Crotty (2016), Robert, Jesus, His Mother, Her Sister Mary and Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Background to the Gospel of John, David Lovell Publishing 2016 ' The Gospel of John has always been a difficult book to interpret. The differences between John and the Synoptics have always been a stumbling block for students. . . . This book takes up these problems. It demonstrates that the present text has followed a long and tortured journey from Jewish Gnosticism to a Christian Gnostic compendium, later extensively edited by Roman Christianity. The result is a surprising re-reading. The book throws light on a different Jesus to the canonical one (he is not human). . . The Roman Christians disagreed on all these interpretations and heavily edited the gospel in order to silence its Gnostic statement. This book will show how the gospel of John should be read at the present time to take account of this complex tradition history.' 
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Streater (2000), Raymond F, and Arthur S Wightman, PCT, Spin, Statistics and All That, Princeton University Press 2000 Amazon product description: 'PCT, Spin and Statistics, and All That is the classic summary of and introduction to the achievements of Axiomatic Quantum Field Theory. This theory gives precise mathematical responses to questions like: What is a quantized field? What are the physically indispensable attributes of a quantized field? Furthermore, Axiomatic Field Theory shows that a number of physically important predictions of quantum field theory are mathematical consequences of the axioms. Here Raymond Streater and Arthur Wightman treat only results that can be rigorously proved, and these are presented in an elegant style that makes them available to a broad range of physics and theoretical mathematics.' 
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Azam Ahmed (2024_12_24), Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the Taliban, ' The Taliban were inching closer, encroaching on land that had once seemed secure, the American officer warned. Four of his men had just been killed, and he needed Afghans willing to fight back. “Who will stand up?” the officer implored a crowd of 150 Afghan elders. The people in Kunduz Province were largely supportive of the Americans and opposed to the Taliban. But recruiting police officers was slow going and, by the summer of 2009, local officials and the American officer — a lieutenant colonel from the Georgia National Guard — landed on a risky approach: hiring private militias. A murmur of discontent passed through the crowd. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” an old man stood up and said, according to four people at the meeting. “We have seen this before. The militias will become a bigger problem than the Taliban.” Over the grumbling, a onetime warlord named Mohammad Omar sprung up and denounced the others as cowards. “I will fight the Taliban!” he shouted. The gathering in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, is not registered in any official history of the war. But people across the province say this seemingly unremarkable moment reshaped the conflict in ways that Washington has never truly understood. . . . . Some of the most notorious warlords and criminals who brought such misery to Kunduz — and ultimately did more to support the Taliban than defeat them — faded away without a final battle or trial. Mr. Omar, the Wall Breaker, died of natural causes not long after the Taliban took over. Haji Fateh fled to safety as the province fell and resettled in Iran, where he lives in a swanky home paid for by the money he earned brutalizing the people of Kunduz, according to one of his friends. Mr. Fateh could not be reached for comment, but he welcomes visitors regularly for lavish meals or tea, said the friend, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of incurring his wrath. Among his most frequent guests, the friend said, are former Afghan government officials, hoping to convince him once more to take up arms on their behalf.' back

Ben Samuels (2024_12_23), Analysis | How Trump and the GOP Plan to Dismantle the U.S. pro-Palestinian Movement, ' WASHINGTON – Four weeks before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes power, all his rhetoric and appointments are indicating that his campaign's vow to crack down on pro-Palestinian sentiment in America will be a defining factor of his administration's early days. Throughout the campaign, both Trump and the Republican Party insisted that such a clampdown would be quick and complete. After Trump's speedy cabinet appointments and ahead of a Congress ruled by a GOP majority, the fight against the pro-Palestinian movement might be one of the only things that has a clear path across the government. - Advertisement - Once Trump's picks for the top diplomatic positions are in place, such as Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador, the harshest step – the deporting of pro-Palestinian protesters who have student visas – could be the first move. Both Rubio and Stefanik are well-known proponents of such a step, one of Trump and the GOP's few solid policy commitments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the campaign.' back

