Bell (1987), John S, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press 1987 Jacket: JB ... is particularly famous for his discovery of a crucial difference between the predictions of conventional quantum mechanics and the implications of local causality . . . . This work has played a major role in the development of our current understanding of the profound nature of quantum concepts and of the fundamental limitations they impose on the applicability of classical ideas of space, time and locality. 
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Deutsch (1997), David, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes - and its Implications, Allen Lane Penguin Press 1997 Jacket: 'Quantum physics, evolution, computation and knowledge - these four strands of scientific theory and philosophy have, until now, remained incomplete explanations of the way the universe works. . . . Oxford scholar DD shows how they are so closely intertwined that we cannot properly understand any one of them without reference to the other three. . . .' 
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Everett III (1973), Hugh, and Bryce S Dewitt, Neill Graham (editors), The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1973 Jacket: 'A novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed in brief form by Hugh Everett in 1957, forms the nucleus around which this book has developed. The volume contains Dr Everett's short paper from 1957, "'Relative State' formulation of quantum mechanics" and a far longer exposition of his interpretation entitled "The Theory of the Universal Wave Function" never before published. In addition other papers by Wheeler, DeWitt, Graham, Cooper and van Vechten provide further discussion of the same theme. Together they constitute virtually the entire world output of scholarly commentary on the Everett interpretation.' 
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Kauffman (1995), Stuart, At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Complexity, Oxford University Press 1995 Preface: 'As I will argue in this book, natural selection is important, but it has not laboured alone to craft the fine architectures of the biosphere . . . The order of the biological world, I have come to believe . . . arises naturally and spontaneously because of the principles of self organisation - laws of complexity that we are just beginning to uncover and understand.'  
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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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Mintz (2017), Laurie, Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get it, HarperOne 2017 ' We've been thinking about sex all wrong. Mainstream media, movies, and porn have taught us that sex = penis + vagina, and everything else is just secondary. Standard penetration is how men most reliably achieve orgasm. The problem is, women don't orgasm this way. We've separated our most reliable route to orgasm--clitoral stimulation--from how we feel we should orgasm--penetration. As a result, we've created a pleasure gap between women and men . . .'
Review: https://www.hares-hyenas.com.au/p/general-sex-manuals-becoming-cliterate-why-orgasm-equality-matters-and-how-to-get-it. 
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Monod (1979), Jacques, Chance and Necessity: An essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (translated by Austryn Wainhouse), Collins Fount 1979 Amazon review 2018: 'Monod was ahead of his time. I bought this book when it was first published - early 1970"s? It affirmed what seemed likely to me, that because chemistry works in probabilistic fashion life and evolution are fueled by small random changes. In this, I see the reason for disease - that the same chemistry that is flexible enough to give life is the same chemistry that gives disease. Monod has never been understood broadly I think for two reasons: (1) Chemistry scares people away although his main points do not rely on the reader's expertise in chemistry and (2) because some see his work as being at odds with religion. Where is religion in his work? Someday we will understand widely that whatever "force" we call God, Allah, Buddha, etc. created matter, energy, time, space and the laws of nature. We are made of and exist in these things. The universe is not only stranger than we know but stranger than we can know.' 
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Tomonaga (1997), Sin-itiro, The Story of Spin, University of Chicago Press 1997 Jacket: 'The Story of Spin, as told by Sin-itiro Tomonaga and lovingly translated by Takeshi Oka, is a brilliant and witty account of the development of modern quantum theory, which takes electron spin as a pivotal concept. Reading these twelve lectures on the fundamental aspects of physics is a joyful experience that is rare indeed.' Laurie Brown, Northwestern University. 
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Veltman (1994), Martinus, Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules, Cambridge University Press 1994 Jacket: 'This book provides an easily accessible introduction to quantum field theory via Feynman rules and calculations in particle physics. The aim is to make clear what the physical foundations of present-day field theory are, to clarify the physical content of Feynman rules, and to outline their domain of applicability. ... The book includes valuable appendices that review some essential mathematics, including complex spaces, matrices, the CBH equation, traces and dimensional regularization. . . .' 
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Adeshola Ore (2024_08_29), Sale of chemical used in suicides of three transgender women should be restricted, Victorian inquest finds , ' The sale of a chemical used by three transgender women who took their own lives should be restricted by the federal government, the Victorian coroner says, after an inquest heard it has been used in dozens of suicides in the state. Victoria’s coroners court last year held an inquest into the suicides of five transgender women who died between 2020 and 2021, including that of Matt Byrne, 25, who took her life after a botched back yard surgery. The coroner, Ingrid Giles, on Thursday morning handed down her findings, including that at least three of the woman in the cluster – Byrne, Heather Pierard and a woman referred to by the pseudonym AS – used the same chemical. They each also directly knew at least one other person in the cluster. . . . In naming the chemical, Giles acknowledged there were risks in drawing attention to suicide methods, but said they were counter-balanced by the “prevention imperative” of reducing its availability. . . . Giles concluded there was likely some discussion about the chemical, including with a New South Wales person who died on 23 July 2021 by the same method. . . . Giles said the chemical was used in 52 suicides in the state between 2017 and 2023, and it had been investigated in a recent inquest into the suicide of a Victorian man who used it to take his life.' back

