Applebaum, Anne, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956, Doubleday 2012 'At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.'  
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Barrow, John D., and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford University Press 1996 'This wide-ranging and detailed book explores the many ramifications of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, covering the whole spectrum of human inquiry from Aristotle to Z bosons. Bringing a unique combination of skills and knowledge to the subject, John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler-two of the world's leading cosmologists-cover the definition and nature of life, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the interpretation of the quantum theory in relation to the existence of observers.' 
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Cantor, Georg, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers (Translated, with Introduction and Notes by Philip E B Jourdain), Dover 1895, 1897, 1955 Jacket: 'One of the greatest mathematical classics of all time, this work established a new field of mathematics which was to be of incalculable importance in topology, number theory, analysis, theory of functions, etc, as well as the entire field of modern logic.' 
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Einstein, Albert, and Robert W Lawson (translator) Roger Penrose (Introduction), Robert Geroch (Commentary), David C Cassidy (Historical Essay) , Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Pi Press 2005 Preface: 'The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. ... The author has spared himself no pains in his endeavour to present the main ideas in the simplest and most intelligible form, and on the whole, in the sequence and connection in which they actually originated.' page 3  
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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 P, and Robert B Leighton et al, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 1) : Mainly Mechanics, Radiation and Heat, Addison Wesley 1963 Foreword: 'This book is based on a course of lectures in introductory physics given by Prof. R P Feynman at the California Institute of Technology during the academic year 1961-62. ... The lectures constitute a major part of a fundamental revision of the introductory course, carried out over a four year period. ... The need for a basic revision arose both from the rapid development of physics in recent decades and from the fact that entering freshmen have shown a stewady incrase in mathematical ability as a result of improvements in high school mathematical course content.' 
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Horney, Karen , Self Analysis, 1994 Introduction: 'Professional analytical help ... can scarcely reach everyone whom it is capable of benefiting. It is for this reason that the question of self-analysis has importance. Is has always been regarded as not only valuable but also feasible to "know oneself", but it is possible that the endeavour can be greatly assisted by the discoveries of psychoanalysis. ... It is the object of this book to raise this question seriously, with all due consideration for the difficulties involved.' (9) 
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Hui, Zhou Wei, Shanghai Baby, Washington Square Press 2001 Editorial review From Library Journal 'Wei Hui's debut novel, which was banned in China, delves deep into the dark and glittering heart of Shanghai, as experienced by a hopeful and hedonistic young novelist, Nikki (better known to her friends as Coco, after the also irrepressibly glamorous Coco Chanel). Although deeply in love with her impotent artist boyfriend Tian Tian, the frustrated Coco takes a successful German businessman as a lover. What follows is the painful and explicit sexual and vocational journey of a young woman in search of her true self, attempting to gain control of her own trajectory as nefarious forces work on her from both within and without. Indeed, it seems almost as if the city's over-the-top materialism drives its inhabitants toward adultery and dark passions, forcing them at once into the dual role of victim/accomplice. It is just such paradoxes that make Wei Hui's novel so complex and thought-provoking: she deftly explores the intimate relationships that belie the seeming oppositions of East and West, love and desire, the natural and the artificial, hedonism and spiritualism. Haunting and resonant, Shanghai Baby proves the existence of the sacred in the profane. For all Chinese literature and contemporary fiction collections.' Tania Barnes, Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc 
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James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience: a Study in Human Nature : Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902, Modern Library 1994 ' When William James went to the University of Edinburgh in 1901 to deliver a series of lectures on "natural religion," he defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." Considering religion, then, not as it is defined by—or takes place in—the churches, but as it is felt in everyday life, he undertook a project that, upon completion, stands not only as one of the most important texts on psychology ever written, not only as a vitally serious contemplation of spirituality, but for many critics one of the best works of nonfiction written in the 20th century.' 
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Kagan, Robert, The Jungle Grows Back, Alfred A. Knopp 2018 ' Recent years have brought deeply disturbing developments around the globe from declining democracy to growing geopolitical competition. American sentiment seems to be leaning increasingly toward going it alone or withdrawing in the face of such disarray. In this powerful urgent essay, Robert Kagan elucidates the reasons that American withdrawal or selfish unilateralism would be the worst possible response, based on a fundamental and dangerous misreading of the world.' 
