Armstrong, Karen, Holy War: The Crusades and their impact on today's world, Anchor Books (Random House) 2001 Jacket: 'In 1095, with the tomb of Jesus still in the hands of infidels and the Byzantine empire overrun by Muslim Turks, Pope Urban II summoned Christian warriors to take up the cross and their swords against the Turks and then recover the holy city of Jerusalem from Islam. It was to be the first of the Crusades, a holy war that would focus the power of the European kingdoms against a common enemy. The Crusades became the stuff of romantic legend, but in reality were a series of rabidly savage battles carried out in the name of Christian piety to advance the power of the Western Church. Their legacy of religious violence is felt today as the age old conflict of Christians, Muslims and Jews persists.' 
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Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, Revised Edition 2006 'The Evolution of Cooperation provides valuable insights into the age-old question of whether unforced cooperation is ever possible. Widely praised and much-discussed, this classic book explores how cooperation can emerge in a world of self-seeking egoists-whether superpowers, businesses, or individuals-when there is no central authority to police their actions. The problem of cooperation is central to many different fields. Robert Axelrod recounts the famous computer tournaments in which the “cooperative” program Tit for Tat recorded its stunning victories, explains its application to a broad spectrum of subjects, and suggests how readers can both apply cooperative principles to their own lives and teach cooperative principles to others.' 
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Dirac, P A M, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (4th ed), Oxford UP/Clarendon 1983 Jacket: '[this] is the standard work in the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, indispensible both to the advanced student and the mature research worker, who will always find it a fresh source of knowledge and stimulation.' (Nature)  
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Feynman, Richard P, and Robert B Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. . . . In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands 
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Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Wilder Publications 2008 Amazon product description:' The Communist Manifesto was first published on February 21, and it is one of the world's most influential political tracts. Commissioned by the Communist League and written by communist theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, it laid out the League's purposes and program. The Manifesto suggested a course of action for a proletarian (working class) revolution to overthrow the ruling class of bourgeoisie and to eventually bring about a classless society.' 
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Nielsen, Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2000 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002. 
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West, Morris L, and Kenneth Woodward (Introduction), The Devil's Advocate, Loyola Press 2005 Amazon customer review: 'It is a fascinating tale of suffering, human failings, redemption and above all faith, set in Southern Italy during World War II. Monsignor Blaise Meredith, who is dying of cancer, has been assigned the most important task of his life to be a Devil's Advocate for beautification of Giacomo Nerone. He is sent to a small town in Calabria to investigate the life and death of this martyr. The story unfolds as the Monsignor interviews Nerone's widow, Nina Sanduzzi, Nerone's friend, Dr. Aldo Myers, a Jew among the Catholics, a wealthy Contessa, who was in love with Nerone and Contessa's guest, Nicholas Black, an English painter. Nerone's character comes alive through Dr. Myers and his widow's narration of events leading to his death by firing squad by the partisan mob. Nerone's life in the small town is revealed gradually like clouds parting to reveal the sun. He is a British officer who disserts his post after a horrifying accident where he kills an infant and the parents. With a bullet in his shoulder he runs away to find love, peace and God. He eventually finds all three.' Vijay B Kumar 
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Raizen, Mark G, "Comprehensive Control of Atomic Motion", Science, 324, 5933, 12 June 2009, page 1403-1406. Review: 'Recent work provides a general two-step solution to trapping and cooling atoms, The first step is magnetic stopping of paramagnetic atoms with a sequence of pulsed fields. The second step is single-photon cooling, which is based on a one-way barrier. This cooling method is related intimately to the historic problem of "Maxwell's Demon" and subsequent work by L Szilard. Here I discuss the connections between single-photon cooling and information entropy. I also outline future application of these methods to fundamental tests with hydrogen isotopes. . back

4 Non Blondes, What's Up,
' Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
And I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means
And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?
ooh, ooh ooh
and I try,
oh my god do I try
I try all the time,
in this institution
And I pray,
oh my god do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?
And I say,
hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?
Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination.'

