vol VII: Notes
2017
Notes
Sunday 19 February 2017 - Saturday 25 February 2017
[Notebook: DB 80: Cosmic plumbing]
Sunday 19 February 2017
[page 310]
Monday 20 February 2017
Pleasantly depressed, thinking of the impossibility of getting people to act reasonably, which requires deferred gratification. How do we implement prudence and providence in the face of popularism? [The power of populism suggests a failure in education to identify the complexity of the issues facing us.]
Tuesday 21 February 2017
Writing is not easy. The way ahead in times of low inspiration is to press ahead
[page 311]
nevertheless, at least generating material for future review which may or may not contribute to the final result, an imaginative hypothesis available for further testing.
The Rainbow Serpent is one of the many manifestation of [what I call] God. Rainbow Serpent - Wikipedia
Why am I not an activist? Because I am not convinced. I am convinced by the bald claim that the Universe is divine. Where my difficulty lies is in finding a transformation that leads from the classical outside God to the new inside God. This is slowly growing, but I am pleased that I am now going to spend another year on the book to complete the picture and tighten it up. Little problems. Do we see Bose statistics in the macroscopic world? There is no formal distinction between the photons in a Bose state, they are indistinguishable. The more general notion of a Bose state is a symmetry, a set of indistinguishable observables - every photon in a laser beam is in an identical state. Every electron in the Universe is in a different state,
Wednesday 22 February 2017
Thursday 23 February
All of this writing has been designed to give myself hope and courage in a world which has some bad defects. I grew up under the shadow of mutual assured destruction and things have not improved much since then, After ab era of democratization , much of which has failed, the would-be
[page 312]
dictators are gaining in power. It is clear that there is some form of salvation in the Universe otherwise it could not have evolved from a gas of photons to its present magnificent complexity. The question is to identify the creative [force]. The established answer postulates a creator in charge of everything modelled as the absolute ideal of totalitarian monarchy, It is no accident that this is the form of government usually established by military force which is destructive rather than creative. This answer to the problem is self contradictory and leads to much pain and repression in populations subject to dictatorship. Mutual assured destruction - Wikipedia
When we observe the physical world in detail we discover that it is predominantly democratic. Almost everything in physics is a numbers game with a series of boundaries which are called laws of nature or (more recently) symmetries. Outcomes within a symmetry, ie breaking symmetries, are unpredictable precisely because they arrise from a symmetry whose members have equal power. We are thus constrained to discussing symmetry breaking in probabilistic terms, and some symmetries can have uncountable numbers of elements, so the probability of any one is correspondingly small. Salvation is no longer just for the strong man, it comes from the attempts of large numbers of people using communication networks to establish consistent social structures, that is structures that accept human rights just as a higher layer must always curate the lower lower layer on which it depends, so I am slowly building and always cleaning the house.
The dream of capital is the work free heaven which yields unlimited benefits for no reason except interest bearing wealth, managed by wealth
[page 313]
managers. This is a tendency that operates against democracy.
Symmetry breaking in quantum mechanics is encapsulated in the eigenvalue equation and the Born rule.: we only see the eigenvalues of the observe with a distribution given by Born, This is the fundamental mechanism of the world. Eigenvalues and eigenvectors - Wikipedia, Born rule - Wikipedia
Lobbying: repetition has power, so we see most of the high probability lines in the atomic spectrum.
Friday 24 February 2017
Beginning to feel that I can take the natural theology project seriously and stop worrying about money, give up work and just write the book full-time on pension and savings. I have been flying blind for a long time and have sometimes felt that I have a landing place in sight but it has seemed unsatisfactory. Now advancing age is telling me that I must make a forced landing and produce the best version of the story that I can. So that is becoming this year's project.
So maybe it is time to have another look at an essay for Theological Studies. Shorter form explanation [including technical detail by reference only] and logical development.
Saturday 25 February 2017
Talar 'Synthesis of All Heresies' page 494 Bernard Gaudeau: 'Indeed the facts demonstrate that the doctrine of Modernism leads
[page 314]
logically and fatally not only to the destruction of the element specific to Catholicism as opposed to Protestantism . . . not only to the destruction of what may be call the generic element of Christianity itself (real divinity of Jesus Christ, biblical inspiration, miracle and other supernatural realities admitted by primitive and orthodox Protestantism) but the facts demonstrate that the doctrine of Modernism leads logically and fatally to the destruction in humanity of the very conception of a real God distinct from the world, personal and transcendent, that is the very foundation of all religious belief, every religious idea, all religious meaning, of all religions. Talar
Legolike boilerplating of the overal thesis: there are about 100 concepts (blocks, subroutines, elements of a library) that I have cooked up to paint this picture. Ideally these would be the chapter divisions in the book length version. The task is to make all the subroutines orthogonal so that they do not interfere with one another except through specified transformations that serve to encode and decode messages between the orthogonal sources, so breaking the orthogonality by inducing overlap between previously orthogonal states described by state functions, ie Turing machines.
