Dauben (1990), Joseph Warren, Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite, Princeton University Press 1990 Jacket: 'One of the greatest revolutions in mathematics occurred when Georg Cantor (1843-1918) promulgated his theory of transfinite sets. . . . Set theory has been widely adopted in mathematics and philosophy, but the controversy surrounding it at the turn of the century remains of great interest. Cantor's own faith in his theory was partly theological. His religious beliefs led him to expect paradox in any concept of the infinite, and he always retained his belief in the utter veracity of transfinite set theory. Later in his life, he was troubled by attacks of severe depression. Dauben shows that these played an integral part in his understanding and defense of set theory.' 
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Khinchin (1960, 1998), Aleksandr Yakovlevich, The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Statistics, Dover 1998 'In the area of quantum statistics, I show that a rigorous mathematical basis of the computational formulas of statistical physics . . . may be obtained from an elementary application of the well-developed limit theorems of the theory of probability.' 
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Nielsen (2016), Michael A., and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2016 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002. 
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Pais (1982), Abraham, 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford UP 1982 Jacket: In this . . . major work Abraham Pais, himself an eminent physicist who worked alongside Einstein in the post-war years, traces the development of Einstein's entire ouvre. . . . Running through the book is a completely non-scientific biography . . . including many letters which appear in English for the first time, as well as other information not published before.' [Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft is er nicht] 
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Alexander Cothren & Robert Phiddian, Friday essay: is ‘wokeness’ killing comedy – or are ageing comedians crying wolf?, ' In late April, comedian Jerry Seinfeld went on the New Yorker Radio Hour and re-opened the debate that refuses to die. While spruiking his debut film, Unfrosted, Seinfeld went on a tangent about how, he believes, political correctness has ruined comedy: It used to be you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, Cheers is on, oh, M*A*S*H is on, Mary Tyler Moore is on, All in the Family is on.’ You just expect that, ‘There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight.’ Guess what? Where is it? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people. . . . A traditional conservative purpose of satirical humour – to put a jumped-up underling back in their place – has had its comic licence revoked in many contexts in the 21st century. This is a change in manners and, in our view, a good one. Comedians should not expect to get away with a traditional mother-in-law or dumb Irishman joke, let alone something blatantly homophobic or racist. These jokes are boring and morally dubious, and comedians should try harder to amuse us than kicking down by reflex. . . . After finishing his attack on PC culture, Seinfeld himself beautifully encapsulated the difficult job of being a comedian that keeps up with ever changing tastes, They move the gates like [… in skiing]. The gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that wherever they put the gates, I’m going to make the gate. Well, stop whingeing then, Jerry, and get back out on the slopes.' back

Ana Faguy, Last known US slave ship should stay under water, experts say, ' The wreck of the last known US slave ship should remain under water as a memorial, a task force of historians and archaeologists has said. The Clotilda was rediscovered in 2019 in the Mobile river, Alabama, 159 years after it was intentionally sunk in 1860 to hide evidence it had been used to smuggle 110 captives from Africa. A 500-page report has concluded that the wreck is too damaged and corroded to be removed and should remain in place as a memorial. The task force headed by the Alabama Historical Commission said keeping it in the river was the most "scientifically responsible and least damaging" plan.' back

Anthony J. I. Clark et al, A Scottish provenance for the Altar Stone of Stonehenge, ' Understanding the provenance of megaliths used in the Neolithic stone circle at Stonehenge, southern England, gives insight into the culture and connectivity of prehistoric Britain. The source of the Altar Stone, the central recumbent sandstone megalith, has remained unknown, with recent work discounting an Anglo-Welsh Basin origin. Here we present the age and chemistry of detrital zircon, apatite and rutile grains from within fragments of the Altar Stone. The detrital zircon load largely comprises Mesoproterozoic and Archaean sources, whereas rutile and apatite are dominated by a mid-Ordovician source. The ages of these grains indicate derivation from an ultimate Laurentian crystalline source region that was overprinted by Grampian (around 460 million years ago) magmatism. Detrital age comparisons to sedimentary packages throughout Britain and Ireland reveal a remarkable similarity to the Old Red Sandstone of the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland. Such a provenance implies that the Altar Stone, a 6 tonne shaped block, was sourced at least 750 km from its current location. The difficulty of long-distance overland transport of such massive cargo from Scotland, navigating topographic barriers, suggests that it was transported by sea. Such routing demonstrates a high level of societal organization with intra-Britain transport during the Neolithic period.' back

