vol VII: Notes
2016
Notes
Sunday 11 December 2016 - Saturday 17 December 2016
[Notebook: DB 80: Cosmic plumbing]
[page 277]
Sunday 11 December 2016
Permutation is the foundation of conservation: in Aristotle's terminology, a constant volume of matter (ie space-time volume of actions) arranged in different ways (forms).
As we approach Christmas again we are led to reflect on the vicious absurdity of a God who directs that a human baby be born to cruelly murdered in order to satiate that God's desire for vengeance against some ancient mythical humans who upset Him.
The terms of trade are closely linked to physical qualities of purity, durability and so on. This is the meaning of the language, carefully encapsulated in scientific [and measurable] terms.
In large swathes of the good old days women were powerless, effectively chattels of men somewhat equivalent to slavery, as early campaigners noted. This atitude remains institutionalised in the Roman Catholic Church and must go before it can become an acceptable institution built on global humanity.
Jesus (he/she) is a window onto a whole new world of human reality.
Do people watch porn because the would love
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to be doing it themselves (I think that applies to me) or for some less self centred (and so untrustworthy) motive.
The first thing that springs to mind when trying to imagine the beatific vision is orgasmic bliss: . . ..
Monday 12 December 2016
Andrei Kozynev: 'The paradoxical situation now us that Rusia is hoping for a US foreign policy based on realpolitik rather than on values, but that would be a disaster for Russia," said Kozyrev, who is now at the Wilson Center thinktank in Washington.' Julian Borger
Tuesday 13 December 2016
Wednesday 14 December 2016
Thursday 15 December
Friday 16 December 2016
Saturday 17 December 2016
Life is very simple. Everything from changing a nappy to going to the moon and back is a sequence od sequences of sequences of steps, each contributing to the overall result: clean bum, return with samples of the moon. All these steps must be done properly, properly planned (in the case of the nappy, experience) and properly executed. Things go wrong, ie God's justice prevails when something is not done properly: the wheel nuts are not tightened and the wheels come off.
Chapter 9: Propagation = marketing but much more careful and responsible.
'I was recently visiting Sicily, and some people's pride in the Cosa Nostra there was similar to yours in the GCHQ. Criminals seem to
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strongly lure the imagination of badly educated people around the world.' Extremophile Gibbs comment. Samuel Gibbs
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Copyright:
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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!)
Aristotle, and (translated by H Tredennick and G Cyril Armstrong), Metaphysics X-XIV, Oeconomica and Magna Moralia, Harvard University Press, ; William Heinemann Ltd. 1977 Introduction III Aristotle's Metaphysical Theory: 'The theory of universal science, as sketched by Plato in The Republic, was unsatisfactory to Aristotle's analytical mind. He felt that there must be a regular system of sciences, each concerned with a different aspect of reality. At the same time it was only reasonable to suppose that there is a supreme science, which is more ultimate, more exact, more truly Wisdom than any of the others. The discussion of this science, Wisdom, Primary Philosophy or Theology, as it is variously called, and of its scope, forms the subject of the Metaphysics. page xxv
Amazon
back |
Mukherjee, Siddhartha, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Scribner 2010 '"In 2010, about six hundred thousand Americans, and more than 7 million humans around the world, will die of cancer." With this sobering statistic, physician and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee begins his comprehensive and eloquent "biography" of one of the most virulent diseases of our time. An exhaustive account of cancer's origins, The Emperor of All Maladies illustrates how modern treatments--multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care--came into existence thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe. While The Emperor of All Maladies is rich with the science and history behind the fight against cancer, it is also a meditation on illness, medical ethics, and the complex, intertwining lives of doctors and patients. Mukherjee's profound compassion--for cancer patients, their families, as well as the oncologists who, all too often, can offer little hope--makes this book a very human history of an elusive and complicated disease.' --Lynette Mong
Amazon
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Papers
Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink, Julia, "Envisioning a different future", Science , 353, 6294, 1 July 2016, page 37. Review of A World to Live In: An Ecologists Vision for a Plundred PlanetMIT press, 2016
'Woodwell calls for a fundamental rethink to ensure the protection of the global commons. In contrast to most current climate policy efforts such as the Paris Agreement which aim to stabilize carbon at levels that prevent dangerous climate change, he advocates a return to the much lower carbon levels of the late 19th century. In his solution reduced fossil fuel use plays a role, of course, but he also advocates for vast reforestation and afforestation efforts to kick-start environmentla and climate recovery. More generally, he calls for closed-cycle industrial systems with no leakage of wastes, arguing that there are no safe threshholds for any toxins that accumulate in the environment. It may seem unlikely that the world will follow this parth, but Woodwell is to be commended for clearly outlining the threats and sketching out a bold solution.'. back |
Links
| AA Gill (journalisted), Articles by AA Gill, back |
| Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendences in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders, '. . . this Dicastery, in accord with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, believes it necessary to state clearly that the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question[9], cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called "gay culture". ' back |
| Gordon Hookey, Terrorism and Terraism, '1. English is my second language, I don't know my first; because colonialism stole it from me. With horrific brutality and atrocious violence, the english took my culture and replaced it with theirs, without my consent or choice. Therefore, I have an open license to utilise their imposed language and culture any way I want, with unrestrained imagination and absolute freedom within my art practice. My creativity is visual poetry. I try to observe the world objectively and honestly by paraphrasing and analogising in making pictorial metaphors to what I see. I like to think I have a strong sense of what is right and wrong in the pursuit of truth and clarity for expressions of humanity.' back |
| Hilltop Hoods, Chase That Feeling, back |
| Johannes Roßnagel, A single-atom heat engine, 'Heat engines convert thermal energy into mechanical work and generally involve a large number of particles. We report the experimental realization of a single-atom heat engine. An ion is confined in a linear Paul trap with tapered geometry and driven thermally by coupling it alternately to hot and cold reservoirs. The output power of the engine is used to drive a harmonic oscillation. From direct measurements of the ion dynamics, we were able to determine the thermodynamic cycles for various temperature differences of the reservoirs. We then used these cycles to evaluate the power P and efficiency η of the engine, obtaining values up to P = 3.4 × 10–22 joules per second and η = 0.28%, consistent with analytical estimations. Our results demonstrate that thermal machines can be reduced to the limit of single atoms.' back |
| John Keane, War and Democracy in the Age of Trump , 'The ethic of democracy instead demands entry into the citadels of military power. It does so because it knows of the follies and idiocies of those who arrogantly plan and prosecute war. It therefore calls for slow thinking, for public openness and for the restraint of arbitrary power, especially when it is backed by weapons that kill, maim and destroy humans and the biomes in which they dwell./ back |
| Jonathan Friedland, Son't call it post-truth. There's a simpler worl: lies, 'What’s so odd about this is that we are happy to accept that there are facts, and judges of fact, in every other aspect of our lives. Philosopher Quassim Cassam notes if a car mechanic says your brakes have broken, you don’t denounce him as biased and drive on: you listen. If a doctor says you have a tumour, you don’t mock him as a member of the medical elite. We even accept expert judgment on reality TV: no one minds Mary Berry deciding who should win Bake Off.
Only in the political realm have we somehow drifted into a world in which no one can be trusted, not on questions of judgment, nor even on questions of fact. But we cannot live in such a world. Evidence, facts and reason are the building blocks of civilisation. Without them we plunge into darkness.' back |
| Julian Borger, Rex Tillerson: an appintment that would confirm Putin's US election win, 'In a very real sense, Tillerson has been a head of a state within a state. Exxon Mobil is bigger economically than many countries. It has its own foreign policy and its own contracted security forces. . . .
