Einstein (2009), Albert, and Translated by Alan Harris, Einstein's Essays in Science, Philosophical Library / Dover 1934, 2009 'His name is synonymous with "genius," but these essays by the renowned physicist and scholar are accessible to any reader. In addition to outlining the core of relativity theory in everyday language, Albert Einstein presents fascinating discussions of other scientific fields to which he made significant contributions. The Nobel Laureate also profiles some of history's most influential physicists, upon whose studies his own work was based. Assembled during Einstein's lifetime from his speeches and essays, this book marks the first presentation to the wider world of the scientist's accomplishments in the field of abstract physics. Along with relativity theory, these articles examine the methods of theoretical physics, principles of research, and the concept of scientific truth. Einstein's speeches to audiences at Columbia University and the Prussian Academy of Science appear here, along with his insightful observations on such giants of science as Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, and others.' 
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Petroski (2006), Henry, Success Through Failure: The Paradox of Design, Princeton University Press 2006 Amazon editorial review: 'Civil engineer and historian Petroski interprets the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as a cautionary tale for designers. That bridge failed because engineers made it by enlarging a previously successful idea. Wise designers, Petroski insists, must always contemplate the possibility of failure. Indeed, it is usually failure that spurs designers on toward improved blueprints. Failure-induced improvement may mean merely that lecturers can use a laser pointer in place of a yardstick, but it may also mean that physicians can turn to lifesaving diagnostic software far superior to fallible human protocols. The potential for failure manifests itself before the event to those designers blessed with prescience, but often improvements are only implemented in the wake of actual failures. From ancient Roman engineers dismayed at the failure of stone-arch bridges to twenty-first-century American architects stunned by the collapse of the Twin Towers, designers have frequently learned valuable principles through hard tutelage. Lucid and concise, this study invites nonspecialists to share in the challenge of trial-and-error engineering.' Bryce Christensen Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved  
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Bernard Lonergan - Wikipedia, Bernard Lonergan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan SJ CC (17 December 1904 – 26 November 1984) was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian, regarded by many as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Lonergan's works include Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), as well as two studies of Thomas Aquinas, several theological textbooks, and numerous essays, including two posthumously published essays on macroeconomics. A projected 25-volume Collected Works is underway with the University of Toronto Press. He held appointments at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Regis College, Toronto, as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Boston College, and as Stillman Professor of Divinity at Harvard University.' back

Darren Paul Fisher, What is it about the books of Terry Pratchett that make them so difficult to adapt to the screen?, ' When you delve into the world of literature, few names shine as brightly as Terry Pratchett’s. Despite his early death, the prolific British author continues to enchant readers with his Discworld book series, a fantasy universe that satirises our own with clever wit and insightful humour. His social commentary is so astute, in fact, that his fictional measure that truly measured the nuances of financial inequality has recently been taken up by a real anti-poverty campaign in the United Kingdom. In short, he is one of the greatest novelists of all time.' back

Eaton, Kim, deBruyn, Moyi & Reneau (14 August 2023), Exclusive: How a Rare Portrait of an Enslaved Child Arrived at the Met, ' The Met recently acquired “Bélizaire and the Frey Children,” a 19th-century Louisiana portrait with a secret: For over a 100 years, the image of an enslaved child was erased. This is his story.' back

General covariance - Wikipedia, General covariance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, In theoretical physics, general covariance (also known as diffeomorphism covariance or general invariance) is the invariance of the form of physical laws under arbitrary differentiable coordinate transformations. The essential idea is that coordinates do not exist a priori in nature, but are only artifices used in describing nature, and hence should play no role in the formulation of fundamental physical laws.' back

Ibrahim Al-Marashi, Blackwater paved the way for Wagner, ' It is hardly surprising that Putin has decided to preserve a mercenary force that has proven quite effective in pushing forward his foreign policy adventures in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has likely learned a lesson or two from another great power – the United States – whose heavy reliance on PMCs paved the way for the growing privatisation and outsourcing of war across the globe. . . . .. The employment of contractors by the US government is not a recent phenomenon, but over the past two decades it has greatly expanded. While in World War II, 10 percent of American armed forces were privately contracted, during the “war on terror”, launched in 2001, they reached some 50 percent, sometimes more. Needing hundreds of thousands of personnel to carry out military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, but fearing domestic backlash, the US government had to turn to PMCs. Since the start of the “war on terror”, the Pentagon has spent $14 trillion, with one-third to one-half of it going to military contractors in combat zones. A lot of this money has gone to contracts related to logistics, construction and weapons supplies, but a sizable chunk has also paid for “hired guns”. During the height of the 2008 counterinsurgency effort in Iraq, the number of contractors reached 163,400 (including people in non-combat roles) compared to 146,800 US troops. In 2010, amid the “surge” in Afghanistan, when additional troops were deployed for a renewed offensive against the Taliban, there were 112,100 contractors (including people in non-combat roles) compared to 79,100 troops.' back

J J O'Connor & E F Robertson, MacTutor: Isaac Newton, ' Newton's greatest achievement was his work in physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By 1666 Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. He had also discovered the law giving the centrifugal force on a body moving uniformly in a circular path. However he did not have a correct understanding of the mechanics of circular motion. Newton's novel idea of 1666 was to imagine that the Earth's gravity influenced the Moon, counter-balancing its centrifugal force. From his law of centrifugal force and Kepler's third law of planetary motion, Newton deduced the inverse-square law.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1992), An essay on the divinity of money , ' The rise of science questioned revelation and the churches as sources of truth, but they have remained in existence because science still lacks the power to ask or answer the fundamental questions of life and death that concern theology. Here I outline a new scientific theology whose model of god derives not from ancient text but from the mathematical theory of text and communication itself. I propose that this model describes the universe of our experience, which is therefore fittingly called god. I then interpret this model using elements of current physical theory. These ideas are then applied to money. The movement of money is an abstract representation of the the activity of society as a whole, just as the flow of momentum in space-time is an abstract representation of the physical universe. My hypothesis is that proper understanding and political control of public cashflows is necessary and sufficient to obtain peaceful civilisation.' back