Chen Ning Yang (1957), Nobel Lecture: December 11, 1957: The Law of Parity Conservation and Other Symmetry Laws of Physics, ' The existence of symmetry laws is in full accordance with our daily experience. The simplest of these symmetries, the isotropy and homogeneity of space, are concepts that date back to the early history of human thought. The invariance of physical laws under a coordinate transformation of uniform velocity, also known as the invariance under Galilean transformations, is a more sophisticated symmetry that was early recognized, and formed one of the corner-stones of Newtonian mechanics. Consequences of these symmetry principles were greatly exploited by physicists of the past centuries and gave rise to many important results. A good example in this direction is the theorem that in an isotropic solid there are only two elastic constants.' back

Chicks, Travellin' Soldier, I cried
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
Too young, for him they told her
Waiting for the love of a travelin' soldier
Our love will never end
Waiting for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone
When the letter says a soldier's coming home

back

David French (2024_08_25), The Christian Persecution Narrative Rings Hollow, ' When you’re inside evangelicalism, Christian media is full of stories of Christians under threat — of universities discriminating against Christian student groups, of a Catholic foster care agency denied city contracts because of its stance on marriage or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment during Covid, when secular gatherings were often privileged over religious worship. . . But when you’re pushed outside evangelicalism, the world starts to look very different. You see conservative Christians attacking the fundamental freedoms of their opponents. Red-state legislatures pass laws restricting the free speech of progressives and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. Christian school board members attempt to restrict access to books in the name of their own moral norms. Other conservatives want to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, to bring legal recognition of same-sex marriages to an end.' back

David Sirota (2024_08_30), Project 2025 started a half-century ago. A Trump win could solidify it forever, 'You can be forgiven for thinking Vice-President Kamala Harris’s first attack ad against Donald Trump seems a little far-fetched. Launched this week, the television spot has all the hallmarks of a YouTube video promoting an internet conspiracy theory. There’s the obligatory scary music and the baritone narrator warning about a mysterious manifesto with the kind of cartoonish name that a Bond villain would label his blueprint for global conquest: Project 2025. And yet, this isn’t a Dr Evil send-up: Project 2025 is very real, it is absolutely Trump’s agenda and it wasn’t some slapdash screed that came out of nowhere. It is the culmination of the 50-year plot that our reporters at the Lever have uncovered in our new audio series Master Plan – a scheme first envisioned by the US supreme court justice who created the foundation for Citizens United and the modern era of corporate politics.' 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

Hugh Everett III (1957), "Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, ' 1. Introduction The task of quantizing general relativity raises serious questions about the meaning of the present formulation and interpretation of quantum mechanics when applied to so fundamental a structure as the space-time geometry itself. This paper seeks to clarify the foundations of quantum mechanics. It presents a reformulation of quantum theory in a form believed suitable for application to general relativity. . . . The relationship of this new formulation to the older formulation is therefore that of a metatheory to a theory, that is, it is an underlying theory in which the nature and consistency, as well as the realm of applicability, of the older theory can be investigated and clarified.' back

