le Carre (1974, 2011), John, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Hodder & Stoughton: Sceptre 1974, 2011 ' The Circus has already suffered a bad defeat, and the result was two bullets in a man's back. But a bigger threat still exists. And the legendary George Smiley is recruited to root out a high level mole of thirty years; standing — though to find him means spying on the spies. Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy is brilliant and ceaselessly compelling, pitting Smiley against his Cold War rival, Karla, in one of the greatest struggles of all fiction.' 
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Nietzsche (1961, 1969), Friedrich, and R. J. Hollingdale (translation and introduction, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Penguin 1961, 1969 ' Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic and free. R. J Hollingdale's vibrant translation captures the dramatic force of Nietzsche's writing. His introduction offers a comprehensive chapter-by-chapter survey of the work, and there are also explanatory notes.' 
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Polanyi (2015), Michael , and Mary Jo Nye (Foreword), Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, Chicago UP 2015 'In this remarkable treatise, Polanyi attests that our personal experiences and ways of sharing knowledge have a profound effect on scientific discovery. He argues against the idea of the wholly dispassionate researcher, pointing out that even in the strictest of sciences, knowing is still an art, and that personal commitment and passion are logically necessary parts of research. In our technological age where fact is split from value and science from humanity, Polanyi’s work continues to advocate for the innate curiosity and scientific leaps of faith that drive our most dazzling ingenuity. For this expanded edition, Polyani scholar Mary Jo Nye set the philosopher-scientist’s work into contemporary context, offering fresh insights and providing a helpful guide to critical terms in the work. Used in fields as diverse as religious studies, chemistry, economics, and anthropology, Polanyi’s view of knowledge creation is just as relevant to intellectual endeavors today as when it first made waves more than fifty years ago.' 
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Polkinghorne (2008), John, Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship, Yale University Press 2008 Jacket: 'Despite the differences of their subject matter, science and theology have a cousinly relationship, John Polkinghorne contends in his latest thought-provoking book.  From his unique perspective as both theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, Polkinghorne considers aspects of quantum physics and theology and demonstrates that the two truth-seeking enterprises are engaged in analogous rational techniques of inquiry. His exploration of the deep connections between science and theology shows with new clarity a common kinship in the search for truth.'   
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Wilczek (2008), Frank, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, Basic Books 2008 ' In this excursion to the outer limits of particle physics, Wilczek explores what quarks and gluons, which compose protons and neutrons, reveal about the manifestation of mass and gravity. A corecipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, Wilczek knows what he’s writing about; the question is, will general science readers? Happily, they know what the strong interaction is (the forces that bind the nucleus), and in Wilczek, they have a jovial guide who adheres to trade publishing’s belief that a successful physics title will not include too many equations. Despite this injunction (against which he lightly protests), Wilczek delivers an approachable verbal picture of what quarks and gluons are doing inside a proton that gives rise to mass and, hence, gravity. Casting the light-speed lives of quarks against “the Grid,” Wilczek’s term for the vacuum that theoretically seethes with quantum activity, Wilczek exudes a contagious excitement for discovery. A near-obligatory acquisition for circulating physics collections.' --Gilbert Taylor  
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Albigensian Crusade - Wikipedia, Albigensian Crusade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'When Innocent III's diplomatic attempts to roll back Catharism met with little success and after the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was murdered (allegedly by an agent serving the Cathar count of Toulouse), Innocent III declared a crusade against Languedoc, offering the lands of the schismatics to any French nobleman willing to take up arms. The violence led to France's acquisition of lands with closer cultural and linguistic ties to Catalonia (see Occitan). An estimated 200,000 to 1,000,000 people were massacred during the crusade.' back

AP in Milan, Italian court sentences Pakistani parents for murder of teenage daughter, ' The parents and an uncle of an 18-year-Pakistani woman have been convicted of her murder in Italy after she refused her family’s demands to marry a cousin in their homeland. Saman Abbas’ body was dug up in November 2022 in an abandoned farmhouse near the fields where her father worked in northern Italy, a year and a half after she was last seen alive on surveillance video walking nearby with her parents. Italian prosecutors argued that she was killed by her family on 1 May 2021. A few days later, her parents flew from Milan to Pakistan. On Tuesday, the parents, Shabbar Abbas and Nazia Shaheen, were sentenced to life in prison, while her uncle, Danish Hasnain, was handed a 14-year prison term by a court in Reggio Emilia. Two cousins were found not guilty and ordered released from jail. back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 1, 2, Is sacred doctrine is a science?, 'I answer that, Sacred doctrine is a science. We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like. There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic. So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed.' back

