Acemoglu, Daron, and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Crown Business 2012 "Some time ago a little-known Scottish philosopher wrote a book on what makes nations succeed and what makes them fail. The Wealth of Nations is still being read today. With the same perspicacity and with the same broad historical perspective, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have retackled this same question for our own times. Two centuries from now our great-great- . . . -great grandchildren will be, similarly, reading Why Nations Fail." —George Akerlof, Nobel laureate in economics, 2001  
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Cassirer, Ernst, Kant's Life and Thought, Yale University Press 1971 Jacket: 'Ernst Cassirer's own philosophical system and approach to the history of ideas developed under the continuous influence of Kant. Cassier looked on Kant's teachings as an expression of the permanent tasks of philosophy, and it was as an heir to Kant's work that he produced this intellectual biography which is at the same time as a survey of Kant's writing.' Note: 'Kants Leben und Lehre was first published in 1918, by Bruno Cassirer in Berlin, as a supplementary volume to the edition of Kant's works of which Ernst Cassirer was both general editor and also sole or coeditor of four individual volumes.' p xxii 
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Cercignani, Carlo, Ludwig Boltzmann: The Man Who Trusted Atoms, Oxford University Press, USA 2006 'Cercignani provides a stimulating biography of a great scientist. Boltzmann's greatness is difficult to state, but the fact that the author is still actively engaged in research into some of the finer, as yet unresolved issues provoked by Boltzmann's work is a measure of just how far ahead of his time Boltzmann was. It is also tragic to read of Boltzmann's persecution by his contemporaries, the energeticists, who regarded atoms as a convenient hypothesis, but not as having a definite existence. Boltzmann felt that atoms were real and this motivated much of his research. How Boltzmann would have laughed if he could have seen present-day scanning tunnelling microscopy images, which resolve the atomic structure at surfaces! If only all scientists would learn from Boltzmann's life story that it is bad for science to persecute someone whose views you do not share but cannot disprove. One surprising fact I learned from this book was how research into thermodynamics and statistical mechanics led to the beginnings of quantum theory (such as Planck's distribution law, and Einstein's theory of specific heat). Lecture notes by Boltzmann also seem to have influenced Einstein's construction of special relativity. Cercignani's familiarity with Boltzmann's work at the research level will probably set this above other biographies of Boltzmann for a very long time to come.' Dr David J Bottomley  
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Deighton, Len, Spy Sinker, HarperCollins 1990 'The third novel in Deighton's "Hook, Line and Sinker" trilogy. Spanning a ten year period (1977-87), Deighton solves the mystery of Fiona's defection - was she a Soviet spy or wasn't she? He also retells some of the events from the "Game, Set and Match", trilogy from Fiona's point of view.' 
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Feynman, Richard P, and Robert B Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. . . . In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands 
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Feynman, Richard, QED: The Strange Story of Light and Matter, Princeton UP 1988 Jacket: 'Quantum electrodynamics - or QED for short - is the 'strange theory' that explains how light and electrons interact. Thanks to Richard Feynmann and his colleagues, it is also one of the rare parts of physics that is known for sure, a theory that has stood the test of time. . . . In this beautifully lucid set of lectures he provides a definitive introduction to QED.' 
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Garret, Don (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Cambridge University Press 1995 Jacket: 'Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza has been one of the most inspiring and influential philosophers of the modern era, yet also one of the most difficult and most frequently misunderstood. Spinoza sought to unify mind and body, science and religion, and to derive an ethics of reason, virtue and freedom "in geometrical order" from a monistic metaphysics. Of all the philosophical systems of the seventeenth century, it is his that speaks most deeply to the twentieth century. The essays in this volume give a clear and systematic exegesis of Spinoza's thought informed by the most recent scholarship. They cover his metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, psychology, ethics, political theory, theology, and scriptural interpretation, as well as his life and influence on later thinkers.' 
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Hofstadter, Douglas R, Goedel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Basic/Harvester 1979 An illustrated essay on the philosophy of mathematics. Formal systems, recursion, self reference and meaning explored with a dazzling array of examples in music, dialogue, text and graphics. 
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Knox, Ronald, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1951 Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion, with Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries. By R. A. Knox. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1950. viii, 622 pages. $6.00.
'ļTHE EARLY FRIENDS - so we like to think - were mystics. The term has pleasing connotations : it suggests serenity, purity, gentleness, a seraphic manner and a saintly quality of life. Books have been written to show that George Fox was a spiritual brother of the Pseudo- Dionysius, Eckhart, Boehme, and William Law.
The immediate experience of God was, to be sure, the central fact of his life, but for the rest it has always seemed to me that the founder of Quakerism would be singularly ill at ease in that select company of spiritual aristocrats. Along comes Monsignor Ronald A. Knox who, writing with wit, grace, and wide-ranging though curiously selective scholarship, puts him in a different company, lumps him with Montanus and John of Ley den, with the fanatical "French Prophets" and the pathological convulsionaries of Saint-Médard, with John Wesley and the rag, tag, and bobtail of modern revivalists. Early Quakerism, he says, bore all the marks of an enthusiastic movement. It would not have surprised George Fox to be called an enthusiast, for until a century ago the term enthusiasm meant nothing more or less than inspiration or possession by a divine or supernatural power, and 48 Bulletin of Friends Historical Association this is precisely what Fox claimed. But the term, before denatured, also carried derogatory overtones: it connoted and unseemly behavior, fanaticism and a suspicion goings-on ; in a word, it was not in good taste. Is Monsignor goings-on ; in a word, it was not in good taste. Is Monsignor fair and accurate in describing Fox and the early Friends as enthusiasts?
