Anonymous, and Juan Mascaro (translator), The Upanishads, Penguin Classics 1965 Amazon.com Review 'The poetic backbone of Hinduism, the millennia-old Upanishads transcend time. The selections offered here illuminate a path that is as "narrow as the edge of a razor" but pregnant with freedom and bliss. Through vivid metaphors and timeless prose, learn how the path of yoga leads beyond the treacherous web of karma to the final, blissful union of the personal soul, atman, with the universal soul, Brahman.' 
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Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 1956, 1964 'This book is intended to provide [an introduction to cybernetics]. It starts from common-place and well understood concepts, and proceeds step by step to show how these concepts can be made exact, and how they can be developed until they lead into such subjects as feedback, stability, regulation, ultrastability, information, coding, noise and other cybernetic topics.' 
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Cantor, Georg, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers (Translated, with Introduction and Notes by Philip E B Jourdain), Dover 1895, 1897, 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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Davis, Martin, Computability and Unsolvability, Dover 1982 Preface: 'This book is an introduction to the theory of computability and non-computability ususally referred to as the theory of recursive functions. The subject is concerned with the existence of purely mechanical procedures for solving problems. . . . The existence of absolutely unsolvable problems and the Goedel incompleteness theorem are among the results in the theory of computability that have philosophical significance.' 
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de Soto, Hernando, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else, Basic Books 2000 'The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph is its hour of crisis. The fall of the Berlin Wall ended more than a century of political competition between communism and capitalism. Capitalism stands alone as the only feasible way to rationally organise a modern economy. . . . As a result, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Third World and former communist nations have balanced their budgets, cut subsidies, welcomed foreign investment, and dropped their tariff barriers. Their efforts have been repaid with bitter disappointment. . . . In this book I intend to demonstrate that the major stumbling block that keeps the rest of the world from benefiting from capitalism is its inability to produce capital. . . . The poor . . . do have things, but they lack the process to represent their property and create capital. The have houses but not titles, crops but not deeds, businesses but not statutes of incorporation. It is the unavailability of these essential representations that explains why people who have adapted every other Western invention, from paper clips to nuclear reactors, have not been able to produce sufficient capital to make their domestic captialism work.' pages 1-7 
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Descartes, Rene, Rules for the direction of the mind: Discourse on the method, Encyclopaedia BritannicaB0006AU8ZG 1955  
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Einstein (2005), Albert, and Robert W Lawson (translator) Roger Penrose (Introduction), Robert Geroch (Commentary), David C Cassidy (Historical Essay), Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Pi Press 1916, 2005 Preface: 'The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. ... The author has spared himself no pains in his endeavour to present the main ideas in the simplest and most intelligible form, and on the whole, in the sequence and connection in which they actually originated.' page 3  
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Galilei, Galileo, and Stillman Drake (translator), Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo: Including the Starry Messenger (1610 Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina), Doubleday Anchor 1957 Amazon: 'Although the introductory sections are a bit dated, this book contains some of the best translations available of Galileo's works in English. It includes a broad range of his theories (both those we recognize as "correct" and those in which he was "in error"). Both types indicate his creativity. The reproductions of his sketches of the moons of Jupiter (in "The Starry Messenger") are accurate enough to match to modern computer programs which show the positions of the moons for any date in history. The appendix with a chronological summary of Galileo's life is very useful in placing the readings in context.' A Reader. 
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Gibson, William, Idoru, 2011 'Tokyo, post-event: After an attack of scruples, Colin Laney's skipped out on his former employer Slitscan - avoiding the rash of media lawyers sent his way - and taken a job for the outfit managing Japanese rock duo, Lo/Rez. Rez has announced he's going to marry an 'idoru' by the name of Rei Toi - she exists only in virtual reality - and this creates complications that Laney, a net runner, is supposed to sort out. But when Chai, part of Lo/Rez's fan club, turns up unaware that she's carrying illegal nanoware for the Russian Kombinat, Laney's scruples nudge him towards trouble all over again. And this time lawyers'll be the least of his worries . . .' 
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Jech, Thomas, Set Theory, Springer 1997 Jacket: 'This book covers major areas of modern set theory: cardinal arithmetic, constructible sets, forcing and Boolean-valued models, large cardinals and descriptive set theory. . . . It can be used as a textbook for a graduate course in set theory and can serve as a reference book.' 