Talar page 502: 'The secret organization that grew up under the facade of Sodalium Planum carried out its campaign chiefly through the tactic of denunciation of an individual or organization to ecclesiastical authorities.'
page 503: '. . . Rome continued its surveillance of Lagrange, his disciples and the Ecole Biblique throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. A regime of strict censorship prevailed, preventing several important Biblical studies from seeing publication.'
[page 315]
Jean Calvert: 'If you ever deal with the modernist crisis, do not forget to tell how much we suffered.' It struck me down, condemned by 4 of the 24 theses - would be good to find a document about this. The 24 Theses of Pope Pius X
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Copyright:
You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.
Further reading
Books
Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)
Christie, Agatha, Murder on the Links, Literary Express 1998 Reviewer:
Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
'The second Hercule Poirot mystery, The Murder on the Links, by Agatha Christie is a good example of the method of its detective and his little grey cells. The cast of charaters is small and there are some wonderfully complex twists but the main pleasure to be derived from this book is setting up Poirot in counterpoint to a more "modern" detective who uses less of a psychological approach and more of the blood-hound method examing the minutiae of the scene and following the scent. Hercule Poirot would definately not be a avid "CSI" watcher. The story also contains many romantic elements, another popular genre used by the author, that generally work better here than in other of her books. A good mystery, if not a Christie classic.' Amazon spotlight review by Ricky Hunter, New York.
Amazon
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Collingham, Liz, Curry: A Take of Cooks and Conquerors, Oxford University Press 2006 Editorial review from Booklist: 'From Booklist
Like a fragrant biryani studded with bits of sweet and savory relishes, every page of this history of Indian cuisine offers some revelation about the origins of Indian food and its spread to the West. Historian Collingham traces how successive invasions of the subcontinent contributed new ingredients and novel cooking techniques that transformed indigenous cooking into what we now recognize as classic Indian cuisine. Early invasions from the northwest brought rice, and Persian pilau became Hindustani biryani. Portuguese sailors imported pork and Brazilian chili peppers to create vindaloo. Collingham describes how the regal courts of the various Indian states elaborated on all these foodstuffs to produce what may have been the most sumptuous banquets the world has ever known. Most surprising of all, Collingham's ruminations address the role of tea in India. Although it is a commonplace that today's India is the world's leading producer and consumer of tea, Indians drank very little tea until the British introduced it scarcely a century ago. Recipes, both contemporary and antique, supplement the text.' Mark Knoblauch
Amazon
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight : A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding'
Amazon
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Papers
| Talar, Charles J. T., ""The Synthesis of All Heresies" - 100 Years On", Thelogical Studies, 68, 3, Se[tember 2007, page 491 - 514. Abstact: 'The condemnation of Roman Catholic Modernism in 1907 was a traumatic event—in the real sense that it relfected the traumatic impact of intellectual and poltical mdernity on the Church, and in that it induced a climate of represeive reaction that safected Catholic scholarship for decades thereafter. The issues raised by the Modernists form an integral part of the trajectory of 20th century theology.'. back |
Links
| Adam Lusher, The man who brought down Nixon says Trump is even 'more treacherous'., 'Bernstein, whose reporting with Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee helped exposed the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, has told his 26,000 twitter followers: “The most dangerous ‘enemy of the people’ is presidential lying – always. Attacks on the press by Donald Trump [are] more treacherous than Nixon’s.” ' back |
| Alexy Kovalev, A message to my doomed colleagues in America, 'This man owns you. He understands perfectly well that he is the news. You can’t ignore him. You’re always playing by his rules — which he can change at any time without any notice. You can’t — in Putin’s case — campaign to vote him out of office. Your readership is dwindling because ad budgets are shrinking — while his ratings are soaring, and if you want to keep your publication afloat, you’ll have to report on everything that man says as soon as he says it, without any analysis or fact-checking, because 1) his fans will not care if he lies to their faces; 2) while you’re busy picking his lies apart, he’ll spit out another mountain of bullshit and you’ll be buried under it.' back |
| Born rule - Wikipedia, Born rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Born rule (also called the Born law, Born's rule, or Born's law) is a law of quantum mechanics which gives the probability that a measurement on a quantum system will yield a given result. It is named after its originator, the physicist Max Born. The Born rule is one of the key principles of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. There have been many attempts to derive the Born rule from the other assumptions of quantum mechanics, with inconclusive results. . . . The Born rule states that if an observable corresponding to a Hermitian operator A with discrete spectrum is measured in a system with normalized wave function (see bra-ket notation), then
the measured result will be one of the eigenvalues λ of A, and
the probability of measuring a given eigenvalue λi will equal <ψ|Pi|ψ> where Pi is the projection onto the eigenspace of A corresponding to λi'. back |
| Charles M. Blow, Harry and Sydney: Soul Brothers, 'Please allow me to divert my gaze for one day away from our national political darkness and toward two national rays of light.