Fair he is not. Despite his protestation that he is not concerned to expose or discredit enthusiasm, his book is a polemic, now subtle, now obvious, from beginning to end. Monsignor Knox misses no chance to make his enthusiasts look ridiculous, and although up to a point I relished his donnish wit, I finally came to agree with in the London Friend, who observed, in the words of Dr Johnson, that "this merriment of parsons is mighty offensive." Moreover, he goes out of his way to try to pin the charge of scandalous upon his subjects (I was going to say victims) until he finally gives away the game, when he expresses himself as willing to accord de Guyon the benefit of the doubt, for "scandals are not to be praeter necessitatem." I came away from the book with the feeling Knox simply has no sympathy for "the passion for holiness" (to quote)the reviewer in the Friend again) that animated many of the enthusiasts and the suspicion that, again despite his prefatory disclaimer, objection to them is that they were not good Catholics.
But if one can overlook the one-sidedness of the interpretation, it is hard to deny that Knox has placed the early Quakers in the right context and that, making the necessary allowances, his book is extremely useful both for its analysis of the nature of enthusiasm and for its encyclopedic treatment of the phenomenon in its historical course.
The enthusiast, he writes:
. . . expects more evident results from the grace of God than we others. He sees what effects religion can have, does sometimes have, in transforming a man's whole life and outlook; these exceptional cases (so we are content to think them) are for him the average standard of religious achievement. ... He has before his eyes a picture of the early Church, visibly penetrated with supernatural influences; and nothing less will serve him for a model.
Is not this a fairly accurate statement of the illuminism, the per-fectionism, the vision of "primitive Christianity revived" so characteristic of the early Friends? As he lays on further strokes, the picture becomes even more recognizable: insistence upon rigorous simplicity of life, rejection of the sacraments, cultivation of inward experience, depreciation of natural reason, appeal from the laws of worldly to the higher law of God - are not these of the essence primitive Quakerism? Even the less important symptoms which which he mentions - ecstatic utterance, convulsive movement, bizarre behavior, hints of the Second Coming - can be found in the first decade of Quakerism.
These hallmarks of enthusiasm were apparently present in the errant church at Corinth to which Paul addressed two cautionary epistles. (With characteristically witty turn of phrase Knox calls this chapter on the birth of Christian enthusiasm "The Corinthians; Letter to St. Paul".) They can be found in the early heresties known as Montanism and Donatism. They were uniquitous in what he calls the "underworld of the Middle Ages," emerging most distinctly in the Albigensian movement. They appear at the dawn of the Reformation as Anabaptism. They show up in curiously different combinations in Jansenism and Quietism. They pass from Moravianism into Methodism and they are constantly cropping up in revivalist sects in the United States to this day.
It is in this historical context that he treats George Fox and his immediate followers. His discussion of promitive Quakerism is not particularly perceptive: most of his information about Fox appears to have come not from the Journal but from a biography published in 1884; he states that the Ranters "left no literature (but cf Russell Schofield's article on "Some Ranter Leaders and Their Opinions in the last number of this Bulletin) ; he is not sure how many Friends were exeuted in Massachusetts Bay, although this question has been settled for years; he seems to dismiss the Quaker experience of the Inward Light as nothing more than a "hunch."
In spite of its weaknesses, however, Enthusiasm is a good book for Friends to read, along with Geoffrey Nuttall's Studies in Christian Enthusiasm Enthusiasm, which focuses with more sympathy and deeper scholarship upon early Quaker experience. For it will give us a new and, I venture to believe a revealing perspective upon those early Friends whom we love to invoke, but for whom "mystic" does not seem white an accurate descriptive label. F. B. T.
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, and (edited by Frederick E Crowe and Robert M Doran, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas Aquinas, Jacket: "Grace and Freedom represents Lonergan's entry into subject matter that would occupy him throughout his lifetime. At the same time it is a manifestation of the thinking that has made him one of the world's foremost Thomist scholars. . . . Lonergan's thesis is that from the sixteenth century onwards, commentators on Thomas Aquinas lacked historical consciousness, raised questions that Thomas had never considered, and obfuscated the issues. Lonergan's achievement consists in having retrieved the actual postion by adopting a historical approach that has reconstructed [Thomas's] intellectual development on grace. . . . What Lonergan also adds is a unique diagnosis of the mistakes made by the modern scholastic authors in their treatment of grace. Throughout this work, Lonergan discovers in Thomas a mind in constant development, displaying radical shifts on fundamental questions. . . . ' 
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Miles, Jack, God: A Biography, Vintage Books 1996 Jacket: 'Jack Miles's remarkable work examines the hero of the Old Testament . . . from his first appearance as Creator to his last as Ancient of Days. . . . We see God torn by conflicting urges. To his own sorrow, he is by turns destructive and creative, vain and modest, subtle and naive, ruthless and tender, lawful and lawless, powerful yet powerless, omniscient and blind.' 
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Nielsen, Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2000 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002. 
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Pais, Abraham, 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford UP 1982 Jacket: In this . . . major work Abraham Pais, himself an eminent physicist who worked alongside Einstein in the post-war years, traces the development of Einstein's entire ouvre. . . . Running through the book is a completely non-scientific biography . . . including many letters which appear in English for the first time, as well as other information not published before.' 
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Cordero, Otto X, et al, "Ecological Populations of Bacteria Act as Socially Cohesive Units of Antibiotic Production and Resistance", Science, 337, 6099, 7 September 2012, page 1228-1231. Abstract: 'ABSTRACT In animals and plants, social structure can reduce conflict within populations and bias aggression toward competing populations; however, for bacteria in the wild it remains unknown whether such population-level organization exists. Here, we show that environmental bacteria are organized into socially cohesive units in which antagonism occurs between rather than within ecologically defined populations. By screening approximately 35,000 possible mutual interactions among Vibrionaceae isolates from the ocean, we show that genotypic clusters known to have cohesive habitat association also act as units in terms of antibiotic production and resistance. Genetic analyses show that within populations, broad-range antibiotics are produced by few genotypes, whereas all others are resistant, suggesting cooperation between conspecifics. Natural antibiotics may thus mediate competition between populations rather than solely increase the success of individuals'. back