Jen Harris (2024_08_25), Kamala Harris Begins to Sketch a New Economic Vision, ' Ms. Harris’s early proposals suggest she is drawing from both strands in telling a more holistic and entirely new story about how the economy works and the aims it should serve. Put differently, her slogan “We’re not going back” might well extend beyond political and social rights to include a different brand of economics. This new story has two themes — call them “build” and “balance.” The first focuses on pointing and shaping markets toward worthy aims; the second corrects upstream power imbalances so that market outcomes are fairer and need less after-the-fact redistribution.' back

Jennifer L. Kent (2024_08_30), Lower speeds on local streets cut deaths and injuries by a quarter in Wales. Over 100 experts want Australia to do the same, ' The July figures were not a monthly blip. The 1,327 lives lost in the year ending July 2024 marked a 10.2% increase from the preceding 12 months. It was the worst 12-month toll since 2012. And for every death, an estimated 20 people are hospitalised for serious road trauma. These numbers are not only shocking, they are shameful. More than 100 of Australia’s top transport and urban researchers have now signed an open letter calling for lower speed limits on local streets. The evidence they cite from overseas is clear: lower speed limits will save lives. Road casualties are on the increase for multiple reasons. The most obvious one is the bigger cars we are driving. Our large SUVs and twin-cab utes are much safer – but only if you’re on the inside. Their sheer mass can make a mess of any vulnerable human flesh that gets in their way. Which brings me to the real tragedy here: we know exactly what to do to reverse this trend; we just don’t have the political will to do it. You see, road trauma is actually a straightforward matter of physics. The embedded kinetic energy in a moving vehicle is released on impact – whether it be with a street sign, tree or child. The faster a vehicle is travelling and the greater its mass, the more energy is released. And it’s the energy that kills – either as it’s dispersed through a vehicle or through someone’s body. This means that if a child is hit by a car doing 50km/hour, there is a 90% chance that child will die. But if that car is doing 30km/h, the child has a 90% chance of living. Yes, it is simple physics, with devastating implications when ignored.' back

John Quiggin (2024_08_28), The RBA is making confusion about inflation and the cost of living even worse, ' The response of the Reserve Bank and other central banks to the inflation shock of 2022 was to rapidly and repeatedly lift the interest rates they influence, the so-called cash rate in Australia’s case, in order to drive inflation back to target. It is important to observe that no theoretical rationale for Australia’s inflation target has ever been put forward. Both the idea of targeting consumer price inflation and the choice of the 2–3% target band are arbitrary. They were inherited from the very different circumstances of the early 1990s and the judgment call of a right-wing New Zealand finance minister. . . . We are now seeing the consequences of using interest rates to target inflation, even if they are poorly understood. Fitting in with familiar narratives, the distributional consequences are framed in terms of intergenerational conflicts (Boomers versus Millennials) rather than the product of misconceived economic policy. If sharp increases in interest rates aren’t the right tool to control inflation, what is? The experience of the 1980s provides an idea. The best idea is to avoid income shocks Rather than seeking a rapid return of inflation to an arbitrary target band, we should instead focus on avoiding large income shocks while bringing about a gradual decline in inflation back

John von Neumann (2014), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, ' Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by John von Neumann translated from the German by Robert T. Beyer (New Edition) edited by Nicholas A. Wheeler. Princeton UP Princeton & Oxford. Preface: ' This book is the realization of my long-held intention to someday use the resources of TEX to produce a more easily read version of Robert T. Beyer’s authorized English translation (Princeton University Press, 1955) of John von Neumann’s classic Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik (Springer, 1932).'This content downloaded from 129.127.145.240 on Sat, 30 May 2020 22:38:31 UTC back