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Kolmogorov, A N, and Nathan Morrison (Translator) (With an added bibliography by A T Bharucha-Reid), Foundations of the Theory of Probability, Chelsea 1956 Preface: 'The purpose of this monograph is to give an axiomatic foundation for the theory of probability. . . . This task would have been a rather hopeless one before the introduction of Lebesgue's theories of measure and integration. However, after Lebesgue's publication of his investigations, the analogies between measure of a set and mathematical expectation of a random variable became apparent. These analogies allowed of further extensions; thus, for example, various properties of independent random variables were seen to be in complete analogy with the corresponding properties of orthogonal functions . . .' 
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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' 
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Murphy-O'Connor, Jerome, Paul: A Critical Life, Oxford University Press, USA 1998 Amazon editorial review: From Library Journal Murphy-O'Connor, a professor of New Testament studies who teaches in Jerusalem, has written an important scholarly biography of Paul based on an extensive analysis of his letters rather than on Luke's Acts of the Apostles, as is traditionally done. The first chapter of the book, "The Chronological Framework," compares evidence from the Pauline corpus with that of Luke's Acts and extant extrabiblical archaeological evidence, enabling Murphy-O'Connor to postulate a more precisely delimited chronology for Paul's entire life than does Gunther Bornkamm's Paul (1971). The remaining 13 chapters, based on information extracted from the authentic Pauline letters, discuss in more detail specific events in Paul's life. One problem with this methodology is that of pure speculation due to the nature of the sources and the occasional lack of confirming extra-biblical evidence. In addition to Paul's biography, Murphy-O'Connor also treats the development in Paul's theological thought. Recommended for academic libraries.Pius Murray, Holy Apostles Coll. & Seminary, Cromwell, Ct. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc 
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Murphy-O'Connor, Jerome, Paul: A Critical Life, Oxford University Press, USA • ISBN-13: 978-0192853424 1998 Amazon editorial review: From Library Journal Murphy-O'Connor, a professor of New Testament studies who teaches in Jerusalem, has written an important scholarly biography of Paul based on an extensive analysis of his letters rather than on Luke's Acts of the Apostles, as is traditionally done. The first chapter of the book, "The Chronological Framework," compares evidence from the Pauline corpus with that of Luke's Acts and extant extrabiblical archaeological evidence, enabling Murphy-O'Connor to postulate a more precisely delimited chronology for Paul's entire life than does Gunther Bornkamm's Paul (1971). The remaining 13 chapters, based on information extracted from the authentic Pauline letters, discuss in more detail specific events in Paul's life. One problem with this methodology is that of pure speculation due to the nature of the sources and the occasional lack of confirming extra-biblical evidence. In addition to Paul's biography, Murphy-O'Connor also treats the development in Paul's theological thought. Recommended for academic libraries.Pius Murray, Holy Apostles Coll. & Seminary, Cromwell, Ct. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc 
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Paine, Thomas, The Age of Reason, Dover 2004 ' "Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst," declared Thomas Paine, adding, "every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity." Paine's years of study and reflection on the role of religion in society culminated with his final work, The Age of Reason. This coolly reasoned polemic influenced religious thinking throughout the world at the dawn of the nineteenth century, and its resonance remains undiminished by time. The selfsame humanist and egalitarian views that made Paine a popular figure of the American Revolution brought him into frequent conflict with political authorities. Parts of The Age of Reason were written in a French jail, where Paine was confined for his opposition to the execution of Louis XVI.' 
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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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Richardson, Robert D., William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2007 Jacket: 'Pivotal member of the Metaphysical Club, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, older brother of the extraordinary siblings Henry and Alice, the remarkable William James put an indelible stamp on psychology, philosophy, teaching and religion — on Modernism itself. In this thought provoking and moving biography, James emerges as an immensely complex and fascinating man.' 
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Tanenbaum, Andrew S, Computer Networks, Prentice Hall International 1996 Preface: 'The key to designing a computer network was first enunciated by Julius Caesar: Divide and Conquer. The idea is to design a network as a sequence of layers, or abstract machines, each one based upon the previous one. . . . This book uses a model in which networks are divided into seven layers. The structure of the book follows the structure of the model to a considerable extent.'  
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Al Jazeera: The Listning Post, History suppresses: Censorship in Israel's archives, ' The silencing of Palestinian History in Israel's Archives: Sealed in Israel's archives and libraries are troves of Palestinian books, documents, photographs and films that were looted from Palestinian institutions and personal archives by Jewish militias and later, the Israeli military. "This confiscation is a kind of daily struggle that Palestinians face," says Sherene Seikaly, a scholar of Middle Eastern history. "One of the reasons, that these archives are a target, that they're threatening, is because they're really a record of Palestinian social life, and Palestine more broadly." ' back

