O'Murchu (1997), Diarmuid, Quantum Theology : Spiritual Implications of the New Physics, Crossroad Publishing Company 1997 Jacket: 'For quantum theorists, the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts underpins all reality. "This is not merely a scientific principle of immense significance for our times" writes DO'M, "it is also a theological norm, known to mystics for centuries and now maturing into the supreme wisdom of our age."' 
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Polkinghorne (2008), John, Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship, Yale University Press 2008 Jacket: 'Despite the differences of their subject matter, science and theology have a cousinly relationship, John Polkinghorne contends in his latest thought-provoking book.  From his unique perspective as both theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, Polkinghorne considers aspects of quantum physics and theology and demonstrates that the two truth-seeking enterprises are engaged in analogous rational techniques of inquiry. His exploration of the deep connections between science and theology shows with new clarity a common kinship in the search for truth.'   
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Christopher Shields (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy b), The Active Mind of De Anima III 5 , ' After characterizingnous the mind (nous) and its activities in De Animaiii 4, Aristotle takes a surprising turn. In De Anima iii 5, he introduces an obscure and hotly disputed subject: the active mind or active intellect (nous poiêtikos). Controversy surrounds almost every aspect of De Anima iii 5, not least because in it Aristotle characterizes the active mind—a topic mentioned nowhere else in his entire corpus—as ‘separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality’ (chôristos kai apathês kai amigês, tê ousia energeia; DA iii 5, 430a17–18) and then also as ‘deathless and everlasting’ (athanaton kai aidion; DA iii 5, 430a23). This comes as no small surprise to readers of De Anima, because Aristotle had earlier in the same work treated the mind (nous) as but one faculty (dunamis) of the soul (psuchê), and he had contended that the soul as a whole is not separable from the body (DA ii 1, 413a3–5). back

Ewen Calloway (20125_01_17), AI-designed proteins tackle century-old problem — making snake antivenoms, ' Proteins designed using artificial intelligence (AI) can block the lethal effects of toxins delivered in the venom of cobras, adders and other deadly snakes. The AI-designed proteins could form the basis of a new generation of therapies for snakebites — which kill an estimated 100,000 people each year and are still treated much as they were a century ago. The study, published in Nature on 15 January1, is also a demonstration of how machine learning has supercharged the field of computational protein design. Challenges that used to take months or years, or even prove impossible — such as designing a new protein to successfully block another — can now be accomplished in seconds.' back

Geeta Pandey (2025_01_12), India races to prepare world's largest religious gathering, ' What is Kumbh Mela? The festival, which concludes on 26 February, has been recognised as an Intangible Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations agency Unesco. Its origin is rooted in a mythological story about a fight between the gods and demons over a Kumbh (a pitcher) of nectar that emerged during the churching of ocean. As the two sides fought over the pot of elixir that promised them immortality, a few drops spilled over and fell in four cities - Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik. As the fight went on for 12 celestial years – each equal to 12 years on Earth – Kumbh Mela festival is held every 12 years in the four cities. An ardh or a half Kumbh is organised halfway between two festivals. The mela is organised in all the four cities, but the biggest festivals, where previous attendance records are broken, are always held in Prayagraj. Hindu seer Mahant Ravindra Puri said the festival this time round was "extra special" and described it as "a Maha [great] Kumbh". "That's because the current alignment of planets and stars is identical to what existed at the moment of the spill," he told the BBC. "Such perfection is being observed after 12 Kumbh festivals or 144 years," he said.' back

Jamie Q. Roberts (2025_01_17), Catch-22: the great antiwar novel whose barbs still strike home, even in times of peace, ' Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) is a satirical antiwar novel about an American bomber squadron stationed in Italy in the second world war. It exposes the horrors of war, but, even more, it is about the inept and immoral military bureaucracy and the grim relationships between men and women within the war. Its barbs still strike home, even in times of relative peace. This is because Heller was not just writing against war. “Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts,” he once said – “and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?” The novel doesn’t exactly have a plot. For the most part, its 42 chapters circle around episodes and characters. It is not until you are some way in that you begin to get a feel for its content and method. The novel needs a second pass to catch everything you missed the first time, such as the first mention of the central “Snowden” episode, or the extent to which various characters are morally compromised, or the way the protagonist Yossarian replies “pretty good” whenever anyone asks him how he is (he is far from pretty good). . . . Yet there is a glimmer of redemption. At the end of the novel, Yossarian is committed to rescuing a young girl: the sister of “Nately’s whore”, a prostitute his naive friend Nately is in love with. Significantly, after she is told of Nately’s death on a mission, Nately’s whore blames Yossarian and spends the remainder of the novel trying to kill him. The last lines of the novel are Nately’s whore was hiding just outside the door. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off. Her wordless and implacable rage feels like the return of the repressed for all the women in the novel. It is a fury that cannot be articulated, because the truth is too dark – but it can nonetheless be embodied.' back