back

Anna Nemtsova, Putin's Crimea Is a Big Anti-Gay Casinof, ' Crimea’s gay population, which some online forums estimated at over 10,000, faces mounting insecurity. The “prime minister” on the Black Sea peninsula, Sergey Aksyonov, has announced that “sexual minorities will never be allowed public events in Crimea.” He promised that police would act quickly to stop them. “Authorities will never support them,” he said. So, instead of the festive rainbow culture of rock and roll, electronic music, psychedelia and esoterica, Russian-run Crimea will offer an alternative: gambling. Last April, shortly after annexation, the Duma voted for the law allowing gaming zones in Crimea.' back

Antonio Graceffo, Mongolia has few coronavirus cases - and some say it is all thanks to Ghengis Khan, ' As of Saturday, Mongolia has had 204 coronavirus cases, all imported, and zero deaths. Not a single person has been infected inside the country. Many Mongolians attribute this low infection rate to several factors: clean air, and a steady diet of natural, free-range meat and milk. They also believe that generations of constant work, riding horses, herding sheep, as well as surviving dramatic temperature swings, from -60 to 45 degrees Celsius, have made them heartier and more resistant to disease. Perhaps most importantly, there is the legacy of Genghis Khan, which Mongolians believe has kept them safe.' back

Charles Krauthammer, The way forward in Iraq and Syria, 'It’s time for a new strategy in Iraq and Syria. It begins by admitting that the old borders are gone, that a unified Syria or Iraq will never be reconstituted, that the Sykes-Picot map is defunct.' back

Chloe Whiteaker, Adrian Leung & Jeremy Diamond, Why Acting Fast Is the Key to Beating the Second Wave of Covid-19, ' Governments that hesitated to mount a broad containment response when the virus first emerged ended up with eight times as many deaths per 100,000 citizens, on average, compared to those that sprung into action soon after—or even before—confirming their first case. That’s according to a Bloomberg News analysis of the Stringency Index—which measures the strictness of “lockdown style” policies tracked by Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government—and data on Covid-19 infections compiled by Johns Hopkins University.' back

Dalya Alberge, Vast neolithic circle of deep shafts found near Stonehenge, ' Four thousand five hundred years ago, the Neolithic peoples who constructed Stonehenge, a masterpiece of engineering, also dug a series of shafts aligned to form a circle spanning 1.2 miles (2km) in diameter. . . . The shafts are vast, each more than 5 metres deep and 10 metres in diameter. Approximately 20 have been found and there may have been more than 30. . . . The consortium is publishing a scientific open-access paper in Internet Archaeology.' back

E J Dionne Jr, Charleston & the Politics of Evasion, 'Right off the top, anyone who wants to discuss the implications of this shooting is scolded for “politicizing a tragedy.” We are told we must “heal” and “mourn” first, that it’s “disrespectful” to the victims to ask what this slaughter means and what we must do as a nation. Thus is real debate delayed until the moment of urgency passes. In a media culture with a short attention span, there is no surer way to contain and marginalize the hard questions.' back

E. J. Dionne, Trump's betrayal of American greatness, ' This year’s Juneteenth celebrations of emancipation should encourage us to remember what Abraham Lincoln said in 1858 about “the monstrous injustice of slavery.” “I hate it,” Lincoln declared, “because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world, enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.” Defenders of slavery, Lincoln said, were “insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.” ' back

George Rennie, Is America a 'failing state'? How a superpower has been brought to the brink, ' After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a sense history had ended, and that the United States represented a supreme endpoint. Today, the US is not dominant, it is in crisis: convulsed by riots and protest, riven by a virus that has galloped away from those charged with overseeing it, and heading into a presidential election led by a man that has possibly divided the nation like no other before him. Using the most common metrics available to political scientists, there are signs the United States is failing.' back

Sub specie aeternitatis - Wikipedia, Sub specie aeternitatis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Sub specie aeternitatis (Latin for "under the aspect of eternity"), is, from Baruch Spinoza onwards, an honorific expression describing what is universally and eternally true, without any reference to or dependence upon the temporal portions of reality. In clearer English, sub specie aeternitatis roughly means "from the perspective of the eternal". Even more loosely, the phrase is used to describe an alternative or objective point of view.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls, Scientific Theology, ' This essay is dedicated to all people, past and present, who have been harmed spiritually, mentally or physically by the Catholic Church or its agents: invaded, murdered, burnt, tortured, raped, abused, molested, beaten, deceived, deprived, disrespected, denied or abandoned.' back