Camille von Kaenel(2024_12_26), These California farmers went for Trump. Now he could deport half their workers., ' SACRAMENTO, California — California farmers could soon enjoy bumper crops thanks to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to lift water restrictions. But who will pick them if he follows through on his deportation threats? The country’s largest agricultural constituency backed Trump in November, bucking California’s deep-blue electorate over his campaign promises to “open the faucet” and deliver more water to the state’s parched, conservative-leaning Central Valley. But now it’s reckoning with an uncomfortable contradiction: Trump also campaigned on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, who make up at least half of the state’s agricultural workforce. . . . Deporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented farmworkers from California would be logistically difficult and time-consuming, to say nothing of the legal challenges California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta and other Democratic officials are already preparing. Homan has said the administration would prioritize deporting undocumented people who’ve committed serious crimes. “If that is indeed the focus of the administration’s effort, then I think most people would support that,” said Puglia, who also declined to say who he voted for. “So there’s a little bit of a wait and see thing here.” During his first term, Trump also said he wouldn’t go after workers in the food sector. But his administration still conducted raids at Mississippi poultry plants and Nebraska produce processing facilities, arresting hundreds of workers. The extent of Trump 2.0’s deportations efforts will determine how much California’s farmers could potentially sacrifice their water access to sway his immigration policies.' back

Elementary particle - Wikipedia, Elementary particle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. Particles currently thought to be elementary include the fundamental fermions (quarks, leptons, antiquarks, and antileptons), which generally are "matter particles" and "antimatter particles", as well as the fundamental bosons (gauge bosons and the Higgs boson), which generally are "force particles" that mediate interactions among fermions. A particle containing two or more elementary particles is a composite particle.' back

Feynman, Leighton & Sands III:8, Chapter 8: The Hamiltonian Matrix, ' One problem then in describing nature is to find a suitable representation for the base states. But that’s only the beginning. We still want to be able to say what “happens.” If we know the “condition” of the world at one moment, we would like to know the condition at a later moment. So we also have to find the laws that determine how things change with time. We now address ourselves to this second part of the framework of quantum mechanics—how states change with time. ' back

Haley Brown (2024_12_25), Killer whale mom who carried her dead baby for 17 days across 1,000 miles of ocean gives birth to new calf , ' The bereaved whale mother who made headlines when she heartbreakingly grieved her dead baby for more than two weeks has given birth to a new calf, scientists said. The mama orca, named J35 by researchers, was unable to let her calf go in 2018, carrying her baby’s lifeless body with her along a one-thousand-mile grief journey. But last Friday, scientists spotted the devoted mom with a new female calf in the Puget Sound, according to a Facebook post from the Center for Whale Research. . . . The mother whale is part of a critically endangered pod of whales who live in the Pacific Northwest and roam the Pacific Ocean between Washington state and British Columbia. Killer whales have strong social ties and continue to help their children even after they are fully grown, according to researchers. As of December 2023, the J-pod of whales had 75 members, according to whale researchers who have been monitoring the pod of whales since the 1970s.' back

Hylomorphism - Wikipedia, Hylomorphism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Hylomorphism (Greek ὑλο- hylo-, "wood, matter" + -morphism < Greek μορφή, morphē, "form") is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which analyzes substance into matter and form. Substances are conceived of as compounds of form and matter.' back

John C. Eccles (1958), Innovation in Science: The Physiology of Imagination, ' Our task here is to see how far our present ideas on the working of the brain can be related to the experiences of mind. The way to the imagination, the highest level of mental experience, lies through the lower levels of sensory experience, imagery, hallucination and memory, and that is the path we shall traverse. All that we shall learn must itself, of course, be the product of perceiving, reasoning and imagining by our brains! back