Lukas Žalalis (2025_01_15), ‘I Realized My Efforts Were Futile’: How a Russian Combat Medic Deserted From the Front Lines, ' In November 2023, Alexei Zhilyaev made a fateful decision. Opposed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 39-year-old IT specialist from a St. Petersburg suburb enlisted as a medic in the Russian army, believing he could save lives on the battlefield. Less than a year later, disillusioned and haunted by the futility of his work, Zhilyaev deserted from the ranks. He now lives in France, where he is waiting for political asylum. His story sheds light on the horrors faced by both soldiers and civilians in Moscow’s nearly three-year war — and the brutality of the Russian military. The Moscow Times could not independently verify the details of Zhilyaev’s account. But Idite Lesom (Get Lost), a Russian project that helps men avoid combat, confirmed that he served as a combat medic in eastern Ukraine and deserted with the group’s help. “I’ve always been against this regime. I protested with Navalny’s supporters,” Zhilyaev told The Moscow Times. “When the war started, my wife and I argued: She was repeating the propaganda trope, ‘They’ve been bombing Donbas for eight years,’ but I was against it.” On Nov. 20, 2023, while meeting a friend at St. Petersburg’s Moskovsky train station, Zhilyaev saw waves of soldiers, maimed and broken, being transported to sanatoriums. Trained as a medic in his youth, he felt compelled to act. Within hours, he signed a contract and was sent to a training camp in Pogonovo near Voronezh. Days later, he was deployed to the front line near Svatove and Kreminna in Ukraine’s Luhansk region. . . He said he was shocked by the Russian military’s reliance on “meat assaults” — sending waves of poorly equipped soldiers to storm fortified positions. “Ukrainian forces value their soldiers. If Russian troops advance, Ukrainians retreat to the prepared positions with all eyes and guns on the seemingly lost position and bombard the attackers,” he said. “A 15-man assault group might see only three return alive. On average, we evacuated about seven Russian bodies and one or two Ukrainian ones.” back

Michael Bachelard (2025_01_17), A decapitated doll and a prayer for my death: The many, many threats of the Exclusive Brethren, ' A letter landed in my inbox last year that gave me a strong burst of nostalgia. It was a legal threat from the defamation lawyer who also represented Bruce Lehrmann and Ben Roberts-Smith. This time he was working for the leaders of a religion, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. I’d sent questions to the church asking about the affairs of its “Man of God”, Bruce Hales, after the raid last March by the Australian Tax Office on companies run by church members. The letter from Sydney solicitor Mark O’Brien said the question was defamatory and the Hales family was considering suing. It made me nostalgic because, by a conservative count, this was the 13th threatening legal letter I’d received over the years from the sect formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren. The PBCC, founded by former priest John Nelson Darby in the 1820s, instructs its members in official ministry to hate the rest of us because we contaminate and defile them. But even though its members do not vote, the church lobbies conservative politicians to its own benefit and does very nicely out of the welfare and charity systems, government grants and federal funding for its schools. At the heart of PBCC theology is the desire to be separate from the world. Its global leader, Sydney-based Hales, preaches that the Brethren assembly – attended by about 50,000 people – is the “highest court” which has “the power [from God] to overrule other judgments”. Even so, the Brethren are willing to use the worldly courts to shut down those they perceive as enemies. This includes not just journalists but also their own often traumatised former members.' back