Jonathan Bartholomaeus (2024_08_28), It wasn’t just race and politics that motivated Voice to Parliament ‘no’ voters. Here’s what we found when we dug deeper, ' The outcome of the referendum has been chalked up to deepening political polarisation, Australian’s entrenched racial prejudice and the rise of populism. In short, opposition to the Voice to Parliament has been characterised as a conservative populist backlash with racist undertones. In the wake of a 60/40 “no” vote majority, this message only serves to deepen the post-referendum divide. However, new research indicates the story is a little more complex. Findings show it was fundamentally the esteem of authority, the desire for an ordered society, and perceptions of justice and fairness that dictated how people engaged with this emotionally charged political issue, and ultimately how they voted. It is only by a greater understanding of people’s attitudes towards the referendum (even if we disagree with them) that Australians can move forward and have a more productive bipartisan conversation. . .. . By understanding the populist account in terms of justice, we can clearly see how the post-referendum divide in society has formed: those who voted “no” feel vindicated at having avoided an unjust change to society, while those who voted “yes” become wary of these people for their extreme and seemingly unwarranted reaction. Understanding not only the important role that justice plays in people’s lives, but also that people can have differing views of what justice is, is crucial to keep in mind. In a world where political polarisation is increasing and where we are confronted with news (some real, some fake) that continually seems to deepen this divide, taking the time to understand the complexity of people’s worldviews and political opinions – even those you might disagree with – is more important than ever.' back

Judith Newman (2017_04_19), Sex-Ed for Grown-Ups: A Roundup of Relationship Self-Help, ' Laurie Mintz, a professor of psychology at the University of Florida, wins this year’s award for best book title, pun division, with BECOMING CLITERATE: Why Orgasm Equality Matters — and How to Get It (HarperOne, $26.99). Books teaching women about orgasms have been popular since the 1970s, and I was skeptical of the need for this one. Don’t our bodies tell us all we need to know, without an instruction manual? Well, maybe not. Mintz begins by arguing that our culture conspires to deprive us of satisfaction, since both men and women now take their cues from pornography. Pornography is a happy land of unicorns and rainbows and women’s achieving ecstasy via intercourse alone. She also points out that while Freud was full of many excellent observations about human behavior, women’s sexual needs were not one of them. Once women hit puberty, Freud wrote, “the clitoris should wholly or in part hand over its sensitivity, and at the same time its importance, to the vagina.” (In terms of great advice, this ranks right up there with “You should take up smoking — it’ll help you lose weight.”) ' back

Laurie Mintz (2023_08_15), The orgasm gap and why women climax less than men, ' Imagine a steamy sex scene involving a woman and a man from your favourite television show or movie. It’s likely that both parties orgasm. But this doesn’t reflect reality. Because during heterosexual sexual encounters, women have far fewer orgasms than men. This is called the orgasm gap. And it has been documented in the scientific literature for more than 20 years. In one study of more than 50,000 people, 95% of heterosexual men said they usually or always orgasm when sexually intimate, while only 65% of heterosexual women said the same. Research shows that some people believe this gap is because women’s orgasms are biologically elusive. Yet, if this were true, women’s orgasm rates would not differ depending on circumstance. Indeed, many studies show that women orgasm more when alone than with a partner.' back

Louis de Broglie (1929), Nobel Lecture: The Wave Nature of the Electron, ' The necessity of assuming for light two contradictory theories-that of waves and that of corpuscles - and the inability to understand why, among the infinity of motions which an electron ought to be able to have in the atom according to classical concepts, only certain ones were possible: such were the enigmas confronting physicists at the time I resumed my studies of theoretical physics. Now a purely corpuscular theory does not contain any element permitting the definition of frequency. This also renders it necessary in the case of light to introduce simultaneously the corpuscle concept and the concept of periodicity. On the other hand the determination of the stable motions of the electrons in the atom involves whole numbers, and so far the only phenomena in which whole numbers were involved in physics were those of interference and of eigenvibrations. That suggested the idea to me that electrons themselves could not be represented as simple corpuscles either, but that a periodicity had also to be assigned to them too. . . . Thus to describe the properties of matter as well as those of light, waves and corpuscles have to be referred to at one and the same time. The electron can no longer be conceived as a single, small granule of electricity; it must be associated with a wave and this wave is no myth; its wavelength can be measured and its interferences predicted. It has thus been possible to predicta whole group of phenomena without their actually having been discovered. And it is on this concept of the duality of waves and corpuscles in Nature, expressed in a more or less abstract form, that the whole recent development of theoretical physics has been founded and that all future development of this science will apparently have to be founded.' back