Jonathan Kennedy (2024_12_25), The birth of Jesus would probably have been forgotten – if it wasn’t for a plague, ' The Plague of Cyprian was first reported in Egypt in 249. The pandemic hit Rome in 251 and lasted for at least the next two decades. Some historians argue that it caused the period of political instability and economic disruption known as the Crisis of the Third Century, which nearly caused the empire to collapse. For other historians, the Cyprian plague was just one aspect of this ancient polycrisis. . . . When your friends, family and neighbours are dying, and there is a very real prospect that you will die soon too, it is only natural to wonder why this is happening and what awaits you in the next life. The historian Kyle Harper and sociologist Rodney Stark argue that Christianity boomed in popularity during the Plague of Cyprian because it provided a more reassuring guide to life at this unsettling time. . . . Paganism offered little comfort to those struck down by disease. The old gods did not reward good deeds, so many pagans abandoned the sick “half dead into the road”, according to Bishop Dionysius, the Patriarch of Alexandria. Death was an unappealing prospect, as it meant an uncertain existence in the underworld. In contrast, Jesus’s message offered meaning and hope. Suffering on Earth was a test that helped believers enter heaven after death. Everlasting life in paradise is quite the prize, but Christianity provided another more tangible benefit, too. Christians were expected to show their love for God through acts of kindness to the sick and needy. Or as Jesus put it: whatever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me. Emboldened by the promise of life after death, Christians stuck around and got stuck in. Dionysius describes how, “heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need”. Early Christians would have saved many of the sick by giving them water, food and shelter. Even today, hydration and nutrition are important elements of the World Health Organization’s Ebola treatment guidelines. As Stark and Harper point out, the fact that so many Christians survived, and that Christians managed to save pagans abandoned by their families, provided the best recruitment material any religion could wish for: “miracles”.' back

Julie Bindel (2024_12_24), Enough with buck-passing, child abuse in the church is systemic, ' In November, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby announced his resignation as the leader of the Church of England after an independent review into the crimes of John Smyth exposed his persistent failure to take the necessary steps to bring the prolific child abuser to justice. He will officially step down in early January. The independent Makin review found that Smyth, a barrister involved in Christian ministry, abused as many as 130 boys and young men at Christian summer camps in Africa and England over four decades. Smyth, who the review found had subjected his victims to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks, died in 2018 at the age of 75, without facing full accountability. The abuse suffered at the hands of John Smyth was “prolific and abhorrent”, the inquiry found. “Words cannot adequately describe the horror of what transpired.” The testimonies of the victims who took part in the inquiry make heartbreaking reading. Many say they waited for over four decades to disclose the abuse because they feared that they would be blamed or disbelieved. The barrister’s horrific abuse of boys involved in Christian camps was first identified in the 1980s, the review found, but the Church of England failed to take appropriate action and practically allowed him to continue his abuse, both in England and Africa.' back

Kelly Bourke (2024_12_25, lueprint for success: how Australian architects made the world take notice in 2024, ' When an unassuming public primary school tucked away in an inner-city Sydney suburb took out the grand prize at the world’s largest architecture festival last month, it made international headlines. Crowned world building of the year, Darlington public school was the second major triumph for FJC Studio in 2024. Two months earlier, the Australian architecture firm had put Liverpool council’s new library, Yellamundie, on the international stage, when it was named one of the world’s four most beautiful libraries. Both buildings attracted high praise for the way the architects had seamlessly incorporated local First Nations culture and history into their design, a practice an increasing number of Australian architects are prioritising in their work that is making the rest of the world sit up and take notice. At the world architecture festival – which since its inception in 2008 has become the Venice Biennale of the architecture world – Darlington public school took out best in show, but 10 other Australian architects also collected major awards. Like at the Olympics, Australia is making a habit of punching above its weight in winning architecture gold, says the festival’s founder and the former deputy chair of the UK’s Design Council, Paul Finch.' back