Mohamad Bazzi (2025_01_16), Biden has paved the way for Trump’s egregious flouting of international rules, ' Early in Trump’s first term in office, it became clear that he has contempt for international law and the rules-based order put in place after the end of the second world war to contain conflict between world powers. But this time, Trump is motivated not just by his disdain for global institutions and norms – or even the “madman theory” of foreign policy, where a president will try to appear unpredictable, or irrational, as a negotiating tactic to throw adversaries off balance. Trump has been emboldened by the recent actions of world leaders who were supposedly far more concerned with preserving international peace and security. Joe Biden and other western leaders prepared the ground for Trump over the past 15 months, as they defied and weakened international law to protect Israel while it waged a devastating war on Gaza. Here’s a summary of how western officials, especially the Biden administration, have repeatedly undermined international institutions and law to shield Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from consequences for their war crimes in Gaza: . . . . The Biden administration could have used these international rulings and Israel’s growing isolation as leverage to stop sending billions in US weapons to Israel and force Netanyahu to end the war. Instead, Biden and his top aides worked for nearly a year to discredit international courts and prosecutors in order to protect Israel. After Trump’s disastrous first term, Biden had entered office in 2021 promising to put protection of human rights at the center of US foreign policy. But he acted like past American presidents, who waged or sustained US wars abroad while delivering grandiose rhetoric about respect for democracy and human rights. Biden laid bare the reality of his policies with his unconditional support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.' back

Sarah Basford Canales (20125_01_17), Human rights report lashes Australia’s ‘diabolical’ asylum seeker treatment and ‘appalling’ youth crime laws, ' Australia’s “diabolical” treatment of asylum seekers and youth crime has worsened, a global human rights advocacy body has warned, urging voters to push back on leaders politicising the issue for gain. Human Rights Watch’s latest world report has lashed Australia for going backwards on children in the criminal justice system in 2024, referencing the Northern Territory’s decision to reintroduce spit hoods for youth detainees and the continued use of watch houses to detain children in Queensland. Last year a Guardian Australia investigation revealed confronting footage of children in Queensland watch houses, locked in “freezing” isolation cells, becoming panicked and struggling to breathe. 'I can't breathe': teenage boy gasps for air after fire lit in Queensland watch house – video In December, the new Queensland government passed “adult crime, adult time” laws, dramatically increasing maximum sentences for child offenders. The government concedes the laws are contrary to international and state human rights law, are discriminatory against young people and will “have a greater impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children”.' back

Wategi, Macoun, Singh, Strakosch & Yeh (2025_01_16, The Human Rights Commission has handed down a report on racism at Australian universities. Here’s why it fails, ' Yet, in this instance, more media scrutiny was centred around Palestinian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah’s call for an end to the genocide against Palestinian people. Questions were raised around her worth as a scholar and recipient of a prestigious research fellowship. Her research was represented through racist stereotypes as a threat to the safety of students at her university. A structural understanding of racism demands an analysis of power and a willingness to stand up to it. It’s here that the commission’s report falls short and ends up reinforcing the problem it’s trying to solve. . . . Antisemitism is real, yet initiatives such as the Coalition’s Private Members Bill seeking to establish a Commission of Inquiry into antisemitism in universities, conflate antisemitism with political criticism of Israel. As a result, the language of anti-racism is being used to shut down those opposing the most horrific expression of racism that exists – genocide. . . . A structural understanding of racism moves beyond racism as isolated incidents located within an organisation. It connects them to the deeper systems of racial dominance embedded in social, legal and political systems of society. Understanding racism as a collection of quantifiable experiences rather than a deeply embedded set of practices, values and knowledge reduces racism to an isolated behaviour. It’s then seen as an anomaly to be treated on the individual level through education or awareness-raising. This approach makes racism a problem of those negatively affected by it, rather than those perpetrating it. The proposed solutions tend to involve tinkering with complaints processes, promoting counselling services and installing diversity targets. This approach treats the symptoms, rather than tackle the root cause of the problem. . . . An analysis of racism divorced from the socio-political environment entrenches rather than eliminates racism. All claims to racial harm might appear equal until power is examined. To properly understand how racism is working, reports like this must go beyond collating individual feelings and experiences as though all perspectives are equal, and examine the institutions and political systems that distribute racial violence and racist harm. We must ask who is being displaced and structurally excluded? Who’s being incarcerated, dehumanised and overpoliced? Who commands sympathies, whilst others do not? Who’s being pushed out of employment, framed as violent and denied sovereignty? Who’s being killed? Who has access to state militaries, land, weapons, media, political influence, government support, international recognition and money? In avoiding an understanding of racism in a structural sense, anti-racism efforts wherever they are situated become useless, or worse - violent.' back