Lylor, Therese, Johanna Rendle-Short, "'That's so Gay': A contemporary Use of Gay in Austrlian English", Australian Journal of Linguistics, 27, 2, October 2007, page 147-173. 'Recently a different usage of the word gay has appeared in Australian English. In addition to the earlier meanings of gay being 'happy', 'carefree' and 'frivolous' (1st meaning), and to a later meaning of gay being synonymous with 'homosexual' (2nd meaning), it appears that gay is now being understood by young people to mean 'stupid', 'lame', or 'boring, as in 'That shirt is so gay,' or 'How gay is that?' (3rd meaning).'. back

Christ of Saint John of the Cross - Wikipedia, Christ of Saint John of the Cross - Wikipedia, the free encyclopeida, ' Christ of Saint John of the Cross is a painting by Salvador Dalí made in 1951. It depicts Jesus Christ on the cross in a darkened sky floating over a body of water complete with a boat and fishermen. Although it is a depiction of the crucifixion, it is devoid of nails, blood, and a crown of thorns, because, according to Dalí, he was convinced by a dream that these features would mar his depiction of Christ. Also in a dream, the importance of depicting Christ in the extreme angle evident in the painting was revealed to him. ' back

Claude Shannon, Communication in the Presence of Noise, 'A method is developed for representing any communication system geometrically. Messages and the corresponding signals are points in two “function spaces,” and the modulation process is a mapping of one space into the other. Using this representation, a number of results in communication theory are deduced concerning expansion and compression of bandwidth and the threshold effect. Formulas are found for the maximum rate of transmission of binary digits over a system when the signal is perturbed by various types of noise. Some of the properties of “ideal” systems which transmit at this maximum rate are discussed. The equivalent number of binary digits per second for certain information sources is calculated.' back