John Quiggin, Measure of happiness tell us less than economics of unhappiness, 'The track record of the welfare state has been one of remarkable success. This can be seen by comparing outcomes in modern welfare states with those in the United States, where the New Deal produced only a stunted, and stinting, version of the welfare state. Despite its technological leadership and its founders' endorsement of the pursuit of happiness, the US leads the developed world on numerous measures of unhappiness, including premature mortality, food insecurity, incarceration and inadequate access to health care.' back

Kathleen Parker, Take down the Confederate flag, South Carolina, 'Now, once and for all, it is clear that the Confederate battle flag that flies on the South Carolina State House grounds is the racist symbol many have long thought it to be. After the massacre of nine people at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, the pro-Southern-heritage argument for the flag can no longer hold.' back

Kristin Kobes Du Mez, If You Want to Understand White Evangelicals, Tour a Hobby Lobby Store, ' Militant white masculinity has been at the heart of “family-values evangelicalism” since the ’60s, when in response to the disruptions of feminism, civil rights, and the anti-war movement, the cultural identity of white evangelicals coalesced around the ideal of masculine protector. Depicting (white) women as sweet, submissive, and vulnerable, evangelicals called for rugged white men to protect women and children by fighting to save “Christian America” against threats foreign and domestic. This white masculine militancy found expression in law & order politics, in the reinforcement of patriarchal authority in Christian homes and churches, and in the ruthless pursuit of culture wars politics.' back

Lucy Mangan, Klittra: Sweden's new word for female masturbation, 'The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) held a competition late last year that asked people to nominate words that women could use instead of having to – ahem – press into service the traditionally male-associated words and phrases that abound. After sifting through more than 1,200 replies – presumably with protective gloves in place – the RFSU chose klittra, a portmanteau of “clitoris” and “glitter”, because “it highlights the importance of the clitoris for pleasure”.' back

Lynette Molyneux, The case for Australian coal in India is weakening, 'Not long ago, rural communities in India and Africa had little hope of access to computing or telecommunications. And yet without heavy investment in mainframe computers, telephone exchanges, poles and wires, advances in technology have enabled the roll-out of affordable, low-function mobile phones and laptop computers. There is no reason why energy access for the rural poor shouldn’t take the same course. Alternative energy technologies like solar, coupled with battery storage, are rapidly decreasing in cost.' back

Michael McGowan & Lorena Allam, WA police officer escaped sanction for 'shocking force' against indigenous boy, ' A Western Australian police officer who dragged a handcuffed Indigenous boy on to the ground, causing his head to hit the pavement, escaped any sanction over the incident after an internal investigation found the level of force used was “necessary and not excessive”. Amid a spate of incidents raising concerns about heavy-handed policing against Indigenous people in Australia, footage obtained by the Guardian highlights what critics say is the flawed process by which investigations into alleged misconduct made against officers are handled internally. . . . A witness to the incident, who heard the boy cry out in pain, was also arrested for obstructing police. The charges were later dropped after the CCTV footage seemed to contradict statements filed by police. ' back

Monica Tan, 'We've got to tell them all our secrets' - how the Barjanji won a landmark battle for indigenous Australians, 'The law was specific too. Only those practices that could be traced, uninterrupted, back to pre-colonial times could be recognised. For the Barkandji people this included the right to camp, erect shelters, move about, hold meetings, hunt, fish, conduct burials and gather and use the natural resources of the land, according to traditional law and customs.' back

NASA, A Decade of the Sun, back

NY Times Editorial Board, The Pandemic is Still Raging. The President Pretends Otherwise, ' Jeffrey Nicholls Australia | Pending Approval South Australia is a small state with a population of about 1.7 million people and has experienced 4 deaths from the COVID-19, which amounts to about 0.25 deaths per 100 000 people. This figure way be considered to represent the state of the art in COVID control. A recent figure from the US is 123 000 deaths in a population of about 330 million people, which amounts to 37 deaths per hundred thousand, approaching 150 times as many. On the assumption that the health care professionals in the US, when left to themselves. are just as efficient as those in SA, it would seem very clear that this enormous discrepancy is a result of the denial of resources and free action to people who in the normal course of events would have controlled the this plague in a manner much closer of the state of the art. The interventions of President Trump and his cronies to prevent these people from doing their work properly are clearly a crime against humanity, and should be treated as such. They have much blood on their hands. back