Aristotle: Metaphysics book XII, The life of God: 1072b14 sqq, 'Such, then, is the first principle upon which depend the sensible universe and the world of nature. And its life is like the best which we temporarily enjoy. It must be in that state always (which for us is impossible), since its actuality is also pleasure. . . . .If, then, the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as that which we enjoy sometimes, it is marvellous; and if it is greater, this is still more marvellous. Nevertheless it is so. Moreover, life belongs to God. For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God; for that is what God is.' back

Codec - Wikipedia, Codec - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. . . . IA coder or encoder encodes a data stream or a signal for transmission or storage, possibly in encrypted form, and the decoder function reverses the encoding for playback or editing. Codecs are used in videoconferencing, streaming media, and video editing applications. In the mid-20th century, a codec was a device that coded analog signals into digital form using pulse-code modulation (PCM). Later, the name was also applied to software for converting between digital signal formats, including companding functions. ' back

Dominican Order - Wikipedia, Dominican Order - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Order of Preachers (Latin: Ordo Praedicatorum, postnominal abbreviation OP), also known as the Dominican Order, is a mendicant Catholic religious order founded by the Spanish priest Dominic of Caleruega in France, approved by Pope Honorius III via the Papal bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216. . . .Founded to preach the Gospel and to oppose heresy, the teaching activity of the order and its scholastic organisation placed the Preachers in the forefront of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The order is famed for its intellectual tradition, having produced many leading theologians and philosophers.' back

Dominican Order - Wikipedia, Dominican Order - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Order of Preachers (Latin: Ordo Praedicatorum, postnominal abbreviation OP), also known as the Dominican Order, is a mendicant Catholic religious order founded by the Spanish priest Dominic of Caleruega in France, approved by Pope Honorius III via the Papal bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216. . . .Founded to preach the Gospel and to oppose heresy, the teaching activity of the order and its scholastic organisation placed the Preachers in the forefront of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The order is famed for its intellectual tradition, having produced many leading theologians and philosophers.' back

Evangelical counsels - Wikipedia, Evangelical counsels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In Christianity, the three evangelical counsels or counsels of perfection are chastity, poverty (or perfect charity), and obedience.As stated by Jesus in the canonical gospels, they are counsels for those who desire to become "perfect" (τελειος, teleios). The Catholic Church interprets this to mean that they are not binding upon all, and hence not necessary conditions to attain eternal life (heaven), but that they are "acts of supererogation" exceeding the minimum stipulated in the biblical commandments. Catholics who have made a public profession to order their life by the evangelical counsels, and confirmed this by public vows before their competent church authority (the act of religious commitment known as a profession), are recognised as members of the consecrated life.' back

Female genital mutilation - Wikipedia, Female genital mutilation - Wikipedia, the free ecyclopedia, ' Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision, is the ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is found in some countries of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and within communities abroad from countries in which FGM is common. UNICEF estimated, in 2016, that 200 million women in 30 countries—Indonesia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Yemen, and 27 African countries—had been subjected to one or more types of FGM.' back

Female Submission Wrestling Encyclopedia, Danube Women Wrestling, ' DWW Galaxy (Danube Women Wrestling) was a female/mixed wrestling video production company founded in Vienna, Austria, in late 1992 by Gunter Rottensteiner - who usually referred to himself as G.R.. He was assisted by two long-term associates - Marek and Rainer. The company built up a huge catalogue of videos divided into numerous different categories, and over the course of its existence it featured well over 300 fighters - some of these only made a handful of appearances but many others fought in scores of bouts and became iconic names in the world of female combat.' back

Gregory J. Chaitin (1982), Gödel's Theorem and Information, 'Abstract: Gödel's theorem may be demonstrated using arguments having an information-theoretic flavor. In such an approach it is possible to argue that if a theorem contains more information than a given set of axioms, then it is impossible for the theorem to be derived from the axioms. In contrast with the traditional proof based on the paradox of the liar, this new viewpoint suggests that the incompleteness phenomenon discovered by Gödel is natural and widespread rather than pathological and unusual.'
International Journal of Theoretical Physics 21 (1982), pp. 941-954 back