Aquinas, Summa, I II, 3, 8, Does man's happiness consist in the vision of the divine essence?, 'I answer that, Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence. To make this clear, two points must be observed. First, that man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire and seek: . . . If therefore the human intellect, knowing the essence of some created effect, knows no more of God than "that He is"; the perfection of that intellect does not yet reach simply the First Cause, but there remains in it the natural desire to seek the cause. Wherefore it is not yet perfectly happy. Consequently, for perfect happiness the intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First Cause. And thus it will have its perfection through union with God as with that object, in which alone man's happiness consists, as stated above (this question articles 1, 7; q 2, a 8). back

Avi Shlaim, Brexit and Suez: A tale of two Tory fiascos, ' Some lessons might, therefore, be learned today from the failure of British statecraft back in 1956. As Churchill once observed, the farther back you go, the farther forward you can see. The broader context for both crises was uncertainty regarding Britain's place in the world. Eden, observed a Sunday Times editorial on January 16, 1977, "was the last prime minister to believe Britain was a great power and the first to confront a crisis that proved beyond doubt that she was not".' back

Betsy Woodruff, China Bars Dissident From Accepting U.W. Human Tights Award, ' Joshua Wong, who led major student protests against Beijing in 2014, was sentenced in January to three months in prison for his role leading the demonstrations. He is appealing the conviction, and out on bail. As a condition of his bail, Wong surrendered his passport to the court. Documents show the court has denied his request to travel to the United States to receive the Lantos prize, an award from an American foundation honoring former House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Lantos.' back

Boy Erased - Wikipedia, Boy Erased - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedis, ' Boy Erased is a 2018 American biographical drama film based on Garrard Conley's 2016 memoir of the same name. It is written for the screen and directed by Joel Edgerton, who also produces with Kerry Kohansky Roberts and Steve Golin. The film stars Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Edgerton, and follows the son of Baptist parents who is forced to take part in a gay conversion therapy program.' back

Chandogya Upanishad - Wikipedia, Chandogya Upanishad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Chandogya Upanishad . . . is a Sanskrit text embedded in the Chandogya Brahmana of the Sama Veda of Hinduism. It is one of the oldest Upanishads. It lists as number 9 in the Muktika canon of 108 Upanishads. The Upanishad belongs to the Tandya school of the Samaveda. Like Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, the Chandogya Upanishad is an anthology of texts that must have pre-existed as separate texts, and were edited into a larger text by one or more ancient Indian scholars.' 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

Edward Fredkin and Tommaso Toffoli, Conservative Logic, 'Conservative logic is a comprehensive model of computation which explicitly reflects a number of fundamental principles of physics, such as the reversibility of the dynamical laws and the conservation of certain additive quantities (among which energy plays a distinguished role). Because it more closely mirrors physics than traditional models of computation, conservative logic is in a better position to provide indications concerning the realization of high-performance computing systems, i.e., of systems that make very efficient use of the "computing resources" actually offered by nature. In particular, conservative logic shows that it is ideally possible to build sequential circuits with zero internal power dissipation. After establishing a general framework, we discuss two specific models of computation. The first uses binary variables and is the conservative-logic counterpart of switching theory; this model proves that universal computing capabilities are compatible with the reversibility and conservation constraints. The second model, which is a refinement of the first, constitutes a substantial breakthrough in establishing a correspondence between computation and physics. In fact, this model is based on elastic collisions of identical "balls," and thus is formally identical with the atomic model that underlies the (classical) kinetic theory of perfect gases. Quite literally, the functional behavior of a general-purpose digital computer can be reproduced by a perfect gas placed in a suitably shaped container and given appropriate initial conditions.' back

Elizabeth Bruenig, The Catholic Church is embroiled n a hel; of its own making, ' The events at this week’s meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore haven’t given much cause for confidence. The main subject of the convention was set to be the sex abuse crisis, which has roiled the church anew since this summer’s revelations concerning Pennsylvania and disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The bishops had planned to vote on “concrete measures to respond to the abuse crisis,” but Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the conference president, was informed the night before the meeting that the Vatican had decreed there would be no such vote.' back