Mansur Mirovalev (2024_12_24), Is Ukraine’s largest church still pro-Russian?, ' Khust, Ukraine – “Praise Jesus” instead of “hello” is what one often hears in Transcarpathia, Ukraine’s westernmost region. Known for piousness, mesmerising folklore, forested mountains and inventive smugglers, Transcarpathia used to be dominated by the Greek-Catholic Church that preserved Orthodox rites, but considers the pope its spiritual leader. Transcarpathia had never been part of Russia until Soviet leader Joseph Stalin annexed it in 1944, imposing the Russian Orthodox Church whose top clerics collaborated with the KGB, the main security agency of the Soviet era. “Soviet intelligence either forced all [Greek-Catholic] priests to the pro-communist Orthodoxy or killed them off in Siberia,” Oleh Dyba, a publicist and scholar of Transcarpathia’s religious life, told Al Jazeera. This is the second year when Ukraine celebrates Christmas on December 25 after hundreds of years of celebrating it on January 7 in accordance with the Gregorian calendar still used by the Russian Orthodox Church. But even so, the formerly pro-Russian Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) remains the country’s largest religious see.. . .' back

Michael Timothy Bennett & Elija Perrier (2024_12_24), An AI system has reached human level on a test for ‘general intelligence’. Here’s what that means, ' A new artificial intelligence (AI) model has just achieved human-level results on a test designed to measure “general intelligence”. On December 20, OpenAI’s o3 system scored 85% on the ARC-AGI benchmark, well above the previous AI best score of 55% and on par with the average human score. It also scored well on a very difficult mathematics test. Creating artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is the stated goal of all the major AI research labs. At first glance, OpenAI appears to have at least made a significant step towards this goal. While scepticism remains, many AI researchers and developers feel something just changed. For many, the prospect of AGI now seems more real, urgent and closer than anticipated. Are they right? You can trust this article because it’s written by academics. Generalisation and intelligence To understand what the o3 result means, you need to understand what the ARC-AGI test is all about. In technical terms, it’s a test of an AI system’s “sample efficiency” in adapting to something new – how many examples of a novel situation the system needs to see to figure out how it works. An AI system like ChatGPT (GPT-4) is not very sample efficient. It was “trained” on millions of examples of human text, constructing probabilistic “rules” about which combinations of words are most likely. The result is pretty good at common tasks. It is bad at uncommon tasks, because it has less data (fewer samples) about those tasks. back

Neyaz Farooquee (2024_12_27), Manmohan Singh's decisions that shaped a billion lives, ' People in India are reflecting on former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's contribution to the country since his death on Thursday evening. Singh, who held the top post for two consecutive terms between 2004 and 2014, was seen as an architect of India's economic liberalisation which changed the country's growth trajectory. The first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power, Singh was also the first Sikh to assume the top office. Known as a soft-spoken technocrat, he had earlier headed India's central bank, served as a finance secretary and minister, and led the opposition in the upper house of parliament. Here are five milestones from Singh's life that shaped his career and had a lasting impact on more than a billion Indians. . . . Economic liberalization: Singh led the initiative to deregulate the economy to avoid its collapse, which he argued was otherwise imminent. Despite stiff opposition from members of his government and party, Singh prevailed. He took bold measures that included devaluing the currency, reducing import tariffs and privatising state-owned companies. He was famously quoted as saying in parliament during his first budget speech in 1991 that "no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come". . . . "I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament," he said. "I think taking into account the circumstances and the compulsions of a coalition polity, I have done as best as I could do under the circumstances".' 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

Pascal's Wager - Wikipedia, Pascal's Wager - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Pascal's Wager (also known as Pascal's Gamble) is an argument in apologetic philosophy which was devised by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, Blaise Pascal. It posits that humans all bet with their lives either that God exists or does not exist. Given the possibility that God actually does exist and assuming the infinite gain or loss associated with belief in God or with unbelief, a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.).' back