Monday is Sidney Poitier’s 90th birthday. His best friend of 70 years, Harry Belafonte, turns 90 on March 1.
This is an ode to and appreciation of the friendship — one of the most remarkable and resilient of our time — between two Hollywood royals.' back |
| Damien Cahill ad Sharon Beder, Neo-liberal think tanks and neo-liberal restructuring , 'Abstract
In 1990, neo-liberal think tanks the Institute of Public Affairs and the Tasman Institute collaborated with 13 employer associations to form ‘Project Victoria’ – a venture which outlined a neo-liberal agenda for the incoming Victorian (Coalition) Government. This article analyses Project Victoria and the privatisation of Victoria’s electricity industry as a case study of the impact of neo-liberal think tanks. The analysis of Project Victoria highlights three main aspects of the impact of neo-liberal think tanks in contemporary Australia. First, neo-liberal think tanks are inextricably bound to the interests of business. Second, neo-liberal think tanks provide a broad framework within which sympathetic governments can convert the sectional interests of business and elites into policy and rhetoric. Third, the think tanks play an important role as shock troops for neo-liberalism.' back |
| David Caldicott, Yes, we can do on-the-spot drug testing quiuckly and safely, 'The Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton’s recent claim that it’s not practical to conduct on-the-spot drug tests “safely and quickly” is, at best, misinformed. These tests have been taking place successfully in Europe for more than a decade.' back |
| Eigenvalues and eigenvectors - Wikipedia, Eigenvalues and eigenvectors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'An eigenvector of a square matrix A is a non-zero vector vthat, when the matrix multiplies yields a constant multiple of v, the latter multiplier being commonly denoted by λ. That is: Av = λv' back |
| Heinz Schandl and Fridolin Kraussman, The 20th century saw a 23-fold increase in natural resources used for building, 'The volume of natural resources used in buildings and transport infrastructure increased 23-fold between 1900 and 2010, according to our research. Globally, there are now 800 billion tonnes of natural resource “stock” tied up in these constructions, two-thirds of it in industrialised nations alone.' back |
| The Society of the Spectacle - Wikipedia, The Society of the Spectacle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Society of the Spectacle (French: La société du spectacle) is a 1967 work of philosophy and Marxist critical theory by Guy Debord, in which he develops and presents the concept of the Spectacle. The book is considered an important text for the Situationist movement. Debord published a follow-up book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in 1988/ back |
| John Schwartz, Why do so many Americans fear Muslims? Decades of denial about America's role in the world, 'Meanwhile, in private, the non-crazy members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment aren’t confused at all. They understand quite well that Islamist terrorism is almost wholly blowback from the foreign policy they’ve designed. . . . The CIA had the same perspective. Michael Scheuer, who for several years ran the section of the Agency that tracked bin Laden, wrote in 2004 that “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” ' back |
| Kevin Sieff, The world's deadliest U.N. mission, 'Here in the vast, lawless desert of northwest Africa, their convoys are being torn apart by improvised explosive devices and their compounds blasted by 1,000-pound car bombs. It is a crisis that looks more like the U.S. ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than the cease-fires traditionally monitored by U.N. missions.
In the past four years, 118 peacekeepers have been killed — making the U.N. mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, the deadliest ever. back |
| Maureen Dowd, Trapped in Trump's Brain, 'So let’s visualize those phrenology skulls mapping distinct faculties in the brain, the ones that spur chastity, sympathy, philanthropy, philoprogenitiveness, mirthfulness, sincerity, grace, morality, generosity, kindness, benevolence.