Evan Osnos, Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Fcebook Before it Breaks Democracy, ' In some sense, the “Mark Zuckerberg production”—as he called Facebook in its early years—has only just begun. Zuckerberg is not yet thirty-five, and the ambition with which he built his empire could well be directed toward shoring up his company, his country, and his name. The question is not whether Zuckerberg has the power to fix Facebook but whether he has the will; whether he will kick people out of his office—with the gusto that he once mustered for the pivot to mobile—if they don’t bring him ideas for preventing violence in Myanmar, or protecting privacy, or mitigating the toxicity of social media. He succeeded, long ago, in making Facebook great. The challenge before him now is to make it good.' back

Fred Hiatt, China has silenced American academics for years. Now they are pushing back, ' Jerome Cohen and Kevin Carrico, China scholars at New York University and Australia’s Macquarie University, respectively, find this unacceptable. They drafted the Xinjiang Initiative, asking for a pledge to raise awareness of these events in every public forum. More than 100 China scholars signed on. “Hundreds of thousands of people of Uyghur and Kazakh descent are being held indefinitely in extra-judicial internment camps in Xinjiang today,” the joint statement explains. “Prisoners are detained due to their ethnicity or Muslim faith, tearing apart families, destroying lives, and threatening culture. These are horrific developments that should have no place in the twenty-first century.' back

Gamma function - Wikipedia, Gamma function - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, the gamma function (represented by the capital Greek letter Γ) is an extension of the factorial function, with its argument shifted down by 1, to real and complex numbers. That is, if n is a posititve integer, Γ(n) = (n - 1)!. . . . The gamma function is a component in various probability-distribution functions, and as such it is applicable in the fields of probability and statistics, as well as combinatorics.. back

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind, ' Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. ' back

John of the Cross - Wikipedia, John of the Cross - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' John of the Cross (Spanish: San Juan de la Cruz; 1542– 14 December 1591) was a major figure of the Counter-Reformation, a Spanish mystic, a Roman Catholic saint, a Carmelite friar and a priest, who was born at Fontiveros, Old Castile. John of the Cross is known for his writings. Both his poetry and his studies on the growth of the soul are considered the summit of mystical Spanish literature and one of the peaks of all Spanish literature. He was canonized as a saint in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII. He is one of the thirty-six Doctors of the Church. ' back

Josh Gabbatiss, Mysterious new type of cell could help reveal what makes human brain special, ' “We really don’t understand what makes the human brain special,” said Dr Lein. “Studying the differences at the level of cells and circuits is a good place to start, and now we have new tools to do just that.” The team found that rosehip neurons turn on a unique set of genes in the human brain – genes that have so far not been found in mouse brains.' back

Julianne Schultz, Friday essay: what do we want to be when we grow up, ' It took a while, but again the legacy of researchers – anthropologists, theologians, linguists, archeologists, historians and the increasingly important work of Indigenous scholars – has meant that the once blank slate of Australian history is now being filled with human beings doing the things that human beings do – making meaning, families, societies, tied to the land and climate. I trust that before too long this important legacy will be a central part of our more grown up conversation.' back

Julianne Schultz, What do we want to be when we grow up?, back

Lily van Eeden, Adrian Treves and Euan Ritchie, Guardian dogs, fencing and "flandry' protect livestock from carnivores, 'A recent synthesis study, led by Lily van Eeden, Ann Eklund, Jennie Miller, and Adrian Treves with a total of 21 authors from 10 countries, found that there’s a worldwide dearth of rigorous experimental studies testing the effectiveness of interventions to protect livestock from carnivores. Where studies do exist, results were mixed. Some management interventions did reduce livestock losses, some made little to no difference, and some resulted in increased livestock losses. This means that for some methods, farmers would be better off doing nothing at all than using them.' back

Moira Weigel, The Coddling of the American Mind review - how elite US liberals have turned rightwards, ' In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, while all other forms of consumer debt have shrunk, student loan debt has tripled. Currently around 44.2 million Americans owe a total of more than $1.5tn, and 30% of these are struggling to make monthly payments. Meanwhile, college teachers are increasingly likely to live from contract to low-paid contract. None of this comes up in The Coddling of the American Mind, a book about why young people feel anxious and college is making it worse. . . . Generation “iGen”, the one that comes after millennials, is, according to the authors, suffering a mental health crisis because of smartphone addiction and the paranoid parenting style of the upper middle class.' back

