Adams (1999), Marilyn McCord, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, Melbourne University Press 1999 Jacket: 'Thinkers in all societies have struggled to make sense of horrendous evil. This provocative book takes a religious perspective. It tackles a fundamental dilemma in Christian thought -- how to reconcile faith in God with the evils that afflict human beings. Distinguished American philosopher Marilyn McCord Adams argues that analytic philosophy of religion is too narrowly focussed. The ground rules for debate have allowed philosophers to avert their gaze from the very worst evils and from their impact on human lives. She proposes a radical shift away from the preoccupation with morals and towards more fruitful evaluative categories such as purity, defilement, honour, shame and aesthetics. The innovative approach of Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God will challenge thinkers both religious and secular.' 
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Chaitin (1987), Gregory J, Algorithmic Information Theory, Cambridge UP 1987 Foreword: 'The crucial fact here is that there exist symbolic objects (i.e., texts) which are "algorithmically inexplicable", i.e., cannot be specified by any text shorter than themselves. Since texts of this sort have the properties associated with random sequences of classical probability theory, the theory of describability developed . . . in the present work yields a very interesting new view of the notion of randomness.' J T Schwartz 
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Contos (2023), Chanel, Consent Laid Bare, Macmillan Australia 2023 Jacket: In 2021 Chanel Contos posted on Instagram asking people to share their stories of sexual assault during their schooling years. This post unexpectedly went viral and almost 7000 people sent in testimonies describing behaviour that constitutes rape. Virtually none of these instances were reported and almost all of them were perpretrated by people they knew. How and why is this hapenning in an era of growing equality? Chanel Contos argues that when it comes to sex, we are still working with an outdated social contract that privileges men's pleasure at the expense of women's huanity. 
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Adiabatic invariant - Wikipedia, Adiabatic invariant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' A property of a physical system, such as the entropy of a gas, that stays approximately constant when changes occur slowly is called an adiabatic invariant. By this it is meant that if a system is varied between two end points, as the time for the variation between the end points is increased to infinity, the variation of an adiabatic invariant between the two end points goes to zero. . . .. In mechanics, an adiabatic change is a slow deformation of the Hamiltonian, where the fractional rate of change of the energy is much slower than the orbital frequency. The area enclosed by the different motions in phase space are the adiabatic invariants. In quantum mechanics, an adiabatic change is one that occurs at a rate much slower than the difference in frequency between energy eigenstates. In this case, the energy states of the system do not make transitions, so that the quantum number is an adiabatic invariant. The old quantum theory was formulated by equating the quantum number of a system with its classical adiabatic invariant. This determined the form of the Bohr–Sommerfeld quantization rule: the quantum number is the area in phase space of the classical orbit.' back

Al Jazeera Staff, Canadian journalism school unveiling award in honour of Shireen Abu Akleh, ' One of Canada’s top journalism schools is inaugurating an award in honour of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, whose killing by Israeli forces last year sent shockwaves around the world and spurred calls for justice and media freedom. The Shireen Abu Akleh Emerging Reporter Award in Social Justice Journalism at Carleton University will be unveiled at an event in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, on Friday evening. . . . .. Israel initially claimed that Abu Akleh may have been shot in a crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters. But video footage, several witnesses and multiple investigations by rights groups and independent media outlets showed there were no armed Palestinians in the area where Abu Akleh and other journalists were standing before Israeli soldiers started firing at them. Israel eventually admitted that one of its soldiers likely killed the Palestinian-American journalist, but said that no criminal investigation would be conducted.' back

Albert Einstein (1907), Planck's Theory of Radiation and the Theory of Specific Heats, ' In two previous papers1 I have shown that the interpretation of the law of energy distribution of black-body radiation in terms of Boltzmann's theory of the second law leads to a new conception of the phenomena of light emission and light absorption, which, even though still far from having the character of a complete theory, is remarkable insofar as it facilitates the understanding of a series of regularities. The present paper will show that the theory of radiation-in particular Planck's theory-leads to a modification of the molecular-kinetic theory of heat by which some difficulties obstructing the implementation of that theory can be eliminated. The paper will also yield a relationship between the thermal and optical behavior of solids.' back

Ali MC, Australian state suspends human rights law to lock up more children, ' The government of Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland has stunned rights experts by suspending its Human Rights Act for a second time this year to be able to lock up more children. The ruling Labor Party last month pushed through a suite of legislation to allow under-18s – including children as young as 10 – to be detained indefinitely in police watch houses, because changes to youth justice laws – including jail for young people who breach bail conditions – mean there are no longer enough spaces in designated youth detention centres to house all those being put behind bars. The amended bail laws, introduced earlier this year, also required the Human Rights Act to be suspended. The moves have shocked Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall, who described human rights protections in Australia as “very fragile”, with no laws that apply nationwide.' back