Franz Wild, Vernon Silver and Willim Clowes, Trouble in the Congo: The Misadventures of Glenwore, ' Just six months ago, Glasenberg sounded confident that the crowning moment of his journey remained ahead, reminding shareholders of predictions that the world would need to triple cobalt production by 2030 to meet demand. “We’re the best placed of all the large-cap companies to take advantage of this electric vehicle phenomenon,” he said at Glencore’s annual meeting in May. But in July that promise clouded. Glencore announced that the U.S. Department of Justice had subpoenaed documents and other records related to its Congolese investments and other deals, and was examining its compliance with U.S. laws on foreign corruption and money laundering.' back

Gideon Levi, How Freud Made Clear We're 'Nothing but a Band of Murderers', ' The emotional conflict regarding the death of loved ones is what gave rise to psychology and religion, Freud said. Over the grave of the loved one arose the doctrines of the soul and the belief in immortality, and that’s where the guilt feelings arose that spawned the first moral imperatives. The most important prohibition generated by the awakening conscience was “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” It was conceived from the outset as a response to the hidden hatred behind the mourning for loved ones who have died, and later expanded to be directed at strangers and eventually enemies too.' back

Glory be to the Father - Wikipedia, Glory be to the Father - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Glory Be to the Father, also known as Gloria Patri, is a doxology, a short hymn of praise to God in various Christian liturgies. . . . Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto, Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now and always, and to the ages of ages. Amen.' back

Infallibility - First Vatican Council, The Latin Text of Denzinger: Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, Denzinger 3074: 'Romanum Pontificem, cum ex cathedra loquitur, id est, cum omnium Christianorum pastoris et doctoris munere fungens pro suprema sua Apostolica auctoritate doctrinam de fide vel moribus ab universa Ecclesia tenendam definit, per assistentiam divinam ipsi in beato Petro promissam, ea infallibilitate pollere, qua divinus Redemptor Ecclesiam suam in definienda doctrina de fide vel moribus instructam esse voluit; ideoque eiusmodi Romani Pontificis definitiones ex sese, non autem ex consensu Ecclesiae, irreformabiles esse.
Si quis autem huic Nostrae definitioni contradicere, quod Deus avertat: anathema sit.' back

Jihadism - Wikipedia, Jihadism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The term "Jihadism" (also "jihadist movement", "jihadi movement" and variants) is a 21st-century neologism found in Western languages to describe Islamist militant movements perceived as military movements "rooted in Islam" and "existentially threatening" to the West.' back

Joel Kotkin, To Make the Internet great Again, Trump Must Smash Facebook and Its Tech Oligarch Friends, 'Unreliable narrator though the President may be, people are indeed waking up to the tech giants’ massive and largely unchecked power, and the consequences of turning over our channels of communication to them. That includes World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who said earlier this year that he “was devastated” by how the internet has been used in recent elections, including our presidential race, and that he’s working to create a new system now that "the web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places.” ' back

Julie Zauzmer and Michelle Boorstein, Vatican tells U. S. bishops not to vote on proposal to tackle sexual abuse, spurns lay and civil investigations, 'BALTIMORE — The Vatican stymied a plan by America’s Catholic leaders to confront sexual abuse, insisting in a surprise directive on Monday morning that America’s bishops postpone their effort to hold bishops more responsible in the abuse cases that have scourged the church. At the same time, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States suggested that bishops should not look to lay people in the church or law enforcement to confront the church’s sexual abuse crisis.' back

Matter and Memory - Wikipedia, Matter and Memory - Wikipedia, the free ecyclopedia, ' Matter and Memory (French: Matière et mémoire, 1896) is a book by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Its subtitle is Essay on the relation of body and spirit (Essai sur la relation du corps à l’esprit), and the work presents an analysis of the classical philosophical problems concerning this relation. Within that frame the analysis of memory serves the purpose of clarifying the problem. Matter and Memory was written in reaction to the book The Maladies of Memory by Théodule Ribot, which appeared in 1881. Ribot claimed that the findings of brain science proved that memory is lodged within a particular part of the nervous system; localized within the brain and thus being of a material nature. Bergson was opposed to this reduction of spirit to matter.' back

Michelle Boorstein, Meeting of U.S. Bishops in Baltimore closes with no action after sexual abuse crisis, 'And then in the final hours on Wednesday, the bishops representing 196 American archdiocese and dioceses took a vote on a measure to simply “encourage” the Vatican to share documents related to its investigation of McCarrick.

It was shot down, 137 to 83.

