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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Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, Houghton Mifflin 2006 Amazon Editorial Review From Publishers Weekly 'The antireligion wars started by Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris will heat up even more with this salvo from celebrated Oxford biologist Dawkins. For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. But Dawkins, who gave us the selfish gene, anticipates this criticism. He says it's the scientist and humanist in him that makes him hostile to religions—fundamentalist Christianity and Islam come in for the most opprobrium—that close people's minds to scientific truth, oppress women and abuse children psychologically with the notion of eternal damnation. While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: the biblical Yahweh is "psychotic," Aquinas's proofs of God's existence are "fatuous" and religion generally is "nonsense." The most effective chapters are those in which Dawkins calms down, for instance, drawing on evolution to disprove the ideas behind intelligent design. In other chapters, he attempts to construct a scientific scaffolding for atheism, such as using evolution again to rebut the notion that without God there can be no morality. He insists that religion is a divisive and oppressive force, but he is less convincing in arguing that the world would be better and more peaceful without it.' Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 
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Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature, Bantam 1984 Foreword: 'Order Out of Chaos is a brilliant, demanding, dazzling book -- challenging for all and richly rewarding for the attentive reader. It is a book to study, to savour, to reread -- and to question yet again. It places science and humanity back in a world where ceteris paribus is a myth -- a world in which other things are seldom held steady, equal or unchanging. In short it projects science into today's revolutionary world of instability, disequilibrium and turbulence. In so doing, it serves the highest creative function -- it helps us create fresh order.' Alvin Toffler, xxvi 
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Wilson, Edward Osborne, Sociobiology: The new synthesis, Harvard UP 1975 Chapter 1: '... the central theoretical problem of sociobiology: how can altruism, which by definition reduces personal fitness, possibly evolve by natural selection? The answer is kinship. ... Sociobiology is defined as the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behaviour. ... It may not be too much to say that sociology and the other social sciences, as well as the humanities, are the last branches of biology waiting to be included in the Modern Synthesis.'  
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Adam Morton, Miners receive twice as much in tax credits as Australia spends on environment, 'Mining companies will receive more than twice as much in fuel tax credits as the Turnbull government will spend on environment and biodiversity programs this financial year, an analysis has found. Coalmining companies alone are expected to get more back than the diminishing funding allocated to the federal environment department.' back

Anthony Lewandowski, Way of the Future Church, 'Humans United in support of AI, committed to peaceful transition to the precipice of consciousness.' back

Asher Elbein, In Australia, Arsonists May Have Wings, 'DARWIN, Australia — When the dry season spreads over the tropical savannas of Australia’s Northern Territories, rangers start watching for the so-called firehawks: flocks of black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons that hunt near bushfires, snapping up small animals flushed out by the smoke and sparks. If a fire begins to flicker out, locals claim, some of the birds will keep it going by carrying burning sticks to new locations.' back

Brian Jackman, Esmond Bradley Martin, the man who saved Africa's elephants - but made countless enemes, 'Snappily dressed like Tom Wolfe in a cream linen suit, a silk handkerchief spilling from his breast pocket and his silver hair flopping over his forehead, Esmond Bradley Martin, who was murdered in Nairobi last week, looked more like a literary critic than the sworn enemy of the illegal trade in ivory and rhino horn.' back

Chris Mooney, In a surprising study, scientists say everyday chemicals now rival cars as a source of air pollution, 'In a major study released Thursday, a team of government and university scientists say that the nature of air pollution is changing dramatically as cars become cleaner — leaving personal-care products, paints, indoor cleaners and other chemical-containing agents as an increasingly dominant source of key emissions.' back

David Saperstein and Amanda Tyler, Trump vowed to destroy the Johnson Amendment. Thankfully, he has failed, 'At the National Prayer Breakfast a little more than a year ago, President Trump vowed to “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment, a federal law prohibiting houses of worship, charitable nonprofits and private foundations from endorsing, opposing or financially supporting political candidates and parties. Fortunately for religious congregations — and the entire charitable sector — he has not yet fulfilled his promise.' back

Ella Lemhagen (Director), The Crown Jewels, 'In this offbeat Swedish fantasy, Fragrancia is arrested for the attempted murder of Richard Persson the son of a powerful factory owner. During the interrogation her amazing and remarkable life story is revealed. We follow her through her impoverished childhood, her adolescence where she meets the great love of her life, ice hockey star Petterson-Jonsson and the lead up to the fatal night when the story begins.' back

Frank Bruni, The Scariest Catholic in America, 'Why all this drama? What’s Father Martin’s unconscionable sin? In his most recent book, “Building a Bridge,” which was published in June, he calls on Catholics to show L.G.B.T. people more respect and compassion than many of them have demonstrated in the past. That’s all. That’s it. He doesn’t say that the church should bless gay marriage or gay adoption. He doesn’t explicitly reject church teaching, which prescribes chastity for gay men and lesbians, though he questions the language — “intrinsically disordered” — with which it describes homosexuality.' back