Ofri Ilani, Monotheism is seen as Judaism's gift to the world. But has it really brought peace and harmony?, ' Monotheism is widely considered more moral and rational than polytheism. But a controversy in Germany is raising the question whether the belief in one God actually leads to fanaticism and violence.' back

Poisson bracket - Wikipedia, Poisson bracket - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, 'IIn mathematics and classical mechanics, the Poisson bracket is an important binary operation in Hamiltonian mechanics, playing a central role in Hamilton's equations of motion, which govern the time-evolution of a Hamiltonian dynamical system . . . In a more general sense: the Poisson bracket is used to define a Poisson algebra, of which the algebra of functions on a Poisson manifold is a special case. These are all named in honour of Siméon-Denis Poisson.' back

Renormalization - Wikipedia, Renormalization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In quantum field theory, the statistical mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similar geometric structures, renormalization is any of a collection of techniques used to treat infinities arising in calculated quantities.' back

Roland Boer, Professor, U of N School of Humanities and Social Science, 'Roland Boer is not your average scholar, nor is he a typical theologian. The academic who enjoys stirring up debate with articles under such arresting titles as Lenin the Nudist, believes a measure of provocation is a good thing if it stimulates thought and discussion about religion. . . . But for all this spirited subversion, Boer is a widely read and internationally recognised academic theologian whose prolific writing has broadened dialogue not only in his specialty research field, Marxist interaction with religion, but across the spectrum of religious and political debate. back

Shamus Khan, Kavanaugh is lying. His upbringing explains why, ' The classical root of “privilege,” privus lex, means “private law.” The French aristocracy, for instance, was endowed with privileges, primarily exemption from taxation. Today’s equivalents are not aristocrats, yet they have both the sense and the experience that the rules don’t really apply to them and that they can act without much concern for the consequences. Elite schools like Georgetown Prep and Yale have long cultivated this sensibility in conscious and unconscious ways.' back

Taj El-Din Hilaly - Wikipedia, Taj El-Din Hilaly - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Sheikh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly (Arabic: تاج الدين الهلالي‎; born Egypt c. 1941), is an Imam of the Lakemba Mosque in Sydney and an Australian Sunni Muslim leader. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils appointed him Mufti of Australia in 1988. His name is alternatively spelt Tajeddin Hilaly, Hilali, Al-Hilaly, Taj el-Din al-Hilali, Aldin Alhilali, Tajideen El-Hilaly or Tajeddine. He referred to himself as the Grand Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, although this title was not unanimously endorsed, and has also been described by some Muslims as honorary, rather than substantial. After a series of controversial statements on social issues, Hilaly retired from this position in June 2007 and was succeeded by Fehmi Naji.' back

Tantra - Wikipedia, Tantra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Tantra is the name scholars give to a style of religious ritual and meditation that arose in medieval India no later than the fifth century CE.[1] The earliest documented use of the word Tantra is in the Hindu text, the Rigveda (X.71.9). Tantra has influenced the Hindu, Sikh, Bön, Buddhist, and Jain religious traditions and spread with Buddhism to East Asia and Southeast Asia. . . . Modern scholars have also provided definitions of Tantra. David Gordon White of the University of California offers the following: Tantra is that Asian body of beliefs and practices which, working from the principle that the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains that universe, seeks to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways' back

The Saturday Paper and Aesop, The Horne Prize, 'Aesop and The Saturday Paper have been cultural partners since 2014, promoting the written word through an annual calendar of events. Together, they nurture writers of longform non-fiction through The Horne Prize, an essay award valued at $15,000. This year’s prize will be presented in early December for an essay of up to 3000 words, addressing some part of the theme ‘Australian life’ – shining light on a particular aspect of who we are, from a contemporary perspective. Entries are open until midnight on October 30, 2018. back

Thomas L. Friedman, Trump to China: 'I own you.' Guess Again, 'As Mary Meeker’s latest internet trends study noted, five years ago China had only two of the world’s largest publicly traded tech companies, while the U.S. had nine. Today, China has nine of the top 20 — Alibaba, Tencent, Ant Financial, Baidu, Xiaomi, Didi, JD.com, Meituan and Toutiao — and the U.S. has 11. Twenty years ago, China had none.' back

Yoni - Wikipedia, Yoni - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Yoni (Sanskrit: योनि yoni, literally "vagina" or "womb") is the symbol of the Goddess (Shakti or Devi), the Hindu Divine Mother. Within Shaivism, the sect dedicated to the god Shiva, the yoni symbolizes his consort. The male counterpart of the yoni is the lingam. Their union represents the eternal process of creation and regeneration.' back