Henry W. Kendall (1990), Nobel lecture: II: Deep Inelastic Scattering: Experiments on the Proton and the Observation of Scaling, ' There are three lectures that, taken together, describe the MIT-SLAC experiments. The first, written by R.E.Taylor sets out the early history of the construction of the two mile accelerator, the proposals made for the construction of the electron scattering facility, the antecedent physics experiments at other laboratories, and the first of our scattering experiments which determined the elastic proton structure form factors. This paper describes the knowledge and beliefs about the nucleon’s internal structure in 1968, including the conflicting views on the validity of the quark model and the “bootstrap” models of the nucleon. . . . The last lecture,by J. I. Friedman is concerned with the later measurements of inelastic electron-neutron and electron-proton measurements and the details of the physical theory - the constituent quark model - which the experimental scattering results stimulated and subsequently, in conjunction with neutrino studies, confirmed.' back

Insect flight - Wikipedia, Insect flight - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Insects are the only group of invertebrates that have evolved wings and flight. Insects first flew in the Carboniferous, some 300 to 350 million years ago, making them the first animals to evolve flight. Wings may have evolved from appendages on the sides of existing limbs, which already had nerves, joints, and muscles used for other purposes. These may initially have been used for sailing on water, or to slow the rate of descent when gliding.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1987), A theory of Peace, ' The argument: I began to think about peace in a very practical way during the Viet Nam war. I was the right age to be called up. I was exempted because I was a clergyman, but despite the terrors that war held for me, I think I might have gone. It was my first whiff of the force of patriotism. To my amazement, it was strong enough to make even me face death.
In the Church, I became embroiled in a deeper war. Not a war between goodies and baddies, but the war between good and evil that lies at the heart of all human consciousness. Existence is a struggle. We need all the help we can get. Religion is part of that help and theology is the scientific foundation of religion.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (2019), A prolegomenon to scientific theology, ' This thesis is an attempt to carry speculative theology beyond the apogee it reached in the medieval work of Thomas Aquinas into the world of empirical science. Since the time of Aquinas, our understanding of the Universe has increased enormously. The ancient theologians not only conceived a perfect God, but they also saw the world as a very imperfect place. Their reaction was to place God outside the world. I will argue that we live in a Universe which approaches infinity in size and complexity, is as perfect as can be, and fulfils all the roles traditionally attributed to God, creator, lawmaker and judge.' back

Jerome I. Friedman (1990), Nobel Lecture III: Deep Inelastic Scattering: Comparisons with the quark model, ' The first suggestion that deep inelastic scattering might provide evidence of elementary constituents was made by Bjorken in his 1967 Varenna lectures. Studying the sum rule predictions derived from current algebra, he stated, ". . . We find these relations so perspicuous that, by an appeal to history, an interpretation in terms of elementary constituents is suggested." . . . The constituent model which opened the way for a simple dynamical interpretation of the deep inelastic results was the parton model of Feynman. He developed this model to describe hadon hadron interactions in which the constituents of one hadron interact with those of the other.' back

Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, Could dinosaurs be the reason humans can’t live for 200 years?, ' But many species of reptiles, amphibians and fish do not show signs of ageing. Examples include turtles and tortoises, salamanders and rockfishes. . . . Perhaps if we study these apparently non-ageing species for long enough they will show signs of ageing. But good luck studying animals such as the Greenland shark, which has been estimated to live nearly 400 years. . . . For 100 million years, during the time of the dinosaurs, mammals were at or near the bottom of the food chain. Mammals were more often prey than predators. During this time there was no reason for mammals to keep processes and genes related to long life, such as DNA repair and tissue regeneration systems. My longevity bottleneck hypothesis proposes that repair and regeneration systems were lost, mutated or inactivated by the evolution of early mammals. This imposed biological constraints that shape how mammals age to this day.' back