Lucy Mangan (2024_08_29), Kaos review – Jeff Goldblum’s furiously fun Greek gods drama is a masterpiece, ' Kaos, the new venture from Charlie Covell, the creator of Channel 4 drama series The End of the F**king World, is anything but chaotic. Multi-stranded, immaculately paced and plotted, it’s a reimagining of Greek mythology that is subtle and intricate, witty, rigorous, hugely intelligent, funny and brutal. It flies. Covell’s script is a masterpiece – so confident, so apparently effortless, so light on its feet – as it builds an alternative modern world in which pantheism (and Zeus) still rules, and gods mix with mortals, rarely to good ends. The eight episodes are stuffed with action, jokes (however much events darken as we go on) and grace notes. A huge cast of characters is deployed without a single one feeling underdeveloped or unnecessary, with Covell using them to interrogate what it means to be human, to have power, to be desperate, to have free will or not. They are all folded seamlessly into its furiously fun embrace. back

Mark Beeson (2024_08_27), The AUKUS submarine deal has been exposed as a monumental folly – is it time to abandon ship?, ' Nautical metaphors are irresistible, I’m afraid, when talking about Australia’s seemingly endless submarine saga. But as investigative journalist Andrew Fowler makes clear in Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty, his excellent and excoriating analysis of the genesis of the AUKUS pact, there isn’t much room for levity otherwise. Anyone who doubts the accuracy of former Labor luminaries Paul Keating and Gareth Evans, who have argued that AUKUS is, as Keating put it, “the worst deal in all history”, really ought to read this book. The plan for Australia to acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines, built locally in partnership with the United Stated and the United Kingdom, is projected to cost up to A$368 billion. But it is not just the cost of the AUKUS project that is astounding. While many people should hang their heads in shame, the principal architect of this monumental folly is Scott Morrison, whose reputation will be deservedly further diminished by the revelations contained in Fowler’s carefully researched volume. One question the book does not address in detail is the abysmal quality of political leadership in this country, especially, though not exclusively, on the conservative side of politics. Whatever the reasons for this, the end result was that the huge shift in Australia’s foreign policy alignment was hatched by a Christian fundamentalist former tourism marketing manager with no training in strategic or foreign affairs but a great gift for secrecy and deception. back

Maya Wei-Haas, Dismantling the Ship That Drilled for the Ocean’s Deepest Secrets, ' A global cataclysm is portrayed in black and white in the sediments off the southeastern coast of the United States. Deep below the seafloor, chalky muds evince an ancient ocean flourishing with life. But a stark black layer cuts through the pale grains, marking the moment 66 million years ago when a six-mile wide asteroid slammed into Earth and our planet was never the same. The impact, known as the Chicxulub event, set off dramatic climate swings that sent 75 percent of Earth’s species — including all non-avian dinosaurs — spiraling toward extinction. Many details of the devastation come from cores — long tubes of sediment or rock that result from drilling into the seafloor — that were hauled onboard the JOIDES Resolution. The ship, known to those who sailed on it as the J.R., was the only dedicated American scientific drill ship. Drill cores from the ship and its predecessor also helped confirm the theory of plate tectonics, which shapes our planet’s surface. They provide records of climate change throughout Earth’s history. They unveiled microbes thriving far deeper beneath Earth’s surface than ever thought possible. Yet the J.R. returned from its last expedition earlier this month, and crews removed its crucial scientific equipment.' back