AP, Al Jazeera, CIA abuse rendered 9/11 defendant unfit for trial: US military judge, ' The judge, Colonel Matthew McCall, said the incompetency finding for Ramzi bin al-Shibh meant that the prosecution of his four co-defendants would continue without him. Al-Shibh remains in custody. McCall issued his ruling late on Thursday. . . .. Originally from Yemen, al-Shibh is accused of organising one cell of the 19 hijackers who commandeered four commercial planes to carry out attacks on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The attacks were the deadliest of their kind on US soil. Brett Eagleson, whose father Bruce Eagleson was killed when one of the hijacked planes destroyed the south tower of the World Trade Center, called the events that forced the sidelining of al-Shibh’s prosecution “another example of the lack of justice that the 9/11 community has received at the hands of our own government”. “They wrongfully tortured these individuals. We don’t stand for torture. Because of that, we’re denied a trial. We’re denied true justice,” . . ..' back

Asmit Bhowmick et al, Structural evidence for intermediates during O2 formation in photosystem II, ' In natural photosynthesis, the light-driven splitting of water into electrons, protons and molecular oxygen forms the first step of the solar-to-chemical energy conversion process. The reaction takes place in photosystem II, where the Mn4CaO5 cluster first stores four oxidizing equivalents, the S0 to S4 intermediate states in the Kok cycle, sequentially generated by photochemical charge separations in the reaction center and then catalyzes the O–O bond formation chemistry1,2,3. Here, we report room temperature snapshots by serial femtosecond X-ray crystallography to provide structural insights into the final reaction step of Kok’s photosynthetic water oxidation cycle, the S3→[S4]→S0 transition where O2 is formed and Kok’s water oxidation clock is reset. Our data reveal a complex sequence of events, which occur over micro- to milliseconds, comprising changes at the Mn4CaO5 cluster, its ligands and water pathways as well as controlled proton release through the hydrogen-bonding network of the Cl1 channel. Importantly, the extra O atom Ox, which was introduced as a bridging ligand between Ca and Mn1 during the S2→S3 transition4,5,6, disappears or relocates in parallel with Yz reduction starting at approximately 700 μs after the third flash. The onset of O2 evolution, as indicated by the shortening of the Mn1–Mn4 distance, occurs at around 1,200 μs, signifying the presence of a reduced intermediate, possibly a bound peroxide. back

Bret Stephens, How to Make Russia Really Pay for Invading Ukraine, ' Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and our democratic partners have frozen roughly $300 billion in Russian central bank assets, amounting to a little less than half of the Kremlin’s foreign currency and gold reserves. Some of us have been arguing ever since that the money should be transferred to Ukraine, both as a matter of justice and as a deterrent against this kind of aggression. As the former Treasury secretary Larry Summers has put it, “Bank robbers should not expect banks to honor their safe deposit boxes.” . . . .. But those objections are themselves flimsy. A carefully argued and exhaustively researched 184-page report circulated this week among journalists, government officials and NGO leaders by the Renew Democracy Initiative shows why. . . .. The report’s central conclusion is that the president has ample authority, under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or I.E.E.P.A., to transfer Russia’s frozen assets to Ukraine. “I.E.E.P.A. plainly states that the president can ‘investigate,’ ‘block,’ ‘regulate,’ ‘direct and compel,’ ‘nullify,’ ‘void’ and ‘prevent or prohibit’” the conveyance of property from one entity to another, Tribe and his colleagues write. “Those powers address conveyances of ‘any right, power or privilege’ with respect to property that a foreign country has an interest in and that is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.” Past presidents have used this authority before: George H.W. Bush froze Iraq’s assets in the United States after its invasion of Kuwait, and ultimately transferred them to the United Nations Compensation Commission for victims of Saddam Hussein’s aggression.' back

Carl Rhodes, Global corporate power is ‘out of control’, but reports of democracy’s death are greatly exaggerated, ' Journalists Claire Provost and Matt Kennard’s Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy charts what has become of the corporate-led global prosperity that was promised in the 1980s. . . .. The book asserts that corporations have staged nothing less than a political coup d’état: a deliberate and successful attempt to usurp the power of nation states and establish themselves as rulers of the world. By its own account, Silent Coup provides a guide to the rise of supranational corporate empires that now dictate how resources are allocated, how territories are governed, how justice is defined and who’s safe. . . . .. The rhetorical flair distracts from the real issues. What Provost and Kennard report is important, and reflects some of the most pressing political challenges of our time. But while their discoveries may have been revelations to them, these matters were hardly secrets and their journalistic exploits are not what is important. The problem is not that nobody knows about the growing global corporatocracy; it is that nobody seems to have the will or ability to stop it. . . .. Democracy still means something. It means a promise of equality, liberty and solidarity among citizens. It means retaining the primacy of popular sovereignty – the rule of the people – instead of political power residing with a minority class of plutocrats. It means believing in the possibility of shared prosperity. It is only with hope that we can retain the political will to continue the democratic promise, and to retain and strengthen the practices, institutions and ways of life that enable that promise. Political change does not come from resigning ourselves to a fate beyond our control, but from daring to dream of a better future. This is where the book fails. It is not too late. Don’t give up.. back