Kate Conolly, Award ceremony suspended after writer compares Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos, ' A German foundation has said it will no longer be awarding aprize for political thinking to a leading Russian-American journalist after criticising as “unacceptable” a recent essay by the writer in which they made a comparison between Gaza and a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. Masha Gessen was due to be presented with the Hannah Arendt prize for political thought on Friday. But the award ceremony will now not take place as planned after the Green party-affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBS) said it was withdrawing its support. The HBS said it had reached its decision in agreement with the senate in Bremen, the northern port city where the ceremony was scheduled to take place. According to the German newspaper Die Zeit, which broke the story, the prize will still be presented to Gessen, though “in a different setting”, and on Saturday instead of Friday. It remains unclear who will present it, what they will be presenting and whether Gessen and other invited guests still plan to attend.' back

Manley, D. B., & Taylor, C. S. (1996), Descartes Meditations - Trilingual Edition, ' The publication of this English-Latin-French edition of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is quite simply an experiment in electronic scholarship. We decided to make this edition available and to encourage its free distribution for scholarly purposes. The idea behind the experiment is to see how others involved in electronic scholarship might put these texts to use. We have no predetermined ideas of what such use may be when transformed from this origin. The texts have no hypertext annotations except for those used for navigation. We invite others to download this edition and to create their own hypertext annotated editions and then to publish those additions on their own Web servers for everyone to use.' back

Masha Gessen (December 2023), In the Shadow of the Holocaust, ' Here was a country, or at least a city, that was doing what most cultures cannot: looking at its own crimes, its own worst self. But, at some point, the effort began to feel static, glassed in, as though it were an effort not only to remember history but also to insure that only this particular history is remembered—and only in this way. This is true in the physical, visual sense. Many of the memorials use glass: the Reichstag, a building nearly destroyed during the Nazi era and rebuilt half a century later, is now topped by a glass dome; the burned-books memorial lives under glass; glass partitions and glass panes put order to the stunning, once haphazard collection called “Topography of Terror.” As Candice Breitz, a South African Jewish artist who lives in Berlin, told me, “The good intentions that came into play in the nineteen-eighties have, too often, solidified into dogma".. . . For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time—in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany. In the two months since Hamas attacked Israel, all Gazans have suffered from the barely interrupted onslaught of Israeli forces. Thousands have died. On average, a child is killed in Gaza every ten minutes. Israeli bombs have struck hospitals, maternity wards, and ambulances. Eight out of ten Gazans are now homeless, moving from one place to another, never able to get to safety.' back

Meinard Kuhlmann (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Quantum Field Theory, ' Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is the mathematical and conceptual framework for contemporary elementary particle physics. In a rather informal sense QFT is the extension of quantum mechanics (QM), dealing with particles, over to fields, i.e. systems with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. (See the entry on quantum mechanics.) In the last few years QFT has become a more widely discussed topic in philosophy of science, with questions ranging from methodology and semantics to ontology. QFT taken seriously in its metaphysical implications seems to give a picture of the world which is at variance with central classical conceptions of particles and fields, and even with some features of QM.' back

Michael Polanyi - Wikipedia, Michael Polanyi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Michael Polanyi FRS (11 March 1891 – 22 February 1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He argued that positivism is a false account of knowing. His wide-ranging research in physical science included chemical kinetics, x-ray diffraction, and adsorption of gases. He pioneered the theory of fibre diffraction analysis in 1921, and the dislocation theory of plastic deformation of ductile metals and other materials in 1934. He emigrated to Germany, in 1926 becoming a chemistry professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and then in 1933 to England, becoming first a chemistry professor, and then a social sciences professor at the University of Manchester. Two of his pupils won the Nobel Prize, as well as one of his children. In 1944 Polanyi was elected to the Royal Society.' back

Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Spanish Inquisition, ' his is a special edition of 'The Best of Monty Python's Flying Circus' The Spanish Inquisition is a feared name in history. Yet as Monty Python goes anything can be made silly...' back