Olivera Simic (2024_08_29), If something can happen once, it can happen again – Dennis Glover’s reading of history sounds an alarm about the present, ' Review: Repeat: A Warning from History – Dennis Glover (Black Inc.) In his latest book, Repeat: A Warning from History, Australian writer Dennis Glover uses the past to illuminate our dire present situation. Repeat is a short book divided into two parts: Tragedy and Farce. Each part consists of five chapters with a repeated sequence of titles. These chapters address the five stages that triggered the second world war and could trigger a global war if repeated. The key stages are:
Sowing the wind (creating difficult economic conditions)
Populism (allowing those willing to exploit hatred to gain power)
Savagery (descending into an era of murder and violence)
Preliminary war (letting populists plan and win early conflicts)
Consequences (waking up to the reality of massacres and global war).
According to Glover, we are in danger of repeating the mistakes of the 1920s and 1930s, which led to the most destructive war in history. . . .
The writing in Repeat is simple and easy to read, but fragmented. The book consists of short anecdotes and summaries of events, often disjointed, which are packed into 140 pages. What is novel in its account is not the events or characters, but the historical parallels it draws between past and present. Glover urges his readers to stop and think where the world might be heading and ask “is it all going to happen again?” He warns that “maybe the endgame has already begun”.' back

P versus NP problem - Wikipedia, P versus NP problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The P versus NP problem is a major unsolved problem in computer science. It asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified (technically, verified in polynomial time) can also be solved quickly (again, in polynomial time). The underlying issues were first discussed in the 1950s, in letters from John Forbes Nash Jr. to the National Security Agency, and from Kurt Gödel to John von Neumann. The precise statement of the P versus NP problem was introduced in 1971 by Stephen Cook in his seminal paper " The complexity of theorem proving procedures" and is considered by many to be the most important open problem in the field.' back

Pius XII (1950_11_01), Apostolic Constitution of Pope Pius XII Munificentissimus Deus defining the dogma of the Assumption, ' 1. The most bountiful God, who is almighty, the plan of whose providence rests upon wisdom and love, tempers, in the secret purpose of his own mind, the sorrows of peoples and of individual men by means of joys that he interposes in their lives from time to time, in such a way that, under different conditions and in different ways, all things may work together unto good for those who love him. [. . .]
44. [. . .] for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished his special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honor of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
45. Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.' back

Plate trick - Wikipedia, Plate trick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics and physics, the plate trick, also known as Dirac's string trick (after Paul Dirac, who introduced and popularized it), the belt trick, or the Balinese cup trick, is any of several demonstrations of the idea that rotating an object with strings attached to it by 360 degrees does not return the system to its original state, while a second rotation of 360 degrees, a total rotation of 720 degrees, does.Mathematically, it is a demonstration of the theorem that SU(2) (which double-covers SO(3)) is simply connected. To say that SU(2) double-covers SO(3) essentially means that the unit quaternions represent the group of rotations twice over. A detailed, intuitive, yet semi-formal articulation can be found in the article on tangloids. back

Qubit - Wikipedia, Qubit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A quantum bit, or qubit . . . is a unit of quantum information. That information is described by a state vector in a two-level quantum mechanical system which is formally equivalent to a two-dimensional vector space over the complex numbers. Benjamin Schumacher discovered a way of interpreting quantum states as information. He came up with a way of compressing the information in a state, and storing the information on a smaller number of states. This is now known as Schumacher compression. In the acknowledgments of his paper (Phys. Rev. A 51, 2738), Schumacher states that the term qubit was invented in jest, during his conversations with Bill Wootters.' back

Richard Bethiel, The Mystery of Spinors, ' In this video, we explore the mystery of spinors! What are these strange, surreal mathematical things? And what role do they play in physical reality? We'll talk about the algebra of SO(3) and SU(2), and the profound physical implications of spinors, particularly as it relates to spin-statistics and the stability of matter! back

Special unitary group - Wikipedia, Special unitary group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, the special unitary group of degree n, denoted SU(n), is the group of n×n unitary matrices with determinant 1. The group operation is that of matrix multiplication. The special unitary group is a subgroup of the unitary group U(n), consisting of all n×n unitary matrices, which is itself a subgroup of the general linear group GL(n, C). The SU(n) groups find wide application in the standard model of physics, especially SU(2) in the electroweak interaction and SU(3) in QCD.' back

