Christie, Agatha, Murder on the Orient Express, Berkley Publishing Group 2000 Amazon: 'This beautifully crafted murder mystery ranks among Agatha Christie's finest. The dapper Belgian detective finds himself investigating the murder of an American businessman on board the Simplon Orient Express. The death occurs in a a manner that implicates one of the twelve passengers in the Stamboul-Calais coach. Poirot carefully interviews the suspects, all of whom have cast-iron alibis. The case appears impossible to solve, until Poirot, using nothing but his wits and a few tiny, seemingly insignificant clues (including a monogrammed handkerchief, a pipe-cleaner, and a Hungarian passport), assembles one of his most brilliant explanations.' A reader from Anaheim, California. 
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Clark, Edmund M., and Orna Grumberg, Doron A. Peled, Model Checking, MIT Press 1999 Jacket: 'Model checking is a technique for verifying finite-state systems such as sequential circuit designs and communication protocols. It has a number of advantages over traditional approaches that are based on simulation, testing and deductive reasoning. In particular model checking is automatic and usually quite fast. Also, of the design contains an error, model checking will produce a counter=example that can be used to pinpiont the error. . . . ' 
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Hardy, Godfrey Harold, and C P Snow (foreword), A Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge University Press 1940-2008 Jacket: G H Hardy was one of the twentieth century's finest mathematical thinkers, renowned among his contemporaries as 'a real mathematician . . . the purest of the pure'. This 'apology', written poignantly as his mathematical powers were declining, offers a brilliant and engaging account of mathematics as very much more than science, When it was first published, Graham Greene hailed it alongside Henry James's notebooks as 'the best account of what it is like to be a creative artist. C P Snow's foreword gives sympathetic and witty insights into Hardy's ife, with its rich store of anecdotes concerning his academic life as well as his passion for cricket.' 
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Khinchin, Aleksandr Yakovlevich, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.' 
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Lo, Hoi-Kwong, and Tim Spiller, Sandra Popescu, Introduction to Quantum Computation and Information, World Scientific 1998 Jacket: 'This book provides a pedagogical introduction to the subjects of quantum information and computation. Topics include non-locality of quantum mechanics, quantum computation, quantum cryptography, quantum error correction, fault tolerant quantum computation, as well as some experimental aspects of quantum computation and quantum cryptography. A knowledge of basic quantum mechanics is assumed.' 
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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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Medcalf, Peter, War in the Shadows: Bougainville 1944-45, Collins 1986 Jacket: '... written by an Australian infantryman who, as a nineteen year old, fought in the bloody campaigns on Bougainville, tells the dramatic truth about jungle warfare in the south-west Pacific during the second world war from the point of view of the combat soldier.' 
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Sacks, Oliver, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Vintage 2002 Amazon editorial review From Publishers Weekly 'Sacks, a neurologist perhaps best known for his books Awakenings (which became a Robin Williams/Robert De Niro vehicle) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, invokes his childhood in wartime England and his early scientific fascination with light, matter and energy as a mystic might invoke the transformative symbolism of metals and salts. The "Uncle Tungsten" of the book's title is Sacks's Uncle Dave, who manufactured light bulbs with filaments of fine tungsten wire, and who first initiated Sacks into the mysteries of metals. The author of this illuminating and poignant memoir describes his four tortuous years at boarding school during the war, where he was sent to escape the bombings, and his profound inquisitiveness cultivated by living in a household steeped in learning, religion and politics (both his parents were doctors and his aunts were ardent Zionists). But as Sacks writes, the family influence extended well beyond the home, to include the groundbreaking chemists and physicists whom he describes as "honorary ancestors, people to whom, in fantasy, I had a sort of connection." Family life exacted another transformative influence as well: his older brother Michael's psychosis made him feel that "a magical and malignant world was closing in about him," perhaps giving a hint of what led the author to explore the depths of psychosis in his later professional life. For Sacks, the onset of puberty coincided with his discovery of biology, his departure from his childhood love of chemistry and, at age 14, a new understanding that he would become a doctor. Many readers and patients are happy with that decision. (Oct.)Forecast: This book is as well-written as Sacks's earlier works, and should get fans engrossed in the facts of his life and opinions. Look for an early spike on the strength of his name, and strong sales thereafter.' Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. 
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Saint Aubyn, Alan, and Walt Wheeler, A Fellow of Trinity, British Library, Historical Print Editions 2011  
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Shannon, Claude, and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of Illinois Press 1949 'Before this there was no universal way of measuring the complexities of messages or the capabilities of circuits to transmit them. Shannon gave us a mathematical way . . . invaluable . . . to scientists and engineers the world over.' Scientific American 
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van der Waerden, B L, Sources of Quantum Mechanics, Dover Publications 1968 Amazon Book Description: 'Seventeen seminal papers, dating from the years 1917-26, in which the quantum theory as wenow know it was developed and formulated. Among the scientists represented: Einstein,Ehrenfest, Bohr, Born, Van Vleck, Heisenberg, Dirac, Pauli and Jordan. All 17 papers translatedinto English.' 
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von Neumann, John, and Robert T Beyer (translator), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1983 Jacket: '. . . a revolutionary book that caused a sea change in theoretical physics. . . . JvN begins by presenting the theory of Hermitean operators and Hilbert spaces. These provide the framework for transformation theory, which JvN regards as the definitive form of quantum mechanics. . . . Regarded as a tour de force at the time of its publication, this book is still indispensable for those interested in the fundamental issues of quantum mechanics.' 
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Weisberg, Robert W, Creativity: Genius and Other Myths, W H Freeman 1985 Jacket: .In Creativity: Genius and Other Myths, Robert Weisberg shows that much of what we believe about creativity is not true. Beginning with an example of a creative solution to a simple real-life problem, he analyzes the traditional literature, arguing that creative responses evolve through a straight forward series of concious steps. 
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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