Owen Chuchill & Robert Delaney, US Senate passes bill that would punish China for Hong Kong national security law, ' In light of recent revelations in former national security adviser John Bolton’s memoir indicating Trump’s willingness to park matters of human rights for the sake of protecting his trade deal with Beijing, the proposed congressional actions around Hong Kong were “more symbolic than substantive”, said Andrew Mertha, director of the China studies programme at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. . . . “The political institutions in the US have utterly abdicated their responsibilities with regard to Hong Kong,” Mertha said. “Since most Americans do not care about foreign policy, this will not be a campaign issue. This leaves the business community as the only force for safeguarding the future of the people of Hong Kong.” ' back

Prisoner's dilemma - Wikipedia, Prisoner's dilemma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The prisoner's dilemma is a canonical example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two purely "rational" individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests[citation needed] to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence rewards and gave it the name "prisoner's dilemma" (Poundstone, 1992)' back

Pythagorean theorem - Wikipedia, Pythagorean theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In any right triangle, the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs (the two sides that meet at a right angle). This is usually summarized as: The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.' back

Richard Paul Hamilton, Hope, anger and courage - or why are conservtives so miserable?, 'Behind Andrew Bolt’s twisted grimace or Miranda Devine’s patrician sneer, a sensitive and compassionate observer can recognise the frightened child hiding under the blankets. For the most immediately obvious fact about such figures, their wealth and fame notwithstanding, is how very unhappy they seem. Understandably so, for a life with neither hope nor compassion is not properly human. Their message amounts to saying that nothing can be done, that nothing should be done and if something is done then the consequences will be dire.' back

Sasha Issenberg, There won't be a backlash against the court's new ruling on gay rights, ' On the morning last October when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from a handful of gay and transgender employees claiming they were unfairly fired, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch found himself musing aloud about the negative impact a judge who was inclined to rule on their behalf might have on the country. “At the end of the day,” Gorsuch asked, “should he or she take into consideration the massive social upheaval that would be entailed in such a decision?” On Monday, Gorsuch delivered the majority opinion in such a decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, without any apparent concern for social upheaval. By declaring “an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay and transgender defies the law,” Bostock instantly completes a five-part canon of LGBT-rights decisions from the court since 1996, the last two of which struck down federal and state laws that treat same-sex unions differently from opposite-sex ones.' back

SCMP Editorial, Fair competition to benefit ro easing of US ban on Huawei, ' Since Trump took office, his administration realised too late that the US has lagged far behind in 5G. Its hostile strategy to undermine Huawei and other Chinese firms may at first make sense. But Huawei is too entrenched in the game to be just kicked out of it on the say-so of Uncle Sam. China’s road to 5G was industrial policy at its most spectacular. In 2012, two years before China Mobile launched 4G services on the mainland, Chinese companies joined international initiatives such as 3GPP to research and develop 5G infrastructure. Today, the country accounts for 35 per cent of 5G standard essential patents. Of these, about 15 per cent are owned by Huawei. By comparison, the share of US firms is estimated at about 13 per cent.' back

Shear, Haberman & Herndon, Trump Rally Size Falls Short of Expectstions After Putting Tulsa on Edge, ' “If it is God’s will that I get coronavirus that is the will of the Almighty. I will not live in fear,” said Robert Montanelli, a resident of Broken Arrow, a Tulsa suburb.' . . . No one interviewed expressed serious concerns about coronavirus risk at the rally. “It’s all fake,” said Mike Alcorn, 40, who works in maintenance and lives in Wichita, Kan. “They’re just making the numbers up. I haven’t seen anybody die, not from coronavirus. I don’t even know anybody who’s got it.” ' back