Reuters and Agence France-Presse (2024_12_27), Azerbaijan plane crashed ‘due to physical and technical external interference’: airline, . Azerbaijan Airlines suspended a host of flights to Russian cities on Friday and said it considered the crash was caused by what it termed “physical and technical external interference”. After the loud bang, the plane had acted strangely as if it was drunk, Rakhimov said. “It was as if it was drunk – not the same plane any more,” he said. Azerbaijan believes missile downed plane, Russia warns against ‘hypotheses’ The Embraer passenger jet had flown from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, in Russia’s southern Chechnya region, before veering off hundreds of miles across the Caspian Sea. It crashed on the opposite shore of the Caspian after what Russia’s aviation watchdog said was an emergency that may have been caused by a bird strike. After the turmoil of the crash landing, there was silence before the moaning of the injured began, Rakhimov said. Asked about reports that Russian air defences had mistakenly shot down the aircraft, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday he had nothing to add and did not want to give any assessments until the official investigation made its conclusions. Rosaviatsia, Russia’s aviation watchdog, said that the captain of the plane had been offered other airports at which to land, but had chosen Kazakhstan’s Aktau. It said that it would provide comprehensive support to Kazakh and Azerbaijani investigations looking into the crash. back

Valerie Hopkins (2024_12_25_, Released From a Russian Prison, This Activist Got Right to Work, ' For much of the last two years, Vladimir Kara-Murza barely used his voice. A political activist and vehement critic of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, he was confined to a harsh isolation cell in a Siberian penal colony. Now, he is using his voice as often as possible. Since being traded to the West in August in the biggest prisoner exchange since the Cold War, Mr. Kara-Murza, 43, has been lobbying Western leaders to take stronger action against Mr. Putin. At the same time, he is trying to give opposition-minded Russians at home and abroad reasons for hope. Mr. Kara-Murza said the need for more prisoner swaps had been among his main arguments to world leaders, including President Biden, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France. “While people are listening, I feel a responsibility to speak because I feel a responsibility toward all the others who are still left back there,” he said, referring to the hundreds of political prisoners in Russia. “We need to have more of these exchanges.” He has promoted this cause even though he has maintained that he was released from Russia against his will. “It has always been a question of principle that a Russian politician has to stay in Russia,” he said. “Because what moral right do I have to call on my fellow Russian citizens to stand up and resist the dictatorship if I wasn’t prepared to do it myself. . . He said his top priority is holding the Kremlin elite accountable for the atrocities they committed inside and outside of Russia, but he has steadfastly rejected the assertion, common in Ukraine and elsewhere, that all Russians bear responsibility for Mr. Putin and his aggression. “We were protesting Putin from the beginning, from the year 2000, while Western leaders on both sides of the Atlantic were looking into his eyes and seeing his soul, pushing reset buttons with him, rolling out red carpets, inviting him for summits, buying oil and gas and so on,” he said. “So if people want to talk about collective responsibility in Russia,” he said, “let’s not forget about the collective responsibility of Western leaders who were aiding and abetting and enabling and appeasing Putin throughout his first many years in power". ' back

Will Oremus & Naomi Nix (2024_12_24), This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped., ' When veteran newsmen L. Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill started their news site rating company, they were prepared for the inevitable cries of bias from both sides. What they didn’t anticipate was that NewsGuard, their company of about 50 employees, would become the target of congressional investigations and accusations from federal regulators that it was at the vanguard of a vast conspiracy to censor conservative views. Since 2018, NewsGuard has built a business offering advertisers nonpartisan assessments of online publishers — backed by a team of journalists who assess which sites are reputable and which can’t be trusted. It uses a slate of nine standard criteria, such as whether a site corrects errors or discloses its ownership and financing, to produce a zero to 100 percent rating. . . . But conservatives now question the company’s premise. Brendan Carr, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, accused the company of facilitating a “censorship cartel,” in a November letter to leading tech platforms. Noting that key legal protections depend on tech executives operating “in good faith,” Carr continued: “It is in this context that I am writing to obtain information about your work with one specific organization — the Orwellian named NewsGuard.” . . . Six years after its launch, NewsGuard has attained what Brill called “sustainable profitability.” But he and Crovitz no longer enjoy friendly bipartisan audiences in Washington. Instead, they find themselves a central target of Republicans’ wide-ranging war on content moderation — a practice many on the right deem censorship — with their reputation and their business at stake.' 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