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Joachim, Howard H, and Errol E Harris, Descartes' Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Thoemmes Press: New Ed edition 1997 Product Description: Taken from the original manuscripts of Joachim's lectures on the Regulae of Descartes, this volume was reconstructed after his death from notes taken by his pupils Errol Harris and John Austin. A critical examination of the main rules for the direction of the mind and the expositions by which Descartes explains them, the work contains commentary on five main topics: the power of knowing, the nature of the intellect, Descartes's account of induction and deduction, Descartes's method of analysis and synthesis, and the notice of vera mathesis. Joachim then goes on to criticize Descartes's method and to expound his own doctrine of philosophical analysis. The last chapter offers his own concrete organic unities in opposition to the Cartesian complex natures.' Amazon 
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Lifton, Robert Jay, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a study of 'brainwashing' in China, 1989 Jacket: 'Brainwashing has often been described in sensational terms; but Dr Lifton's painstaking investigation of Thought Reform is based on psychological studies (with follow up interviews) of Western civilians and Chinese intellectuals who underwent the process in a variety of prisons, universities and other settings."  
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Mascaro, Juan, and (translator), The Bhagavad Gita, Penguin Books 1962-1968  
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Miles (1996), Jack, God: A Biography, Vintage Books 1996 Jacket: 'Jack Miles's remarkable work examines the hero of the Old Testament . . . from his first appearance as Creator to his last as Ancient of Days. . . . We see God torn by conflicting urges. To his own sorrow, he is by turns destructive and creative, vain and modest, subtle and naive, ruthless and tender, lawful and lawless, powerful yet powerless, omniscient and blind.' 
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Posner (2015), Gerald, God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican, Simon & Schuster 2015 'From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, this book traces the political intrigue and inner workings of the Catholic Church. Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this book is about the church’s accumulation of wealth and its byzantine entanglements with financial markets across the world. Told through 200 years of prelates, bishops, cardinals, and the Popes who oversee it all, Gerald Posner uncovers an eyebrow-raising account of money and power in perhaps the most influential organization in the history of the world.' 
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Robins, R H, A Short History of Linguistics, Routledge 1997 'This complete revision and updating of Professor Robins' classic text offers a comprehensive account of the history of linguistic thought from its European origins some 2500 years ago to the present day. It examines the independent development of linguistic science in China and Medieval Islam, and especially in India, which was to have a profound effect on European and American linguistics from the end of the eighteenth century.' 
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Thiering, Barbara, Jesus of the Apocalypse: The life of Jesus after the crucifixion, Doubleday 1996 Introduction: 'It is now possible to show that ... the bizarre images of the [Book of Revelation] were deliberately constructed ... to read like fantastic images but to convey through this form actual historical information. ... Above all the Book of Revelation contains evidence, supplied by the early Christians themselves, that Jesus survived the crucifixion and remained active for many years afterwards. ... " vi 
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Shannon, Claude E, "The mathematical theory of communication", Bell System Technical Journal, 27, , July and October, 1948, page 379-423, 623-656. 'A Note on the Edition Claude Shannon's ``A mathematical theory of communication'' was first published in two parts in the July and October 1948 editions of the Bell System Technical Journal . The paper has appeared in a number of republications since: • The original 1948 version was reproduced in the collection Key Papers in the Development of Information Theory . The paper also appears in Claude Elwood Shannon: Collected Papers. The text of the latter is a reproduction from the Bell Telephone System Technical Publications, a series of monographs by engineers and scientists of the Bell System published in the BSTJ and elsewhere. This version has correct section numbering (the BSTJ version has two sections numbered 21), and as far as we can tell, this is the only difference from the BSTJ version. • Prefaced by Warren Weaver's introduction, ``Recent contributions to the mathematical theory of communication,'' the paper was included in The Mathematical Theory of Communication, published by the University of Illinois Press in 1949. The text in this book differs from the original mainly in the following points: • the title is changed to ``The mathematical theory of communication'' and some sections have new headings, • Appendix 4 is rewritten, • the references to unpublished material have been updated to refer to the published material. The text we present here is based on the BSTJ version with a number of corrections.. back

Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron - Wikipedia, Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (7 December 1731-17 January 1805) was the first professional French scholar of Indian culture. He conceived the institutional framework for the new profession. He inspired the founding of the Ecole francaise d'extreme orient a century after his death and, later still, the founding of the Institut francais de Pondichery.' back

Alan Turing, On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, 'The “computable” numbers may be described briefly as the real numbers whose expression: s as a decimal are calculable by finite means. Although the subject of this paper is ostensibly the computable numbers, it is almost equally easy to define and investigate computable functions of an integral variable or a real or computable variable, computable predicates, and so forth. The fundamental problems involved are, however, the same in each case, and I have chosen the computable numbers for explicit treatment as involving the least cumbrous technique.' back

Alan Turing, On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, 'The "computable" numbers may be described briefly as the real numbers whose expressions as a decimal are calculable by some finite means. Although the subject of this paper is ostensibly the computable numbers, it is almost equally easy to define and investigate computable functions of an integral variable of a real or computable variable, computable predicates and so forth. . . . ' back

Alex Lo, Diplomatic disputes hide pettiness and savagery, ' The United Nations and various human rights groups have repeatedly criticised the US-led sanctions and their inhumane effects on the general Venezuelan populace. Washington, however, is determined to toughen the stranglehold, including extraditing Maduro’s go-to troubleshooter Alex Saab, who had been working around the sanctions to supply food, fuel and medicine to the country. The sanctions have been sheer vindictive savagery. back

Alexandra Petri, Opinion: Some Things That Didn’t Go Wrong in 2021, back

Ann Telnaes, Opinion: The best Ann Telnaes cartoons of 2021, ' Editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes drew her takes on all of 2021′s biggest stories. Here are her favorites. back

Belen Fernandez, Elon Musk and all that was wrong with 2021, ' Might it not be more charming, then, to select a Person of the Year who is actually concerned with alleviating human misery – as opposed to someone chasing a dystopian vision of an exclusive future universe run by and for Elon Musk? Granted, this is the same magazine that named Adolf Hitler “Man of the Year” in 1938.' back

Bloomberg, SenseTime IPO lands Chinese professor $3.4bn fortune, ' Just weeks after the U.S. placed a unit of SenseTime Group Inc. on a blacklist for alleged human rights violations, the firm is about to make founder Tang Xiao’ou one of the world’s richest people. China’s largest artificial intelligence company priced its initial public offering at HK$3.85 (49 cents) per share, raising $5.55 billion That was the bottom of the expected range, but a signal that despite increased tensions with the U.S. and Beijing’s crackdown on tech giants, the country, including its vast surveillance machinery, continues to churn out huge fortunes and massive gains for venture capitalists. ' back

Caietanum Card. Bisleti, Praefectus, Acta Apolistice Sedis 8 (1916) 157, ' His dubiis Emi ac Rmi DD. Cardinales huius S. Congregationis, in plenario coetu, habito diebus xxn et xxiv, mense februario huius anni, ita respondendum censuerunt: Ad I. Summa Theologica S. Thomae habenda est uti textus praelectionum quoad partem scholasticam quaestionum; ita scilicet ut, una cum aliquo textu, qui ordinem logicum quaestionum indicet et partem positivam contineat, habeatur prae manibus et explicetur Summa Theologica quoad partem scholasticam. Ad II. Omnes illae viginti quatuor theses philosophicae germanam S. Thomae doctrinam exprimunt, eaeque proponant 'veluti tutae normae directivae.' back

Claude E Shannon, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, 'The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages.' back

Clive Irving, Air France 447 Report: How the Plane Went Down, 'A new report mostly blames pilot error for the tragic 2009 airplane crash. Clive Irving asks why pilots should be faulted for having to cope with serious technical failures.' back

Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 12:12: . . . of makingmany books there is no end, 'King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.) And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.' back

Exodus 32, Moses slaughters the worshippers of the Golden Calf, '27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbour'.” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day”.' back

Felicia Marian, Thoka Ndlozi & Anneline Malebo, Joy - Paradise Road, 1980, ' Come with me down paradise road
This way please, I'll carry your load
This you won't believe.
Come with me to paradise skies
Look outside and open your eyes
This you must believe.

There are better days before us
And a burning bridge behind, fire smokin' the sky is blazing,
There's a woman waiting weeping
And a young man nearly beaten all for love.
Paradise was almost closin' down.

Come with me to paradise days
It'll change your life, it'll shore change your ways
This you won't believe
. Take my hand down paradise lane
Away from heart ache with out any pain
I know 'cause I have been.

There are better days before us
And a burning bridge behind, fire smokin', the sky is blazing,
There's a woman waiting weeping
And a young man nearly beaten all for love.
Paradise was almost closin' down.

There are better days before us
And a burning bridge behind, fire smokin', the sky is blazing,
There's a woman waiting weeping
And a young man nearly beaten all for love

You must believe - you must believe this
You must believe - you must believe this
You must believe - you must believe this...
There are better days...

back

Jordi-Vidal-Robert & Hans-Joachim Voth, Extraordinarily, the effects of the Spanish Inquisition linger to this day, ' From Imperial Rome to the Crusades, to modern North Korea or the treatment of Rohingya in Myanmar, religious persecution has been a tool of state control for millennia. While its immediate violence and human consequences are obvious, less obvious is whether it leaves scars centuries after it ends. In a new study we have attempted to examine the present day consequences of one of the longest-running and most meticulously documented persecutions of them all – the trials of the Spanish Inquisition between 1478 to 1834. The records of 67,521 trials still exist, along with indicators of their locations and places of birth and residence of the people they tried. We find that today – two hundred years after its abolition – the locations in which the inquisition was strong have markedly lower levels of economic activity, trust and educational attainment than those in which it was weak.' back

Justin Romberg, Nyquist Theorem, The Connections Project, Rice University: 'The fundamental theorem of DSP [digital signal processing]' back

King James Bible, Psalms 82:6 I have said . . . , 'Viewing the 1769 King James Version. Click to switch to 1611 King James Version of Psalms 82:6

I have said, Ye [are] gods; and all of you [are] children of the most High.