Stefan Gössling , These celebrities cause 10 000 times more carbon emission from flying that the average person, ' The jet-setting habits of Bill Gates and Paris Hilton mean that they produce an astonishing 10,000 times more carbon emissions from flying than the average person. . . . The implications of the flying habits of global superemitters are therefore far reaching. It is clear that governments need to follow the public and pay more attention to consumption in order to stem the growing class of very affluent people who contribute very significantly to emissions and encourage everyone else to aspire to such damaging lifestyles.' back

Sykes-Picot Agreement - Wikipedia, Sykes-Picot Agreement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Sykes–Picot Agreement, officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was a secret agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and France, with the assent of Russia, defining their proposed spheres of influence and control in the Middle East should the Triple Entente succeed in defeating the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The negotiation of the treaty occurred between November 1915 and March 1916. The agreement was concluded on 16 May 1916.' back

Thalia Anthony & Harry Blagg, Enforcing assimilation, dismantling Aboriginal families: a history of police violence in Australia, ' The experience of one Aboriginal child in Western Australia in 1935 was told to the inquiry: I was at the post office with my Mum and Auntie [and cousin]. They put us in the police ute and said they were taking us to Broome. They put the mums in there as well. But when we’d gone [about ten miles] they stopped, and threw the mothers out of the car. We jumped on our mothers’ backs, crying, trying not to be left behind. But the policemen pulled us off and threw us back in the car. They pushed the mothers away and drove off, while our mothers were chasing the car, running and crying after us. We were screaming in the back of that car. When we got to Broome they put me and my cousin in the Broome lock-up. We were only ten years old. Police still play a role in removing First Nations children from their families today.' back

Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I, 2, 3, Does God exist?, 'I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways. The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. . . . ' back

Tim Vines, The 'allegiance to Australia' bill: arguably unconstitutional, definitely questionable, ' . . . this law fails to answer a central question in this debate: why should some citizens be entitled to escape justice? By revoking citizenship we renounce our own ability to bring a person to justice for breaking our laws. As citizens we agree to be bound by Australian laws, and to submit to the jurisdiction of Australian courts if we break them. If an Australian commits non-terror related murder (say domestic violence) we punish them in our courts because that is the compact between citizen and state: protection provided by the latter in return for allegiance. The “allegiance to Australia” bill ultimately weakens, rather than strengthens, that bond.' back

Troy Sutton, I study coronavirus in a high security biosafety lab - here's why I feel safer here than in the world outside, ' As I dilute the coronavirus to infect cultured cells, I hear the reassuring sound of purified air being blown by my respirator into my breathing space. There are three layers of nitrile and protective materials between me and the virus, and every part of my body is wrapped in protective equipment. . . . As an expert on respiratory virus transmission and vaccine development, I’ve halted all other research in my lab so we can devote our expertise to studying SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The goal is to understand the virus and develop a vaccine, fast. ' back

United Nations, Official UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights Home Page, 'The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) (French) (Spanish) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.'' back

Wendy Tuohy, Women from all sides tell Kate Ellis what really happens in politics, ' Such factors as a focus on women's looks, maternal and marital status, their sexuality (or speculation about it) and "weaponised gossip" are tailor-made to affect their standing. The phenomenon is so pervasive that only one (former) politician refused to speak on the record for the book. "Focus on physical appearance is much greater for women, focus on their private lives, issues around motherhood ... slut-shaming, personal attacks, rumours and gossip [are] used to undermine women in a way men don't have to face to the same extent in Parliament," Ms Ellis said.' back

Wiederman, Steinberger & Lenzem, Affluence is killing the planet, warn scientists, ' But here is the catch: affluence trashes our planetary life support systems. What’s more, it also obstructs the necessary transformation towards sustainability by driving power relations and consumption norms. To put it bluntly: the rich do more harm than good. This is what we found in a new study for the journal Nature Communications. . . . The facts are clear: the wealthiest 0.54%, about 40 million people, are responsible for 14% of lifestyle-related greenhouse gas emissions, while the bottom 50% of income earners, almost 4 billion people, only emit around 10%. The world’s top 10% income earners are responsible for at least 25% and up to 43% of our environmental impact.' 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.' back