Mohammad Zaheer, It pains me to say it - but Boris Johnson is right about Asia Bibi, ' Despite being freed by her country’s Supreme Court, Asia Bibi’s life is in danger. Violent mobs held the nation hostage in the aftermath of the verdict, demanding that the Pakistani Christian farm labourer, who had falsely been accused of blasphemy, be hanged. The Pakistani government has appeared helpless in tackling the hardliners calling for her head, choosing instead a policy of appeasement. Disheartened by the government’s capitulation and afraid for his life, her lawyer has already fled to the Netherlands, and there are calls across the western world for her to be given asylum. Several countries have stepped forward to offer her sanctuary, but the UK is not one of them. Now, politicians such as Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid are urging the government to do so.' back

Noblesse oblige - Wikipedia, Noblesse oblige - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Noblesse oblige is a French expression used in English. It translates as "nobility obliges" and denotes the concept that nobility extends beyond mere entitlements and requires the person who holds such a status to fulfill social responsibilities. For example, a primary obligation of a nobleman could include generosity towards those around him. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the term "suggests noble ancestry constrains to honourable behaviour; privilege entails responsibility." ' back

Olbers' paradox - Wikipedia, Olbers' paradox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In astrophysics and physical cosmology, Olbers' paradox, named after the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers and also called the "dark night sky paradox", is the argument that the darkness of the night sky conflicts with the assumption of an infinite and eternal static universe. The darkness of the night sky is one of the pieces of evidence for a non-static universe such as the Big Bang model. If the universe is static and populated by an infinite number of stars, any sight line from Earth must end at the (very bright) surface of a star, so the night sky should be completely bright. This contradicts the observed darkness of the night.' back

Paul Keating, Australian Parliament, back

Peter Hadley, Estimate the size of an atom, 'The object of this section is to estimate the the size of an atom. While the Schrödinger equation can be solved for the hydrogen atom, only the uncertainty relation will be used here. This approach is mathematically simpler and provides some insight into what determines the size of an atom.' back

Peter Waldman, The EPA Can't Wait to Reopen the Mine That Poisoned North Idaho, ' Mining has left a mark on the culture of the Silver Valley and an indelible stain on the landscape, which remains heavily contaminated. To extract a pound of metal, mining companies had to process nearly 14 pounds of ore, and they dumped the crushed waste rock into mountain streams and along river banks. Over the course of a century, the tailings and mine drainage flowed down the 40-mile-long watershed, depositing some 75 million tons of highly toxic sludge into Lake Coeur d’Alene.' back

Pragmatism - Wikipedia, Pragmatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedai, 'Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870.[1] Its origins are often attributed to the philosophers William James, John Dewey, and Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce later described it in his pragmatic maxim: "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object." ' back

Priya Satia, What Happened Beyond the Western Front, ' Shifting our gaze from France to the Middle East, we can see how faith in technological warfare survived. The Mesopotamia and Palestine campaigns—in which the British fought the Ottoman Empire in present-day Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Syria, and Saudi Arabia in alliance with the indigenous “Arab Revolt”—were mobile and creative military affairs, incorporating deception tactics, irregular warfare, and air power, which have become basic to modern warfare. This tactical exceptionalism was the product of British commanders’ unique willingness to use craft in a region that they thought of as magical and mysterious, an ancient biblical land of “cunning and subterfuge,” “where little surprise would be occasioned in … seeing a genie floating … out of a magic bottle.” ' back

Quantum entanglement - Wikipedia, Quantum entanglement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Quantum entanglement, also called the quantum non-local connection, is a possible property of a quantum mechanical state of a system of two or more objects in which the quantum states of the constituting objects are linked together so that one object can no longer be adequately described without full mention of its counterpart&mdasheven if the individual objects are spatially separated in a spacelike manner. This interconnection leads to non-classical correlations between observable physical properties of remote systems, often referred to as nonlocal correlations.' back

Silence (2016 film) - Wikipedia, Silence (2016 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Silence is a 2016 historical period drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and with a screenplay by Jay Cocks and Scorsese, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō. . . . The story is set in a time when it was common for the faith's Japanese adherents, then called the kakure kirishitan, to hide from persecution which resulted from the suppression of Christianity in Japan during the Shimabara Rebellion (1637–1638) against the Tokugawa shogunate.' back

Suspiria (2018 film) - Wikipedia, Suspiria (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Suspiria (Latin: "sighs") is a 2018 supernatural horror film directed by Luca Guadagnino with a screenplay by David Kajganich, based on the 1977 film directed by Dario Argento. It stars Dakota Johnson as an American woman who enrolls at a prestigious dance academy in 1977 Berlin that is run by a coven of witches. Tilda Swinton co-stars in three roles, including as the company's lead choreographer as well as a male psychotherapist who becomes embroiled with the academy.' back

