"natural theology > notes > 2017

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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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Packer, George, The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 0374299633 2005 Amazon review: 'As the death toll mounts in the Iraq War, Americans are agonizing over how the mess started and what to do now. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, joins the debate with his thoughtful book The Assassins' Gate. Packer describes himself as an ambivalent pro-war liberal "who supported a war [in Iraq] by about the same margin that the voting public had supported Al Gore." He never believed the argument that Iraq should be invaded because of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he saw the war as a way to get rid of Saddam Hussein and build democracy in Iraq, in the vein of the U.S. interventions in Haiti and Bosnia. How did such lofty aims get so derailed? How did the U.S. get stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East? Packer traces the roots of the war back to a historic shift in U.S. policy that President Bush made immediately after 9/11. No longer would the U.S. be hamstrung by multilateralism or working through the UN. It would act unilaterally around the world--forging temporary coalitions with other nations where suitable--and defend its status as the sole superpower. But when it came to Iraq, even Bush administration officials were deeply divided. Packer takes readers inside the vicious bureaucratic warfare between the Pentagon and State Department that turned U.S. policy on Iraq into an incoherent mess. We see the consequences in the second half of The Assassins' Gate, which takes the reader to Iraq after the bombs have stopped dropping. Packer writes vividly about how the country deteriorated into chaos, with U.S. authorities in Iraq operating in crisis mode. The book fails to capture much of the debate about the war among Iraqis themselves--instead relying mostly on the views of one prominent Iraqi exile--but it is an insightful contribution to the debate about the decisions--and blunders--behind the war.' --Alex Roslin
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Papers

Chaitin, Gregory J, "Randomness and Mathematical Proof", Scientific American, 232, 5, May 1975, page 47-52. 'Although randomness can be precisely defined and can even be measured, a given number cannot be proved random. This enigma establishes a limit in what is possible in mathematics'. back

Links

Alex Emmons, Trump Wants NSA Program Reauthorized but Won't Tell Many Americans It Spies On, 'But Goitein noted that the NSA already uses computer IP addresses to approximate who is a U.S. citizen for other purposes, so it would be easy for them to estimate how many Americans’ communications they collect. “The NSA has determined that the IP address is an accurate enough indicator of a persons status … to use it to filter out the wholly domestic communications that the NSA is prohibited from acquiring,” she testified. “If it’s accurate enough to enable the NSA to comply with that constitutional obligation, then it’s certainly accurate enough for the estimate.” ' back

David Caldicott, Weekly Dose: while the media panic about ie, we should worry about carfentanil, 'Developed in the mid-1970s as a large animal sedative (Wildnil), carfentanil is 10,000 times more potent than morphine. A lethal dose in humans is only 20 micrograms. That is the weight of ten snowflakes, or a single grain of pollen.' back

David Leonhardt, A Public-Health Crisis That We Can Fix, 'Modern society is impossible to imagine without the automobile, yet it’s also one of the biggest destroyers of life. In the United States, crashes claim 1,000 lives every nine days. Last year, 40,000 Americans died, about as many as from breast cancer and more than twice as many as from murder.' back

Dyani Lewis, Science-based environmental targets could become business as usual, 'A science-based target is one that limits a business’s global share of greenhouse gas emissions to keep warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels. This threshold has been widely adopted in international climate policy, including the Paris climate agreement, which Australia ratified in November last year. Setting science-based targets “gives a lot of credibility to a [company’s] climate strategy,” says Hoen. Unlike previous programs such as the Carbon Disclosure Project, the SBT initiative directly ties corporate emissions goals to the Paris Agreement’s 2C target.' back

Gerald S. Dickinson, The biggest problem for Trump’s border wall isn’t money. It’s getting the land., 'As Eloisa Tamez’s case demonstrated, that’s a lot of ammunition for hundreds of landowners. If the rollout of Trump’s hastily drafted travel ban is any indicator, we should expect sloppy execution of statutory requirements and takings procedures if the administration attempts to condemn border land.' back

Ian Johnson, Leading climatologist urges mass protest against Trump administration amid global warming denial, 'A leading climatologist has warned US democracy is under attack from the “uninhibited use of lies, false statements and bad science”, as he urged people to take part in public demonstrations in support of science. In an article for the website Wired, Dr Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute in California, said leading members of Trump administration rejected the “undeniable reality of climate change”, evolution, the science about vaccines, and the need to study gun violence.' back

Lindy Edwards, Forget Tony Abbott: Malcolm Turnbull facing a once-in-a-century upheaval to politics, 'We are now witnessing a new political realignment. For most of the last 100 years, 20 per cent of the world's population has monopolised 80 per cent of the world's wealth. New technologies are empowering people from developing countries to start seeking a greater share of the world's bounty.' back

Mark Atwood Lawrence, America's Case of 'Tonkin Gulfitis', 'Washington sought to bolster its position in an increasingly hostile world by forming or, more often, tightening its partnerships with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa and other regional powers that could be counted on to serve its interests in return for American political support and military supplies. This approach made good sense to leaders increasingly attuned to the limits of American power, and in 1969 the Nixon administration codified its reliance on reliable regimes as the “Nixon Doctrine.” The problem was that America’s partners were usually right-wing, authoritarian regimes that used American aid to maintain their power and coerce their own populations.' back

Ruy Teixeira, Things look bleak for liberals now. But they'll beat Trump in the end, 'And he can’t hold back the one true inevitability in demographic change: the replacement of older generations by newer ones. Underappreciated in November’s election was the continuing leftward lean of young voters, once again supporting the Democratic candidate by around 20 points — and with younger millennials, including both college-educated and noncollege whites, even more pro-Democratic than older ones. That is huge. And don’t expect these voters to shift right as they age. Political science research shows that early voting patterns tend to stick.' back

Ryan Devereaux, Homeland Security sees anger at Trump as a driver of "domestic terrorist violence", ' “The issue of what is counted as political violence and what isn’t, this is a longstanding problem,” German, the former FBI agent, said. “Law enforcement agencies have long tended to view vandalism, civil disobedience, or even just protest against government institutions as more serious than actual violence against marginalized populations. That’s why crimes against government property are ‘terrorism’ but crimes against minorities are ‘hate crimes’ at best and ignored at worst.” ' back

Thomas L Friedman, Peanut Butter on the Trump Team's Chin, 'Government moves “at the speed of trust,” observes Stephen M. R. Covey in his book “The Speed of Trust.” “There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world — one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love. … That one thing is trust.” ' back

Yachai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts and Ethan Zuckerman, Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda, 'Our . . . study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world. This pro-Trump media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton.' back

vol VII: Notes

2017

Notes

Sunday 5 March 2017

Monday 6 March 2017

Tuesday 7 March 2017

Wednesday 8 March 2017

Thursday 9 March

Friday 10 March 2017

Saturday 11 March 2017

Further reading

Books

Papers

Links