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Notes

[Notebook: DB 57 Language]

[Sunday 21 August 2005 - Saturday 27 August 2005]

Sunday 28 August 2005
Monday 29 August 2005
Tuesday 30 August 2005
Wednesday 24 August 2005

[page 193]

Thursday 25 August 2005

'but the pressures [on Swiss journalists] not to enquire to closely, not to say the unsayable, remain stronger in Switzerland that elsewhere because of the narrow and close knit nature of the society. Faith, Safety in Numbers page 32. Faith

 

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'Similar pressures in other countries have bred a whole school of irreverent journals - like the Canard Enchaine in France or Private Eye in Britain - systematically engaged in debunking of accepted truths, the systematic listing of 'naked emperors''. Faith, page 33.

'. . . the amazingly lax moral framework in which the banker's operated went largely unquestioned.'

'Maybe Mr Nussbaumer can cut corners in his Mercedes, but you must not follow on your moped,' Faith page 35.

The fundamental step in socio-religious reform is reform of our system of values. Given the values, economists can work out what is best to do. A neutral assumption is that everything is of equal value. More complex assumptions assign

[page 194]

different values to different events.

But it was simply to important to the banks' - and the country's - standing in the world to be questioned or investigated.'

Friday 26 August 2005
Saturday 27 August 2005

The power of Mao can be understood as multidimensional ferromagnetism in which some random event allows a certain assembly of particles to move into a common state (spin up, conforming to the new (political) regime). Systems move to states of low energy, such as a monarchic dictatorship might be, but the force of oppression creates its own energy, which, skillfully applied, can introduce a new low energy state. More specifically, we examine the prevalence of various states by applying statistical mechanics (mathematics) to a certain set of 'Basis ' states. [there is a tension between energy and entropy parametrized by the 'Gibbs free energy'. Frank L Lambert]

 

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Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty


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Further reading

Books

Bogarde, Dirk, A Gentle Occupation: A Novel, Alfred a Knopf 1980 Amazon Product Description 'Bogarde's debut novel, set in 1945, concerns the period after the war as the British Army attempts to carry out a caretaking operation on an island seething with revolt following the Japanese occupation. A film star of the 1950s and 1960s, Bogarde has also written four volumes of autobiography.' 
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Brillouin, Leon, Science and Information Theory, Academic 1962 Introduction: 'A new territory was conquered for the sciences when the theory of information was recently developed. . . . Physics enters the picture when we discover a remarkable likeness between information and entropy. . . . The efficiency of an experiment can be defined as the ratio of information obtained to the associated increase in entropy. This efficiency is always smaller than unity, according to the generalised Carnot principle. . . . ' 
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Elkana, Yehuda, The Discovery of the Conservation of Energy, Hutchinson Educational 1974 Jacket: 'This book chronicles historically and in a philosophical context the discovery and gradual develoment of the concept of energy ... Metaphysical beliefs in the principle of 'conservation of something' in nature resulted finally in the statement of the physical laws of the conservaiton of energy in the work of Hermann von Helmholtz.' 
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Faith, Nicholas, Safety in Numbers: The Mysterious World of Swiss Banking, Viking Press 1982 Jacket: 'For centuries Swiss banks have offered a secure refuge for the funds of moneyed people who have private reasons for hiding their wealth or who are reluctant (or afraid) to keep their assets in their own countries. ... In recent years, however ... the age old inviolability and secrecy have begin to change. As Nicholas Faith is first to show in this remarkable book, international wealth and international tax evasion may never be the same.' 
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Misner, Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. . . . this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity. . . . ' 
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Polanyi, Michael, and Amaryta Sen (foreword), The Tacit Dimension, University Of Chicago Press 1966, 2009 Amazon product description: '“I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell,” writes Michael Polanyi, whose work paved the way for the likes of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper. The Tacit Dimension argues that tacit knowledge—tradition, inherited practices, implied values, and prejudgments—is a crucial part of scientific knowledge. Back in print for a new generation of students and scholars, this volume challenges the assumption that skepticism, rather than established belief, lies at the heart of scientific discovery.' 
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Wodehouse, P G, The Indiscretions of Archie, SMK Books 2014 'Review "The handsome bindings are only the cherry on top of what is already a cake without compare." Evening Standard "Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in" Evelyn Waugh "He exhausts superlatives" Stephen Fry ' 
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Links