Joseph H. Taylor (1994), Binary Pulsars and Relativistic Gravity, ' At present levels of accuracy, a small kinematic correction (approximately 0.5% of the observed) must be included to account for accelerations of the solar system and the binary pulsar system in the Galactic gravitational field. After doing so, we find that Einstein’s theory passes this extraordinarily stringent test with a fractional accuracy better than 0.4%. The clock-comparison experiment for PSR 1913 + 16 thus provides direct experimental proof that changes in gravity propagate at the speed of light, thereby creating a dissipative mechanism in an orbiting system. It necessarily follows that gravitational radiation exists and has a quadrupolar nature.' back

Kate Selig, Judge rules in favor of Montana youths in landmark climate decision, ' In the first ruling of its kind nationwide, a Montana state court decided Monday in favor of young people who alleged the state violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment” by promoting the use of fossil fuels. The court determined that a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act has harmed the state’s environment and the young plaintiffs by preventing Montana from considering the climate impacts of energy projects. The provision is accordingly unconstitutional, the court said. “This is a huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy and for our climate,” said Julia Olson, the executive director of Our Children’s Trust, which brought the case. “More rulings like this will certainly come.” The sweeping win, one of the strongest decisions on climate change ever issued by a court, could energize the environmental movement and usher in a wave of cases aimed at advancing action on climate change, experts say. The ruling — which invalidates the provision blocking climate considerations — also represents a rare victory for climate activists who have tried to use the courts to push back against government policies and industrial activities they say are harming the planet. . . .. The Montana case will face an appeal to the state Supreme Court, Emily Flower, a spokesperson for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, confirmed Monday. She decried the ruling as “absurd” and said Montanans cannot be blamed for changing the climate.' back

Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.' A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, Essai philosophique dur les probabilites introduction to the second edition of Theorie analytique des probabilites based on a lecture given in 1794. 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

Paul Moses, Rudy's RICO Comeuppance, After being sentenced to one hundred years in prison for his racketeering conviction as head of the Genovese organized crime family, Anthony Salerno penned a letter to a newspaper columnist who had expressed alarm about the powerful law that prosecutor Rudy Giuliani had used in the case. “Roy Cohn, my former attorney, always stated that you were an honorable man,” Salerno wrote to columnist Murray Kempton in 1987. Kempton, a Pulitzer Prize winner who’d battled the likes of Cohn during the McCarthy era, had written a column headlined “If RICO Wins, We Lose,” noting various ways the Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organization Act (RICO) of 1970 let prosecutors circumvent traditional civil-liberties protections. “It is a plaything for frustrated drama actors such as U.S. Attorney Giuliani,” Salerno wrote. “History repeatedly shows us that a government that relies on unprincipled abuses of authority and dubious laws has a tendency to snowball into worse scenarios.” In other words: What goes around, comes around. back

Pope Pius X, Lamentabili Sane: The Syllabus of Errors (Condemning the Errors of the Modernists) Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, July 3, 1907, 'WITH TRULY LAMENTABLE RESULTS, our age, casting aside all restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things, frequently pursues novelties so ardently that it rejects the legacy of the human race. Thus it falls into very serious errors, which are even more serious when they concern sacred authority, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and the principal mysteries of Faith. The fact that many Catholic writers also go beyond the limits determined by the Fathers and the Church herself is extremely regrettable. In the name of higher knowledge and historical research, (they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas. ... ' back

Rachael Burgin (2023_08_12), Rape myths make it almost impossible for victim-survivors of sexual assault to find justice in Australia’s legal system, This week the public was finally provided with a copy of Walter Sofronoff’s inquiry into the conduct of Bruce Lehrmann’s rape trial. Its release, however, has brought with it more misreporting around sexual violence, including the perpetuation of “rape myths”. A central finding of the inquiry – that the prosecution against Lehrmann was properly brought by the director of public prosecutions, Shane Drumgold SC, who moved to charge Lehrmann after ACT police declined to – has been overlooked in much of the reporting. The inquiry’s findings do not establish Lehrmann’s guilt or innocence, just that the police and the DPP acted appropriately in bringing charges. . . .. The inquiry, and much of the media reporting on it, have consistently erased the voices and experiences of victim-survivors of sexual violence. . . .. What we have learned from the inquiry is that, as it stands, we can’t look to the criminal justice system for answers. As Dame Vera Baird famously said as the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales – we are witnessing the decriminalisation of rape. .. . ..' Dr Rachael Burgin is a senior lecturer in criminal justice at Swinburne Law School and the CEO of Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy (RASARA) back

SCMP Evident Image of the Year, SCMP Evident Image of the Year, ' The winners of the Evident Image of the Year Award 2022 have been announced. The global winning image was taken by Laurent Formery of the United States.' back

Suzanne Smith (ABC Compass), Hidden children, ' Brendan has discovered that globally there are thousands of children of priests, just like him, who as adults found their biological parents through DNA testing and social media groups. There are 450,000 Catholic priests around the world and, though there are no accurate records, it is estimated that they have fathered over 20,000 children. Crucially, a 25-year study of 1,500 Catholic priests found less than half the priests in the United States attempt celibacy — which experts say is a major factor fuelling so-called reproductive abuse. The study’s author, ex-priest Richard Sipe, argued it creates a culture of secrecy that tolerates and even protects paedophiles — though he estimated that four times as many priests involve themselves sexually with women than with children.' back