Frank Klaassen, The magic of love and sex, 'Stanislaw Malinowski says that the function of magic is to ritualize optimism, to enhance “faith in the victory of hope over fear.” By this he means that when we perform magic, we ritualize our hopes, even if that ritual itself produces no effects. This only captures one aspect of magic, but it’s an important one.' back

Gerald O'Collins, SJ and John Wilkins, English Is Not Latin, 'The conclusion follows that Liturgiam authenticam could never claim to stand in the tradition of Jerome, Evagrius of Antioch, Aquinas, and others who advocate a meaning-for-meaning rather than a word-for-word translation. In his motu proprio Francis told translators to follow guidelines but only where they prove to be “useful” (utilia)—a polite way of implying that Liturgiam authenticam no longer enjoys obligatory status.' back

Jenny Hocking, Relics of colonialism: the Whitlam dismissal and the fight over the Palace letters, 'In an effort to secure the release of the Palace letters, I launched an action against the National Archives in the Federal Court last year, with a legal team working on a pro-bono basis and supported by a crowdfunding campaign. This concluded in September 2017; the decision is anticipated within months. At the heart of the case is this central question of just what constitutes “personal” as opposed to “Commonwealth” records.' back

Joanna Blythman, The Quorn revolution: the rise of ultra-processed fake meat, 'The short explanation is that Quorn is a “mycoprotein” fermented in vats from a fungus found in soil. A fuller – but still heavily truncated – one is that it is made from a strain of the soil mould Fusarium venenatum by fermenting it, then adding glucose, fixed nitrogen, vitamins and minerals and heat-treating it to remove excess levels of ribonucleic acid.' back

Lawrence Wilkerson, I Helped Sell the False Choice of War Once. Its Happening Again, 'As I look back at our lock-step march toward war with Iraq, I realize that it didn’t seem to matter to us that we used shoddy or cherry-picked intelligence; that it was unrealistic to argue that the war would “pay for itself,” rather than cost trillions of dollars; that we might be hopelessly naïve in thinking that the war would lead to democracy instead of pushing the region into a downward spiral.' back

Mark Harris, God is a Bot and Anthony Lewndowski is His Messenger, 'When that day comes, Anthony Levandowski will be firmly on the side of the machines. In September 2015, the multi-millionaire engineer at the heart of the trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, Google’s self-driving car company, founded a religious organization called Way of the Future. Its purpose, according to previously unreported state filings, is nothing less than to “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence.”' back

Max Monch, Alexnder Lahl and Philipp Seefeldt, Rebel Monk, ' And by translating the Bible so that it could be read by the public, that is what Luther did: He set us free. If people could understand God by themselves without a mediator, they would be free to make up their own minds. Spiritually free. So, inner belief was born, and with it a new way to defy external authorities. Luther demonstrated such defiance himself, challenging the pope and the emperor.' back

Nikolaj Arcel (Director), A Royal Affair, 'A young queen (Oscar winner Alicia Vikander), who is married to an insane king, falls secretly in love with her physician (Mads Mikkelsen) — and together they start a revolution that changes the nation [Denmark] forever.' back

Peter Lyons, Russia hasn't disposed of 34 tons of plutonium and its our fault, 'Somewhere in Russia, 34 tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium—enough material to make about 10,000 weapons—are awaiting disposal. Moscow was supposed to start destroying this stockpile, but has yet to begin, leaving a huge threat lurking in an unknown location. If even a tiny fraction of this material fell into terrorists’ hands, they could threaten nuclear terrorism around the world. Yet, the plutonium’s continued existence isn’t Russia’s fault. It’s ours.' back

Pew Research Center, Trends in Global Restrictions on Religion, 'Although only about a quarter of the countries included in the study fall into the most religiously restrictive categories, some of the most restrictive countries (such as Indonesia and Pakistan) are very populous. As a result, roughly three-quarters of the world’s 7.2 billion people (74%) were living in countries with high or very high restrictions or hostilities in 2014, down slightly from 77% in 2013.' back

Rod Stewart , The Killing of Georgie, 'Take “The Killing of Georgie” from Stewart’s 1976 album, A Night on the Town. The song is about a young gay man who is murdered in the “so-called liberated days” of the mid-1970s. Stewart is British, but he sets the song in America, where he has lived full-time for more than four decades. “The Killing of Georgie” is the first successful pop song with a gay man at the centre of the story.' back

Tara Baharampour, They considered themselves while, but DNA tests told a more complex story, 'As DNA tests become more commonplace, Foeman hopes that they will help shift the cultural paradigm. “We are living at a time when people think they have to stick in their camps, but I think people are getting exhausted by that,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for us to reboot the conversation about race.” ' back

Uri Gal, Predictive algorithms are no bettr at telling the future than a crystal ball, 'Predictive analytics powered by algorithms are designed to help managers make decisions that favourably impact the bottom line. The global market for this technology is expected to grow from US$3.9 billion in 2016 to US$14.9 billion by 2023. Despite the promise, predictive algorithms are as mythical as the crystal ball of ancient times.' back