Sreedhevi Iyer, Why are authors expected to be ‘authentic’?, ' The recent Oscar-winning movie American Fiction – an adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure by screenwriter and director Cord Jefferson – is a scathing look at the racial stereotyping prevalent in the publishing industry. . . . Fictional writers, like Monk and Sintara Golden, satirise the reality faced by authors of colour, who are expected to perform a version of themselves in public and, paradoxically, end up adopting a persona – a supposedly “authentic” but in fact phoney persona – for the benefit of readers, literary gatekeepers and other industry players. Reductiveness in the name of “authenticity” is not specific to the American market. Global literary discourse also requires authors of colour to produce ostensibly “authentic” narratives. They are then required to embody this “authenticity” when presenting themselves in public. But are such narratives predetermined by race, ethnicity and language? Who qualifies as an “authentic” author? The demand for “authenticity” – within literary culture, in particular, and postmodern culture in general – has become a problematic, paradoxical idea. Authors are now expected to depict an authentic experience – and yet the form of such authenticity is pre-determined on their behalf.'/;;/. back

Supererogation - Wikipedia, Supererogation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, "works of supererogation" (also called "acts of supererogation") are those performed beyond what God requires. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7, Saint Paul says that while everyone is free to marry, it is better to refrain from marriage and remain celibate to better serve God. The Roman Catholic Church holds that the counsels of perfection are supererogatory acts, which specific Christians may engage in above their moral duties.' back

Tsung Dao Lee (1957), Nobel Lecture: Weak interactions and nonconservation of parity, ' In the previous talk Professor Yang has outlined to you the position of our understanding concerning the various symmetry principles in physics prior to the end of last year. Since then, in the short period of one year, the proper roles of these principles in various physical processes have been greatly clarified. This remarkably rapid development is made possible only through the efforts and ingenuity of many physicists in various laboratories all over the world. To have a proper perspective and understanding of these new experimental results it may be desirable to review very briefly our knowledge about elementary particles and their interactions. back

Tyler Broome, US election: how Trump’s speeches echo Roman rhetoric and style from 2,000 years ago, ' If you were to ask some ancient Romans about US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric, they would probably say that what he lacks in eloquence, he makes up for with his command over his audience’s emotions. . . . These techniques would be all too familiar to those living under Roman control who regularly heard speeches from their leaders. Much of Trump’s rhetorical style is recommended in treatises written by the Roman statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero, over 2,000 years ago. In his treatise On The Ideal Orator, written in 55 BC, Cicero wrote that emotional arguments were especially effective for winning over a crowd, saying: Mankind makes far more decisions through hatred, or love, or desire, or anger, or grief, or joy, or hope, or fear, or error, or some other affection of mind, than from regard to truth, or any settled maxim, or principle of right, or judicial reform, or adherence to the laws. . . . But, we should remember that while Roman theory discusses the manipulation of audiences’ emotions, it also warns us about just how dangerous this can be. Cicero’s On the Ideal Orator is not just a handbook for how to win over an audience, but a discussion of the morals a leader should possess: a leader with the skill to sway an audience but without the morals to guide them in the right direction is a dangerous prospect for any nation. Cicero might have been impressed with Trump’s rhetorical appeals to emotion, but he would certainly have been wary of the morality of using such techniques. back

William J Broard, Ship Brings Rocky Clues to Life’s Origins Up From Ocean’s ‘Lost City’, ' Researchers have long argued that regions deep in the Earth’s oceans may harbor sites from which all terrestrial life sprung. In the Atlantic, they gave the name “Lost City” to a jagged landscape of eerie spires under which they proposed that the life-preceding chemistry may have churned. And now for the first time, specialists have succeeded in getting a glimpse of this potential Garden of Eden. A report in the journal Science on Thursday tells of a 30-person team drilling deep into a region of the Mid-Atlantic seabed and pulling up nearly a mile of extremely rare rocky material. Never before has a sample so massive and from such a great depth come to light. The material is central to a major theory on the origin of life. . . . The discovery raised waves of excitement in the community that studies life precursors because Michael J. Russell, a geochemist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, had predicted the existence of such cooler springs. He saw them as ideal for nurturing life. . . . That history explains the current excitement to see what analyses of the expedition’s rocky samples bring to light. Dr. Klein said the findings could bear on the origin of life not only on Earth but also elsewhere in the solar system and the universe. “The importance of this ship and the cores cannot be overestimated,” he said. “This is a basic resource for the future.” back