Then think of the president’s skull, which is stuffed with other humours: insecurity, insincerity, victimhood, paranoia, mockery, self-delusion, suspicion, calculation, illogic, vindictiveness, risk, bullying, alimentiveness, approbativeness, vitativeness. Gall, divided into three parts.' back |
| Mutual assured destruction - Wikipedia, Mutual assured destruction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Mutual assured destruction or mutually assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender (see pre-emptive nuclear strike and second strike).[1] It is based on the theory of deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.' back |
| Nic Haslam, Trump and the cycle of dehumanisation, 'The implications of this work are disturbing. Political rhetoric such as Donald Trump’s resonates with people who see some groups as not only socially marginal but also as marginally human. Those dehumanising perceptions underpin support for hostile and exclusionary policies.
The targets of those policies, seeing that their humanity is neither recognised nor respected, react with animosity of their own and pull away from the social contract. Hostility is met with polarised hostility, and the sense of mutual distrust and disdain are deepened. This is a sobering and pessimistic conclusion, but one that this important piece of research forces on us.' back |
| Paul Barratt and Sue Wareham, Australia's unprecedented decision to snub nuclear talks is irresponsible, 'Australia's boycott of the disarmament talks, a decision that was made public just last week, will have grave implications, quite apart from the unconscionable act of snubbing the most promising disarmament initiative in decades. . . . The US, which has been the strongest opponent of the ban treaty process, with Australia as our ally's most active and vocal supporter, has conceded behind closed doors that a ban treaty will have exactly its intended purpose.' back |
| Rainbow Serpent - Wikipedia, Rainbow Serpent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake is a common deity, often a creator god, in the mythology and a common motif in the art of Aboriginal Australia.[2] It is named for the obvious identification between the shape of a rainbow and the shape of a snake.' back |
| Robert Mickens, Letter from Tome: How Will Francis Deal With Trump, 'It is the U.S. president who should be concerned. Neither the pope nor his aides would allow Trump to get away with the type of shenanigans that helped propel him to the White House.
In fact, Pope Francis and the Holy See may be the last and most reliable check on the politics of fear and division that are being promoted by the U.S. president and other populist leaders around the globe.' back |
| Robert Zaretsky, Trump and the 'Society of the Spectacle', 'Nearly 50 years ago, Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle” reached bookshelves in France. It was a thin book in a plain white cover, with an obscure publisher and an author who shunned interviews, but its impact was immediate and far-reaching, delivering a social critique that helped shape France’s student protests and disruptions of 1968.' back |
| Ross Gittins, Australia positiond to be renewable energysuperpower, 'The old joke says the questions in economics exams don't change from year to year, but the answers do. Welcome to the economics of energy and climate change, which has changed a lot without many people noticing - including Malcolm Turnbull and his climate-change denying mates.
They've missed that the economics has shifted decisively in favour of renewable energy, as Professor Ross Garnaut, of the University of Melbourne, pointed out at an energy summit in Adelaide last October.' back |
| Simon Romero, Nearly in Ruins: The Church Where Sages Dreamed of a Modern Brazil, 'Indeed, few Brazilians know much about positivism, the secular religion that was spread in Brazil in the second half of the 19th century by followers of the French philosopher Auguste Comte, except, perhaps, that two of his tenets — order and progress — remain emblazoned on the Brazilian flag.' back |
| Steven Simon and Daniel Benjmin, The Islamic Huckster inthe White Huse, 'What has been learned during this long effort from law enforcement, intelligence community analyses and an abundance of scholarship on jihadists is that religious doctrine is not their sole or even primary driver. The issues that Mr. Gorka so defiantly “jettisons” actually do play a role.
Declaring a religious war now would only validate the jihadist narrative and force fence-sitters to procure AK-47s. Having elevated a huckster weak on jihadist history and doctrine and unaware of what his own government has learned over decades, the Trump administration now risks exacerbating the very security challenges it hopes to surmount.' back |
| Thomas P. Campbell, Why Art Matters to America, 'All too often, art is seen as a “soft” subject, the first thing to be cut, whether by local school boards or the federal government, when money is tight. But looked at purely in dollars, it is a false saving. The N.E.A.’s budget is comparatively minuscule — $148 million last year, or 0.004 percent of annual federal discretionary expenditures — while the arts sector it supports employs millions of Americans and generates billions each year in revenue and tax dollars.' back |
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