Order of Preachers, Saint Dominic, 'The Dominican Friars (priests and brothers) began as a religious Order in the south of France in the early 13th century. We were founded by Dominic Guzman. St. Dominic was born in Caleruega, Spain in 1170. A bright star is said to have shone on his forehead at baptism indicating the light that he was to become not only in himself but also through all those who would belong to his Order. When he went to Palencia at the age of fifteen to pursue higher studies at its famous school, soon to become a university, Dominic was already formed in mind and character – a man firmly grounded in the Faith. During the ten years as a student at Palencia, prayer and study filled his days. Even then his heart was full of compassion when he parted with his most prized possessions - his books - to buy food for the famine-stricken poor. After priestly ordination, he spent ten years as a cathedral canon in Osma, where in silence, meditation and liturgical prayer, he was unknowingly being prepared for the great undertaking that Divine Providence had reserved for him. While on a mission to Denmark with his bishop, Dominic encountered a number of people in the south of France who were beholden to the teachings of the Albigensian heresy. This group had erroneous ideas about God, about Jesus, about the goodness of all of God’s creation, and about how we should live our lives. Dominic began to preach to all people the true Gospel about God's infinite love for the world revealed in Jesus Christ who truly became one of us and lived among us.' back

Phases of Venus - Wikipedia, Phases of Venus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The phases of Venus are the variations of lighting seen on the planet's surface, similar to lunar phases. The first recorded observations of them are thought to have been telescopic observations by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Although the extreme crescent phase of Venus has since been observed with the naked eye, there are no indisputable historical pre-telescopic records of it being described or known.' back

Phillip C. Almond, Who wote the Bible?, ' The Bible tells an overall story about the history of the world: creation, fall, redemption and God’s Last Judgement of the living and the dead. The Old Testament (which dates to 300 BCE) begins with the creation of the world and of Adam and Eve, their disobedience to God and their expulsion from the garden of Eden. The New Testament recounts the redemption of humanity brought about by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It finishes in the book of Revelation, with the end of history and God’s Last Judgement. During the first 400 years of Christianity, the church took its time deciding on the New Testament. Finally, in 367 CE, authorities confirmed the 27 books that make it up. But who wrote the Bible? Broadly, there are four different theories. 1.God wrote the Bible; 2. God inspired the writers: conservative; 3. God inspired the writers: liberal; and 4. People wrote it with no divine help back

Richard E. Taylor (1990), Nobel Lecture: I. Deep Inelastic Scattering: The Early Years, ' Soon after the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics was announced Henry Kendall, Jerry Friedman and I agreed that we would each describe a part of the deep inelastic experiments in our Nobel lectures. The division we agreed upon was roughly chronological. I would cover the early times, describing some of the work that led to the establishment of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center where the experiments were performed, followed by a brief account of the construction of the experimental apparatus used in the experiments and the commissioning of the spectrometer facility in early elastic scattering experiments at the Center.' back

Secular arm - Wikipedia, Secular arm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Introduced circa 1180–1250 at the time of the Albigensian Crusade, the church inquisitors delivered a Cathar heretic, or any heretic, to the secular arm, to be burnt at the stake. Under canon law church tribunals had no jurisdiction to impose penalties involving mutilation or death.[4] The law, however, provided that the judge of a common law court had the right to invoke the secular arm to address the culpability of an individual, who was a subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.[5] Notably the contrary circumstance of appeal by individuals to the secular authorities to interfere with, or hinder, the process of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was until recently punished in the Roman Catholic Church by excommunication.' back

Stephanie Nolen, New Hope — and an Old Hurdle — for a Terrible Disease With Terrible Treatments, ' Three years ago, Jesús Tilano went to a hospital in a thickly forested valley in Colombia with large open lesions on his nose, right arm and left hand. He was diagnosed with leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that is spread in the bite of a female sand fly and which plagues poor people who work in fields or forests across developing countries. He was prescribed a drug that required three injections a day for 20 days, each one agonizingly painful. . .. “The cure was worse than what I had before,” Mr. Tilano said. . . . Among the so-called “neglected tropical diseases,” many experts believe leishmaniasis is in a class of its own in terms of the lack of progress, in the 120 years since it was first identified, to help the two million people who contract it each year. . . . Increasingly, new research on diseases such as leishmaniasis is coming from public sector and academic institutions in middle-income countries, particularly Brazil, South Africa, India, Cuba and China, Ms. Vieira said. “We need to do it, because no one will do it for us,” said Dr. Juliana Quintero, an expert in leishmaniasis and researcher at PECET. The Colombian government is missing an opportunity now by not funding the Phase 3 trial for PECET’s experimental therapies, Ms. Vieira said. “The trials are expensive but it’s much less than what they will pay for a treatment if it is developed by a for-profit company, or all the things that they already have to pay for, for people who are sick and don’t have access to the treatment,” she said.' back