- 1769 Oxford King James Bible 'Authorized Version' back

Laurence Frost & Heather Smith, Air France Crash Criminal Probe Shows Scope of Crew Errors, 'Air France Flight 447’s crew reacted badly to an autopilot shutdown and misread instruments showing the plane’s rapid descent before it plunged into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people aboard, a report shows.' back

P. Pratap Kumar, Archbishop Desmond Tutu: father of South Africa’s ‘rainbow nation’ , ' Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu has died at the age of 90. Archbishop Tutu earned the respect and love of millions of South Africans and the world. He carved out a permanent place in their hearts and minds, becoming known affectionately as “The Arch”. . . . With his growing political activism in the 1980s, the Arch became a target of the apartheid government’s full scale victimisation and faced death threats as well as bomb scares. In March 1980 his passport was revoked. After much international outcry and intervention, he was given a “limited travel document” two years later to travel overseas. His work was recognised globally, and he was awarded Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984 for being a unifying leader in the campaign to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa. . . . South Africa is blessed to have had such a brave and courageous man as The Arch, who truly symbolised the idea of the country as a “rainbow nation” . South Africa will feel the loss of the moral direction of this brave soldier of God for generations to come. Hamba kahle (go well) Arch.' back

Peter Martin, Like songs, the best graphs tell stories. Here are my 10 favourites from 2021, ' “One of the first things you have to decide on with a musical is why should there be songs.” The person speaking is Stephen Sondheim, the writer of some of the best songs for musicals in the 20th century, who died in November aged 91. You can put songs in any story, but what I think you have to look for is, why are songs necessary to this story? If it’s unnecessary, then the show generally turns out to be not very good. I’m no Sondheim, but as an editor I won’t put a graph into any story unless it is absolutely necessary to tell the story. When I do, the picture can be worth at least the 800 words that accompany it. So here are my 10 favourites from the business and economy stories I edited for The Conversation in 2021. back

Philip Weller, Macbeth Navigator, back

Priscian - Wikipedia, Priscian - Wikipedia, the free encyclopdia, 'Priscianus Caesariensis (fl. 500 AD), commonly known as Priscian . . . was a Latin grammarian. He wrote the Institutiones grammaticae ("Grammatical Foundations") on the subject. This work was the standard textbook for the study of Latin during the Middle Ages and provided the raw material for the field of speculative grammar.' back

Psalm 82, Psalms, chapter 82, 6I declare: “Gods though you be,*d offspring of the Most High all of you, 7Yet like any mortal you shall die; like any prince you shall fall.” back

Richard P. Feynman, Nobel Lecture: The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics, Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1965: We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or to describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn’t any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work, although, there has been in these days, some interest in this kind of thing. Since winning the prize is a personal thing, I thought I could be excused in this particular situation, if I were to talk personally about my relationship to quantum electrodynamics, rather than to discuss the subject itself in a refined and finished fashion. Furthermore, since there are three people who have won the prize in physics, if they are all going to be talking about quantum electrodynamics itself, one might become bored with the subject. So, what I would like to tell you about today are the sequence of events, really the sequence of ideas, which occurred, and by which I finally came out the other end with an unsolved problem for which I ultimately received a prize.' back

Scholasticism - Wikipedia, Scholasticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics ("scholastics," or "schoolmen") of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100 to 1700, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending dogma in an increasingly pluralistic context. It originated as an outgrowth of, and a departure from, Christian monastic schools at the earliest European universities.' back

Shane Keating, Slip, slop, slurp! The surprising science of sunscreen, sand and ice cream, ' Viscosity is the ability of a fluid to keep its shape when a force is applied. Sunscreen is what’s called a shear-thinning fluid, which means rubbing it makes its viscosity decrease so it flows more freely. . . . The opposite of a shear-thinning fluid is a shear-thickening fluid, a material whose viscosity increases with applied force. . . . Non-Newtonian fluids are found in all sorts of useful substances from biofuels to body armour to blood plasma, and there is still much about them to discover.' back

Vita & Virginia - Wikipedia, Vita & Virginia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Vita & Virginia is a 2018 biographical romantic drama film directed by Chanya Button. The screenplay, written by Button and Eileen Atkins, is adapted from the 1992 play Vita & Virginia by Atkins. The film stars Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, and Isabella Rossellini. Set in the 1920s, Vita & Virginia tells the story of the love affair between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. back