Derek Cai, China MeToo activist stands trial for subversion, ' Journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin appeared in court in the southern city of Guangzhou on Friday with her co-accused, labour campaigner Wang Jianbing. The two were detained in 2021 as part of China's wide crackdown on activists. Rights groups have raised concern over their condition while in detention. Ms Huang, 35, had been sleep deprived and malnourished, a friend told news website Radio Free Asia. Friday's hearing proceeded under heavy guard, with authorities surrounding the court house with a fence, said the spokesperson of a group that is campaigning for their freedom. "There's a very heavy police presence around the court today because of the trial," said the spokesperson, who asked not to be named and is also a friend of Ms Huang and Mr Wang. back

Entropy (information theory) - Wikipedia, Entropy (information theory) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In information theory, entropy is a measure of the uncertainty associated with a random variable. In this context, the term usually refers to the Shannon entropy, which quantifies the expected value of the information contained in a message, usually in units such as bits. In this context, a 'message' means a specific realization of the random variable. Equivalently, the Shannon entropy is a measure of the average information content one is missing when one does not know the value of the random variable. The concept was introduced by Claude E. Shannon in his 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication".' back

Jason Farago, The Essential J.M. Coetzee, ' Coetzee has had a fascinating third act since immigrating to Australia in the 2000s; his books have grown more experimental and philosophical, blending fiction with nonfiction and often defying traditional novelistic structure. The most important of his Australian novels — a book of real power and deep mystery — is “The Childhood of Jesus” (2013), the first in a trilogy of peculiar and deadpan stories about a boy and a man making new lives in a world “washed clean".' back

Jennan Ismael (Standord Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Quantum Mechanics, ' Quantum mechanics is, at least at first glance and at least in part, a mathematical machine for predicting the behaviours of microscopic particles — or, at least, of the measuring instruments we use to explore those behaviours — and in that capacity, it is spectacularly successful: in terms of power and precision, head and shoulders above any theory we have ever had. Mathematically, the theory is well understood; we know what its parts are, how they are put together, and why, in the mechanical sense (i.e., in a sense that can be answered by describing the internal grinding of gear against gear), the whole thing performs the way it does, how the information that gets fed in at one end is converted into what comes out the other.' back

John Crace, Unfortunately for the Tories Liz Truss is the gift that keeps on giving, ' Still, there’s one thing no one can take away from her. She has at least advanced the cause of women in politics. Sort of. Not so long ago, women had to be twice as good as men to succeed to the top jobs in government. Truss has shattered that particular glass ceiling. She is living proof that a woman can now be every bit as useless as a man and still become prime minister. What a legacy. Admittedly May had nudged us in that direction, but Truss is an icon of incoherence. Radon – “she’s a gas, but she’s inert” – Liz is a beacon for the brainless everywhere. Oxford should be rethinking its PPE course as we speak.' back

Katharine Richardson & Xuemei Bal, What are ‘planetary boundaries’ and why should we care?, ' If we keep our activities to a safe level, the sheer exuberance of life and the planet’s own processes can handle it. But in six out of nine vital life support systems, we have blown well past the safe zone. And we’re now in the danger zone, where we – as well as every other species – are now at risk. Planetary boundaries update 2023 Here’s the sum total of our impact on the planet. You can see the areas we’re still within safe limits – and those where we are well past. Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre based on analysis in Richardson et al 2023, CC BY-ND Our breach of boundaries is very new In last week’s update, the research team found we had now gone beyond the safe zone into dangerous territory in six of the nine processes. We are still in the green for ozone-depleting chemicals. Ocean-acidification is still, just, in the green, and so is aerosol pollution and dust. But on climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, synthetic chemicals such as plastics, freshwater depletion, and nitrogen/phosphorus use, we’re well out of the safer zone. On these six, we’re deep in the red zone.' back

Lily Kuo, China sentences Uyghur academic to life in prison in Xinjiang, ' Rahile Dawut, a prominent Uyghur academic who disappeared six years ago at the height of the Chinese government’s crackdown in Xinjiang, has been given a life sentence in prison, according to a human rights group that has worked for years to locate her. Dui Hua, a California-based group that advocates for political prisoners in China, said in a statement Thursday that the 57-year-old professor — who was convicted in 2018 on charges of endangering state security by promoting “splittism” — had lost an appeal of her sentence in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region High People’s Court. A former professor at Xinjiang University and leading scholar on Uyghur folklore, she is among more than 300 intellectuals, artists and writers believed to be detained in Xinjiang, amid a government campaign ostensibly aimed at better assimilating China’s Muslim minority and promoting ethnic harmony. Rights groups have accused the Chinese government of committing “cultural genocide” by wiping out previously vibrant local Uyghur culture.' back