Boris Vladimirovich Gnedenko - Wikipedia, Boris Vladimirovich Gnedenko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Boris Vladimirovich Gnedenko (Russian: Бори́с Влади́мирович Гнеде́нко; January 1, 1912 – December 27, 1995) was a Soviet mathematician and a student of Andrey Kolmogorov. . . .. Gnedenko was appointed as Head of the Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry Section of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1949, and became Director of the NASU Institute of Mathematics in 1955. Gnedenko was a leading member of the Russian school of probability theory and statistics. . . . In 1958, he was a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Edinburgh with a talk entitled "Limit theorems of probability theory". back

Brown, Shaw, Glynn-Braun & Campbell, The report on murdered and missing Indigenous women and children fails to hold anyone to account. It’s not enough., ' After two years and 16 hearings, the Senate Inquiry into Missing and Murdered First Nations women handed down its report yesterday. While important, it was not the moment of reckoning many of us had hoped for. The Senate inquiry was introduced and spearheaded by Dorinda Cox, the West Australian Greens Senator, who today called the report’s recommendations “weak” and “toothless”. The inquiry came after other nations, such as Canada and the United States, held their own inquiries into missing and murdered Indigenous women. Australia’s own report about the appalling rates of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women was comparatively benign. . . . What the inquiry found is precisely what First Nations women have been saying for decades: that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children are disproportionately impacted by men’s use of violence. That their stories and lives are ignored by mainstream media. That police often fail to adequately investigate, search for, or respond to calls for help from First Nations women and children. And that the data is shockingly incomplete and inadequate. No one is accurately keeping count. . . . National Homicide Monitoring Program data on murdered First Nations women and children from 1989–1990 to 2022–2023 show 476 women were recorded as victims of homicide (murder and manslaughter). 158 children were recorded as victims of homicide (murder, manslaughter and infanticide).' back

Dennis Muller, An exposé of whatever-it-takes culture, Eric Beecher’s The Men Who Killed the News is an idealistic book for the times, ' Eric Beecher is a rare beast: a combination of journalist, media owner and idealist. With The Men Who Killed the News, he has produced a book that is at once a cry of indignation at the media’s abuse of power and an attempt to chart a future for journalism. The cry of indignation comes first. In a pacey compression of press history going back to the late 19th century, Beecher vividly illustrates how newspaper moguls from William Randolph Hearst in the 1880s to Rupert Murdoch today have cynically debased the profession of journalism in pursuit of wealth and power. The first belong to the age of industrialisation, which enabled the rapid daily production of tens of thousands of newspapers and the creation of a vast monopoly on public access to news and information. These men include not just Hearst and Murdoch, but Joseph Pulitzer, Henry Luce and A.O. Sulzberger in the United States, and Lords Beaverbrook, Rothermere and Northcliffe in Britain. The second belong to the age of the digital revolution, which has created two behemoths whose power is greater by several orders of magnitude than all the legacy moguls combined: Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.' back

Emily Anthes, How the World’s Oldest Humpback Whale Has Survived Is a Mystery, ' A humpback whale’s tail is as unique as a fingerprint. The lobes, or flukes, at the end of the tail have scalloped edges that vary from whale to whale; the undersides feature distinct black-and-white patterns that mark a whale for life. When Adam A. Pack, a marine mammal researcher at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo, was photographing whales in Alaska’s Frederick Sound in July, he instantly recognized the flukes of an old friend. Emphasis on old. The tail — mostly black, with a wash of white speckles near the edge — belongs to a whale named Old Timer. First spotted in 1972, Old Timer is now a male of at least 53 years, making him “the oldest known humpback whale in the world,” said Dr. Pack, who is also the co-founder and president of The Dolphin Institute. Humpback whale populations, once severely depleted by commercial whaling, have rebounded in recent decades. But the animals are threatened by ship strikes, entanglements in fishing gear and climate change. And Dr. Pack had worried about Old Timer: The last time he had seen the whale, in 2015, was in the middle of a record-breaking, yearslong heat wave. Scores of seabirds and marine mammals, including humpback whales, died.' back

Erik Ofgang, Piecing Together an Ancient Epic Was Slow Work. Until A.I. Got Involved., ' In 1872, in a quiet second-floor room at the British Museum, George Smith, a museum employee, was studying a grime-encrusted clay tablet when he came across words that would change his life. In the ancient cuneiform script, he recognized references to a stranded ship and a bird sent in search of land. After he had the tablet cleaned, Smith was certain he’d found a prototype of the biblical flood story. “I am the first man to read that after more than 2,000 years of oblivion,” Smith reportedly said in a frenzy of excitement. . . .
For 152 years since Smith’s discovery, successive generations of Assyriologists — experts in the study of cuneiform and the cultures that used it — have taken up his quest to piece together a complete version of the poem known now as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Fragments of the epic, which was written more than 3,000 years ago and was based upon still earlier works, have re-emerged as tablets have been unearthed in archaeological digs, found in museum store rooms or surfaced on the black market.' back

Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (2019), First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. IV: Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole, ' We present the first Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) images of M87, using observations from April 2017 at 1.3 mm wavelength. These images show a prominent ring with a diameter of ∼40 μas, consistent with the size and shape of the lensed photon orbit encircling the “shadow” of a supermassive black hole. The ring is persistent across four observing nights and shows enhanced brightness in the south. To assess the reliability of these results, we implemented a two-stage imaging procedure. In the first stage, four teams, each blind to the others’ work, produced images of M87 using both an established method (CLEAN) and a newer technique (regularized maximum likelihood). This stage allowed us to avoid shared human bias and to assess common features among independent reconstructions. In the second stage, we reconstructed synthetic data from a large survey of imaging parameters and then compared the results with the corresponding ground truth images. This stage allowed us to select parameters objectively to use when reconstructing images of M87. Across all tests in both stages, the ring diameter and asymmetry remained stable, insensitive to the choice of imaging technique. We describe the EHT imaging procedures, the primary image features in M87, and the dependence of these features on imaging assumptions.' back

Gareth Evans (2024_8_16), Gareth Evans: AUKUS is terrible for Australian national interests – but we’re probably stuck with it, ' This is an edited extract of a presentation by Gareth Evans, Distinguished Honorary Professor at ANU and former Australian foreign minister, to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Conference. Politics played a significant part in the birth of AUKUS in Australia, and politics both here and in the United States will play a crucial role in determining whether it lives or dies. That is so at least for its core submarine component. The second pillar of the agreement, relating to technical cooperation on multiple new fronts, is both much less clear in its scope and less obviously politically fraught. On the Australian side, partisan political opportunism was a factor in the initiation of the submarine deal, bipartisan political support was a condition of US agreement to it, and maintenance of that bipartisan support into the future presumably will be a precondition of its continuance, at least when it comes to highly sensitive elements like the handover of three Virginia class submarines. . . . This is an edited extract of a presentation by Gareth Evans, Distinguished Honorary Professor at ANU and former Australian foreign minister, to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Conference. Politics played a significant part in the birth of AUKUS in Australia, and politics both here and in the United States will play a crucial role in determining whether it lives or dies. That is so at least for its core submarine component. The second pillar of the agreement, relating to technical cooperation on multiple new fronts, is both much less clear in its scope and less obviously politically fraught. On the Australian side, partisan political opportunism was a factor in the initiation of the submarine deal, bipartisan political support was a condition of US agreement to it, and maintenance of that bipartisan support into the future presumably will be a precondition of its continuance, at least when it comes to highly sensitive elements like the handover of three Virginia class submarines. . . . Australia’s no-holds-barred embrace of AUKUS is more likely than not to prove one of the worst defence and foreign policy decisions our country has made, not only putting at profound risk our sovereign independence, but generating more risk than reward for the very national security it promises to protect. I cannot imagine this decision being made by any of the Hawke-Keating governments of which I was part. Times have changed.' back

George Totari, Long live Palestine Swedish song with English Subtitles, 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

Joshua: 10:12-13, And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped . . ., '12At that time Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” 13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.' back

Michael Adams, Australia’s corporate watchdog is suing our largest stock exchange. What’s going on?, ' One of the most important functions of the ASX is to provide a system for recording and settling share transactions. The current system is the Clearing House Electronic Subregister System, or CHESS for short, which we’ve had since 1994. But for the past decade or so, it has been known that the technology underpinning CHESS is outdated and needs replacing. . . . This new system was to be based on blockchain technology, an innovation that excited global markets and would have made Australia a world leader. . . . The regulator alleges that about 100 defects in the application “were not addressed”. According to the filing, the ASX’s own audit and risk committee was informed the CHESS replacement project had a “red” status on February 3 2022 – that is, there was a high risk it wouldn’t be completed on time. ASIC alleges that despite this, when the ASX published its half-yearly results about a week later, it misleadingly indicated the project was “progressing well” – and still on track for its planned date to go live. . . . Pre-tax, it had already cost about A$250 million. The use of blockchain technology to replace CHESS has now been abandoned altogether.' back

Myrvold, Genovese & Shimony (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Bell's Theorem, ' Beginning in the 1970s, there has been a series of experiments of increasing sophistication to test whether the Bell inequalities are satisfied. With few exceptions, the results of these experiments have confirmed the quantum mechanical predictions, violating the relevant Bell Inequalities. Until recently, however, each of these experiments was vulnerable to at least one of two loopholes, referred to as the communication, or locality loophole, and the detection loophole (see section 5). Finally, in 2015, experiments were performed that demonstrated violation of Bell inequalities with these loopholes blocked. This has consequences for our physical worldview; the conditions that entail Bell inequalities are, arguably, an integral part of the physical worldview that was accepted prior to the advent of quantum mechanics. If one accepts the lessons of the experimental results, then some one or other of these conditions must be rejected.' back

