Latvia Phone +371 67 220 661 peteris@arstubiedriba.lv, editorin-chief@wma.net Co-Editor Prof. Dr. med. Elmar Doppelfeld, Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag, Dieselstr. 2, D-50859. Koln, Germany back

Zeynep Tufecki, Mark Zuckerberg Is in Denial, 'The problem with Facebook’s influence on political discourse is not limited to the dissemination of fake news. It’s also about echo chambers. The company’s algorithm chooses which updates appear higher up in users’ newsfeeds and which are buried. Humans already tend to cluster among like-minded people and seek news that confirms their biases. Facebook’s research shows that the company’s algorithm encourages this by somewhat prioritizing updates that users find comforting.' back

vol VII: Notes

2016

Notes

Sunday 13 November 2016

Monday 14 November 2016

Tuesday 15 November 2016

Wednesday 16 November 2016

Thursday 17 November

Friday 18 November 2016

Saturday 19 November 2016

Papers

Links