Paul Sakkal, Church seeks exemption for religious belief in misinformation bill, ' Catholics and Muslims have raised the alarm about the potential for Labor’s new online misinformation laws to restrain the teaching of religious doctrine on issues such as euthanasia. The powerful Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is pushing to make sure a person expressing sincere religious beliefs cannot be captured under a draft bill that has been criticised by the Coalition, human rights commission, civil liberties groups and top legal minds. . . . .. “There are people who will sometimes incorrectly claim that the teachings of the Catholic Church are ‘hateful’ or ‘harmful’. The conference is concerned that the bill could be used to portray the church’s communication of its teachings as a form of public misinformation,” the Catholic submission states.' back

Richard Feynman & Steven Weinberg (1986), Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures, Foreword: John C Taylor: 'Dirac Died in 1984, and St John's College, Cambridge (Dirac's College), very generously endowed an annual lecture to be held at Cambridge University in Dirac's memory. The First two lectures, printed here, are contrasting variations of Dirac's theme of the union of quantum theory and relativity.' back

Ring (mathematics) - Wikipedia, Ring (mathematics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, rings are algebraic structures that generalize fields: multiplication need not be commutative and multiplicative inverses need not exist. In other words, a ring is a set equipped with two binary operations satisfying properties analogous to those of addition and multiplication of integers. Ring elements may be numbers such as integers or complex numbers, but they may also be non-numerical objects such as polynomials, square matrices, functions, and power series. Formally, a ring is an abelian group whose operation is called addition, with a second binary operation called multiplication that is associative, is distributive over the addition operation, and has an identity element (this last property is not required by some authors).' back

Rob Davies & Jonathan Jones, ‘You could fill a museum with it’: the $963m Roman Abramovich art collection revealed, ' The Guardian can reveal that during an extraordinary spending spree, spanning nearly a decade, Abramovich and his ex-wife, the US-based collector Dasha Zhukova, acquired what experts believe is one of the most significant private collections of modern art ever assembled, a trove of more than 300 pieces whose worth was estimated by the oligarch’s own assessors at almost $1bn. “You could fill a museum with it; this is a stupendous collection,” said Andrew Renton, the professor of curating at Goldsmiths, University of London. “It’s not the vulgar collection of a nouveau riche; it shows very good taste. If you have enough money, you can buy a piece of history.” The details have come to light thanks to the Oligarch Files, a leak from the Cyprus-based offshore financial services provider MeritServus, analysed in collaboration with the OCCRP and other international media partners. MeritServus was placed under sanctions by the UK government in April, after the Guardian reported on its work for Abramovich and other oligarchs.' back

Stephen Kerry, ‘Don’t say anything about it’: why so many LGBTQIA+ Buddhists feel pressure to hide their identities, ' More than half of Australia’s LGBTQIA+ Buddhists feel reluctant to “come out” to their Buddhist communities and nearly one in six have been told directly that being LGBTQIA+ isn’t in keeping with the Buddha’s teachings. These are some of the findings from my research looking at the experiences of LGBTQIA+ Buddhists in Australia. I’m a genderqueer, non-binary Buddhist myself and I was curious about others’ experiences in Australia since there has been no research done on our community before. So, in 2020, I surveyed 82 LGBTQIA+ Buddhists and have since followed this up with 29 face-to-face interviews. Some people may think Buddhism would be quite accepting of LGBTQIA+ people. There are, after all, no religious laws, commandments or punishments in Buddhism. My research indicates, however, this is not always true. Buddhism does have five precepts, or rules for behaving in a moral or ethical way, that monastics and some lay practitioners are meant to follow to have a morally good life. The precept of “sexual misconduct” has been interpreted as referring to homosexuality. . . .. In my research, I found that many LGBTQIA+ Buddhists are reluctant to come out because, as Lang* [pseudonym] (a pansexual, non-binary man) explained: there is a profound lack of understanding of how heteronormative and puritan many Buddhist spaces are.' back

The Taming of the Shrew (1967 film) - Wikipedia, The Taming of the Shrew (1967 film) - Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia, ' The Taming of the Shrew is a 1967 period romantic comedy film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, based on William Shakespeare’s play about a courtship between two strong-willed people in 16th-century Italy. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor (who also produced) as Kate and Richard Burton as Petruchio, who were both nominated for BAFTA Awards for their acting. It features Cyril Cusack, Michael Hordern, Michael York, and Victor Spinetti in supporting roles.' back