Active intellect - Wikipedia, Active intellect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The nature of the active intellect was the subject of intense discussion in medieval philosophy, as various Muslim, Jewish and Christian thinkers sought to reconcile their commitment to Aristotle's account of the body and soul to their own theological commitments. At stake in particular was in what way Aristotle's account of an incorporeal soul might contribute to understanding of the nature of eternal life.' back

Aristotle and Aquinas, Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on Aristotle's 'On Interpretation', 'There is a twofold operation of the intellect, as the Philosopher says in III De anima [6: 430a 26]. One is the understanding of simple objects, that is, the operation by which the intellect apprehends just the essence of a thing alone; the other is the operation of composing and dividing. There is also a third operation, that of reasoning, by which reason proceeds from what is known to the investigation of things that are unknown. The first of these operations is ordered to the second, for there cannot be composition and division unless things have already been apprehended simply. The second, in turn, is ordered to the third, for clearly we must proceed from some known truth to which the intellect assents in order to have certitude about something not yet known.' back

Asma T. Uddin, When a Swimsuit Is a Security Threat, 'These explanations may seem ludicrous, but Mr. Valls and Mr. Lisnard perfectly summed up the two contradictory public order rationales that European courts all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights use when dealing with Muslim women in religious garb. According to Europe’s highest court of human rights, Muslim women in head scarves and burqas are simultaneously victims, in need of a government savior, and aggressors, spreading extremism merely by appearing Muslim in public.' back

C.J. Chivers, How Many Guns Did the U.S. Lose Track of in Iraq and Afghanistan? Hundreds of Thousands, 'Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States has handed out a vast but persistently uncountable quantity of military firearms to its many battlefield partners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today the Pentagon has only a partial idea of how many weapons it issued, much less where these weapons are. Meanwhile, the effectively bottomless abundance of black-market weapons from American sources is one reason Iraq will not recover from its post-invasion woes anytime soon.' back

Carmen Leong, Malaysia's Bersih movement shows social media can mobilize the masses, 'Second, although social media has been pivotal in propagating dissenting opinions, the influence is mainly emotion-driven. An activist and blogger noticed how the virality of his blogs increases with the intensity of emotions in the writing. “If you want something to go viral, you rant and rant…,“ the blogger said.' back

De Interpretatione - Wikipedia, De Interpretatione - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'De Interpretatione or On Interpretation (Greek: Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας, Peri Hermeneias) is the second text from Aristotle's Organon and is among the earliest surviving philosophical works in the Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit, and formal way. The work is usually known by its Latin title.' back

Eaten Fish, Save Eaten Fish, 'Eaten Fish is a cartoonist named Ali, a 24 year old Iranian artist who has been held in Australia’s immigration detention centre for 3 years now. 18 months ago First Dog on the Moon began mentoring Eaten Fish and they have since kept regular contact. Throughout the three years that Eaten Fish has been incarcerated on Manus Island he has suffered from ever worsening and extreme OCD, panic attacks – that can leave him literally paralysed, and Complex PTSD. Earlier this year Eaten Fish was seriously assaulted. Since this assault he has continued to endure ongoing sexual harassment from guards, staff and some other detainees. This compounds the effects of the assault and his serious mental health conditions.' back

Hiroko Tabuchi, A Cheaper Airbag and Takata's Road to a Dedly Crisis, 'But when Autoliv’s scientists studied the Takata airbag, they found that it relied on a dangerously volatile compound in its inflater, a critical part that causes the airbag to expand. “We just said, ‘No, we can’t do it. We’re not going to use it,’” said Robert Taylor, Autoliv’s head chemist until 2010.' back

James A Secord, Nature's Fancy: Charles Darwin and the Breeding of Pigeons, 'The analogy between artificial and natural selection is central to the Origin. To follow its ramifications Darwin left his accustomed world of natural history, with its characteristic intellectual approaches and institutions and ventures instead into one inhabited by those knowledgeable about the breeding of plants and animals.
"Believing that it is always best to study some special group, I have, after deliberation, taken up domestic pigeons. Darwin's words from the Origin introduce a long section on fancy pigeons, his most completely documents example of the analogy of artificial selection.' Secord, James A. "Nature's Fancy: Charles Darwin and the Breeding of Pigeons." Isis 72, no. 2 (1981): 163-86. back