“Reporting on Exxon was not only harder than reporting on the Bin Ladens, it was harder than reporting on the CIA by an order of magnitude,” said Steve Coll, who wrote about the company in a book, Private Empire. “They have a culture of intimidation that they bring to bear in their external relations, and it is plenty understood inside the corporation too. They make people nervous, they make people afraid,” Coll, now a journalism professor at Columbia University, told Texas Monthly.' back |
| Katherine Stewart, Betsy DeVos and God's Plan for Schools, 'BOSTON — At the rightmost edge of the Christian conservative movement, there are those who dream of turning the United States into a Christian republic subject to “biblical laws.” In the unlikely figure of Donald J. Trump, they hope to have found their greatest champion yet. He wasn’t “our preferred candidate,” the Christian nationalist David Barton said in June, but he could be “God’s candidate.”' back |
| Michael J. L Brown, Trump has embraced pseudoscience and its deceptive tactics in a post-truth world, 'As a scientist, I expect the Trump presidency to have a curious familiarity.
Why? Because the relentless stream of falsehoods and character attacks of Trump’s campaign mainstreamed disinformation tactics that biologists, immunologists and climate scientists have come to know and despise. . . . It’s critical that the broader community learns from the grim experience of scientists when dealing with these attacks. Often scientists failed to appreciate that many public arguments about science are actually political battles, rather than evidence-based discussions. Raw political battle isn’t about seeking truth and reasoned argument. It’s about winning news cycles and elections.' back |
| Nassim Khadem, Bermuda tops list of world's top taxhavens according to Oxfam, 'More than $4 billion in Australian tax is being shifted by Australian-based multinationals into the world's 15 worst corporate "tax havens" each year, Oxfam says.
Its report, Tax Battles: the dangerous race to the bottom on corporate tax, to to be released on Monday, defines a "tax haven" as a low-tax or no-tax nation with generous tax incentives.'
Oxfam's ranking of the top 15 corporate tax havens:
1 Bermuda
2 Cayman Islands
3 Netherlands
4 Switzerland
5 Singapore
6 Ireland
7 Luxembourg
8 Curaçao
9 Hong Kong
10 Cyprus
11 Bahamas
12 Jersey
13 Barbados
14 Mauritius
15 British Virgin Islands back |
| Paul Krugman, Useful Idiots Galore, 'It has long been obvious — except, apparently, to the news media — that the modern G.O.P. is a radical institution that is ready to violate democratic norms in the pursuit of power. Why should the norm of not accepting foreign assistance be any different? . . . Now what? If we’re going to have any hope of redemption, people will have to stop letting themselves be used the way they were in 2016. And the first step is to admit the awful reality of what just happened.' back |
| Ross Gitting, Politicised Treasury bites own tail, covers for Turnbull, 'Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen is right: One of the Abbott-Turnbull government's various acts of economic vandalism is its politicisation of the once-proud federal Treasury.' back |
| Samuel Gibbs, Mobile phones hacked: can the NSA and the GCHQ listen to all our hone calls? , 'The latest revelations from the NSA files have shown that US and UK surveillance agencies could have the ability to listen in on billions of mobile phone calls from around the world. But how can they do that, and what does it mean for the general public? And should you be worried?
What’s happened?
The biggest manufacturer of Sim cards in the world has reportedly been hacked into by the US NSA and UK GCHQ.
The security agencies stole the encryption keys that are built into every one of the Sim cards made by the Dutch firm Gemalto.' back |
| The Editors, Commonweal, Team Trump: A Cabinet of Deplorables, 'If it’s fair to judge people by the company they keep, then it’s fair to judge a president by his cabinet. The one Donald Trump has been assembling since the election does not inspire much confidence. During the campaign, whenever Trump’s critics expressed alarm at his lack of experience or ignorance of public policy, his supporters assured us that, once elected, he would surround himself with competent people and not just the diehard loyalists and bomb-throwers who staffed his campaign team. For the most part, this is not what has happened. The loyalists and bomb-throwers remain.' back |
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