Richard P. Feynman (1965), 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

Richard P. Feynman (1985), Quantum mechanical computers, ' We are here considering ideal machines; the effects of imperfections will be considered later. This study is one of principle; our aim is to exhibit some Hamiltonian for a system which could serve as a computer. We are not concerned with whether we have the most efficient system, nor how we could best implement it.' back

Samuel Bickett & Shannon Van Sant, Opinion: An alliance of autocracies is deepening. One city plays a central role., ' In recent years, dictators in China, Iran, Russia and North Korea have strengthened trade and security ties, formalized cooperation and alliances, and worked together to expand their power from Ukraine to Taiwan.
One city plays a central role in this deepening alliance of autocracies: Hong Kong.
Once a trusted global financial center aligned with Western democracies and governed by the rule of law, our new report with the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation details how Hong Kong has become the world’s leader in such practices as importing and re-exporting banned Western technology to Russia, forming untraceable front companies for the purchase and sale of barred Iranian oil, and managing “ghost ships” that illegally trade natural resources with North Korea. . . .
For decades, Hong Kong served as the world’s gateway to mainland China, its economic influence rivaling that of New York and London. Unsurprisingly, it also attracted elements of organized crime and money-laundering syndicates. But with its government steadily becoming an economic pariah in the West due to its crackdown on rights and freedoms, local officials have sought to bring in investment from autocratic regimes and oligarchs to compensate.' back

Shafi Musaddsique, ‘Leve Palestina’: The 1970s song that became an antiwar anthem in Sweden, Gothenburg, Sweden – George Totari’s understated apartment is full of noise and life even in his retirement, as he sits surrounded by his daughter and grandchildren. Soft grey walls typical of a Swedish apartment bear no hallmarks of a home belonging to an internationally acclaimed musician, however. With his long, greying hair, wide-rimmed spectacles and fiery eyes, the Swedish-Palestinian Christian, born in 1946 in Nazareth, remembers his hometown being transformed by illegal Israeli settlements and checkpoints when he was a child. By the 1960s, Nazareth had become a hotbed of Palestinian activists amid a swelling number of internally displaced people. And its vibrant interfaith community of Palestinian Christians and Muslims, together with their political zeal, were the inspiration for a powerful protest song by Totari, first released in Northern Europe in the late 1970s and revived, decades later, by the latest global movement against the ongoing war on Gaza. Leve Palestina, Totari’s 1979 song about Palestine, has gained new life since Israel’s brutal war on Gaza began on October 7 last year and has left more than 39,000 Palestinians dead – with many thousands more lost under the rubble and presumed dead – and nearly 90,000 wounded.' back

Solovay–Strassen primality test - Wikipedia, Solovay–Strassen primality test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Solovay–Strassen primality test, developed by Robert M. Solovay and Volker Strassen in 1977, is a probabilistic test to determine if a number is composite or probably prime. The idea behind the test was discovered by M. M. Artjuhov in 196 (see Theorem E in the paper). This test has been largely superseded by the Baillie–PSW primality test and the Miller–Rabin primality test, but has great historical importance in showing the practical feasibility of the RSA cryptosystem. The Solovay–Strassen test is essentially an Euler–Jacobi probable prime test.' back

Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical, 'Submitted on 17 Mar 2007 (v1), last revised 18 Mar 2008 (this version, v3)) Measurements transfer information about a system to the apparatus, and then further on – to observers and (often inadvertently) to the environment. I show that even imperfect copying essential in such situations restricts possible unperturbed outcomes to an orthogonal subset of all possible states of the system, thus breaking the unitary symmetry of its Hilbert space implied by the quantum superposition principle. Preferred outcome states emerge as a result. They provide framework for the “wavepacket collapse”, designating terminal points of quantum jumps, and defining the measured observable by specifying its eigenstates.' back

Wojciech Hubert Zurek (2008), Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical, 'Submitted on 17 Mar 2007 (v1), last revised 18 Mar 2008 (this version, v3)) Measurements transfer information about a system to the apparatus, and then further on – to observers and (often inadvertently) to the environment. I show that even imperfect copying essential in such situations restricts possible unperturbed outcomes to an orthogonal subset of all possible states of the system, thus breaking the unitary symmetry of its Hilbert space implied by the quantum superposition principle. Preferred outcome states emerge as a result. They provide framework for the “wavepacket collapse”, designating terminal points of quantum jumps, and defining the measured observable by specifying its eigenstates.' back