John Silvester, They destroyed Denis Ryan's police career. Now they admit he was right all along, Ryan, now 84, read from a prepared statement thanking Ashton for being "forthright and frank", adding: "In my day as a detective, I became aware and indeed had my career roughly ended by some of the most senior members of the force who had a distorted sense of loyalty to other institutions. "That failure led to what I have described as an epidemic of clerical child sex abuse in Victoria. That the Catholic Church covered up and engaged in criminal conspiracies brings great shame on that institution. But the failures of policing in pursuit of that distorted sense of loyalty led one victim to become two, to become 10 and awfully and finally for the number of victims to become too large to count.' back

John van Wyhe (editor, 2002), The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, 'The world's largest and most widely used resource on Darwin.' back

Katherine Murphy, Federal police commissioner warns MPs 'words matter' in debate on Islam, 'One Nation’s policy on Islam states that the religion sees itself “as a theocracy, not a democracy.” “Islam does not believe in democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press or freedom or assembly,” the policy says. “It does not separate religion and politics. Many believe that it is solely a religion, but the reality is that it is much more, for it has a political agenda that goes far outside the realm of religion.” “Its religious aspect is fraud; it is rather a totalitarian political system, including legal, economic, social and military components, masquerading as a religion.” ' back

Michael Slezak, Investors controlling 13tn call on G20 leaders to ratify Paris agreement, ' “So investors are asking companies: tell us what the implementation of the Paris agreement means for your business so that we can price that risk and invest accordingly,” said Emma Herd, the chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) – one of the six organisations that represent the 130 investors on the letter.' back

Missy Ryan, Zakaria Zakaria and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, The 500-lb bombs struck their targets in a Syrian village. But who did they kill?, 'According to conflicting Syrian and U.S. accounts, the attack was either a major victory for the United States and its allied ground ­forces or the worst case of civilian casualties by the United States since the war against the Islamic State began. U.S. officials said the strike killed a large group of Islamic State fighters; Syrian activists said the people killed in Tokhar were mostly men, women and children seeking shelter from the war around them.' back

NYT Editorial Board, A Stark Reminder of Guantanamo's Sins, 'Years later, it became clear that Abu Zubaydah wasn’t a top figure in Al Qaeda after all. It also became clear that he had willingly provided insights into terrorist groups when he was interrogated by F.B.I. agents, who treated him cordially. By the time he was turned over to the C.I.A., his knowledge about threats to the United States appears to have been largely exhausted. Yet agency personnel insisted on the need for torture, waterboarding him at least 83 times and subjecting him to other cruelty. Never charged and never tried, Abu Zubaydah has also never been allowed to speak publicly about his ordeal. His American abusers have never been held to account.' back

Sally Weale and David Batty, Sexual harassment of stuents by university staff hidden by non-disclosure agreements, 'Universities’ use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in sexual harassment cases involving staff and students is allowing alleged perpetrators to move to other institutions where they could offend again, according to academics, lawyers and campaigners.' back

Steven Weinberg, The Cosmological Constant Problems [Talk given at Dark Matter 2000, Marina del Rey, CA, February 2000], 'Abstract. The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence does not help with either; anthropic considerations offer a possibility of solving both. In theories with a scalar field that takes random initial values, the anthropic principle may apply to the cosmological constant, but probably to nothing else.' back

The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Wikipedia, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication is a book by Charles Darwin that was first published in January 1868. A large proportion of the book contains detailed information on the domestication of animals and plants but it also contains in Chapter XXVII a description of Darwin's theory of heredity which he called pangenesis.' back

World view - Wikipedia, World view - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A comprehensive world view or worldview is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point of view. A world view can include natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and ethics. The term is a calque of the German word Weltanschauung, composed of Welt ('world') and Anschauung ('view' or 'outlook').The German word is also used in English.' back

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