Tat Tvam Asi - Wikipedia, Tat Tvam Asi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Tat Tvam Asi. . . is one of the Mahāvākyas (Grand Pronouncements) in Vedantic Sanatana Dharma. It originally occurs in the Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7,[1] in the dialogue between Uddalaka and his son Śvetaketu; it appears at the end of a section, and is repeated at the end of the subsequent sections as a refrain. The meaning of this saying is that the Self - in its original, pure, primordial state - is wholly or partially identifiable or identical with the Ultimate Reality that is the ground and origin of all phenomena.] back

The Phrase Finder, There is more than one way to skin a cat, 'Other versions of the phrase were in use in the 19th century, which specify the 'other ways' of felicide that might be employed. Charles Kingsley recorded the most common variant in the novel Westward Ho!, 1855. As befits a West Country gentleman, Kingsley opted for: There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream. Other forms of end that have been employed (and sometimes of a dog rather than a cat) are hanging, choking with butter and choking with pudding.' back

The Will to Believe - Wikipedia, The Will to Believe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, '"The Will to Believe" is a lecture by William James, first published in 1896, which defends, in certain cases, the adoption of a belief without prior evidence of its truth. In particular, James is concerned in this lecture about defending the rationality of religious faith even lacking sufficient evidence of religious truth. . . . James' central argument in "The Will to Believe" hinges on the idea that access to the evidence for whether or not certain beliefs are true depends crucially upon first adopting those beliefs without evidence. As an example, James argues that it can be rational to have unsupported faith in one's own ability to accomplish tasks that require confidence.' back

Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton - New World Encyclopedia, 'Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was a prominent American Trappist monk, poet, and author. A prolific writer, he was among the most recognized monastic figures of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, was a literary sensation and catapulted him to celebrity status. He remained true to the vows of his order, despite personal struggles which made him a symbol for humanity's search for meaning in the modern world. Merton was a leading voice of interfaith engagement. Drawing from early experiences with Asian art and reverence for nature, Merton recognized commonalities in the contemplative traditions of Christianity and Buddhism and encouraged the cross-fertilization of Eastern and Western spirituality. An outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and supporter of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, Merton urged the Church to take a more activist stance of social issues. Merton's sometimes strident pronouncements stood in contrast to his writings on faith and inner transformation, for which the Trappist monk is best remembered. "We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves," Merton wrote, "and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God."' back

Vedanta - Wikipedia, Vedanta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Vedanta . . . or Uttara Mīmāṃsā is one of the six orthodox (āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy. Vedanta literally means "end of the Vedas", reflecting ideas that emerged from the speculations and philosophies contained in the Upanishads. It does not stand for one comprehensive or unifying doctrine. Rather it is an umbrella term for many sub-traditions, ranging from dualism to non-dualism, all of which developed on the basis of a common textual connection called the Prasthanatrayi. The Prasthanatrayi is a collective term for the Principal Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita.' back

William James 1904, A World of Pure Experience, ' I give the name 'radical empiricism to my Weltanschauung. Empiricism is known as the opposite of rationalism. Rationalism tends to emphasize universals and to make wholes prior to parts the order of logic as well as in that of being. Empiricism, on the contrary, lays the explanatory stress upon the part, the element, individual, and treats the whole as a collection and the universal an abstraction. My description of things, accordingly, starts with the parts and makes of the whole a being of the second order.' VOL. 1. No. 20. SEPTEMBER 29, 1904 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS back

William James 1909, A Pluralistic Universe, Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy back

William James 1909a, The Meaning of Truth, A sequel to Pragmatism back

Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical, 'Submitted on 17 Mar 2007 (v1), last revised 18 Mar 2008 (this version, v3)) "Measurements transfer information about a system to the apparatus, and then further on -- to observers and (often inadvertently) to the environment. I show that even imperfect copying essential in such situations restricts possible unperturbed outcomes to an orthogonal subset of all possible states of the system, thus breaking the unitary symmetry of its Hilbert space implied by the quantum superposition principle. Preferred outcome states emerge as a result. They provide framework for the ``wavepacket collapse'', designating terminal points of quantum jumps, and defining the measured observable by specifying its eigenstates. In quantum Darwinism, they are the progenitors of multiple copies spread throughout the environment -- the fittest quantum states that not only survive decoherence, but subvert it into carrying information about them -- into becoming a witness.' back