Zurek, Wojciech Hubert, "Quantum origin of quantum jumps: Breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer in the transition from quantum to classical", Physical Review A, 76, 5, 16 November 2007, page . Abstract: '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 a framework for 'wave-packet 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 &mdash the fittest quantum states that not only survive decoherence, but subvert the environment into carrying information about them &mdash into becoming a witness.'. back

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius - Free Ebook, 'The book called 'The Consolation of Philosophy' was throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholar's familiar companion. Few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfred's paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century.' back

Camille Jordan - Wikipedia, Camille Jordan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan (January 5, 1838 – January 22, 1922) was a French mathematician, known both for his foundational work in group theory and for his influential Cours d'analyse. He was born in Lyon and educated at the École polytechnique. He was an engineer by profession; later in life he taught at the École polytechnique and the Collège de France, where he had a reputation for eccentric choices of notation.' back

Chris O'Brien, For 800 years, they were celebrated as martyrs to their faith. Just one problem: The Cathars may never have existed, ' They lived simple lives of austerity and abstinence and suffered horrifying deaths, cut down by marauding armies and burned at the stake as heretics — or so the legend goes. For their considerable pains, the Cathars were memorialized and celebrated as martyred religious rebels by a region of southern France that, eight centuries later, still promotes itself under their name: Pays Cathare. But in recent weeks, a debate has erupted across this region in newspapers, tourism offices, and in research conferences following an academic exhibition that explored a more modern-day heresy: The Cathars never existed. ' back

Church-Turing thesis - Wikipedia, Church-Turing thesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, back

Commentarium Petitionis - Wikipedia, Commentarium Petitionis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Commentariolum Petitionis ("little handbook on electioneering"), also known as De petitione consulatus ("on running for the Consulship"), is an essay supposedly written by Quintus Tullius Cicero, c. 65-64 BC as a guide for his brother Marcus Tullius Cicero in his campaign in 64 to be elected consul of the Roman Republic. The essay does not provide any information that a man of politics such as Cicero would not already know, and is written in a highly rhetorical fashion. As such, its authenticity has been questioned.' back

David A. Hoekema, Risking Peace: How Religious Leaders Ended Uganda's Civil War, ' The reign of terror imposed on the people of northern Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) from 1987 to 2006 was one of the most brutal of the past century. . . . That story is widely known around the world, thanks in part to Western aid agencies’ reports and a widely viewed video, “Kony 2012,” made by an American NGO. Far less known—scarcely mentioned in news reports—was the formation of an alliance of religious leaders in the darkest period of the conflict. Overcoming centuries of mistrust and disagreement, the Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim communities of the Acholi region joined forces to help relieve suffering caused by the violence and to bring government and rebel leaders to the negotiating table. Their work bears witness to the transforming power of interfaith collaboration and to the ability of local communities in Africa to resolve a seemingly intractable conflict.' back

Differentiable manifold - Wikipedia, Differentiable manifold - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, a differentiable manifold is a type of manifold that is locally similar enough to a linear space to allow one to do calculus. Any manifold can be described by a collection of charts, also known as an atlas. One may then apply ideas from calculus while working within the individual charts, since each chart lies within a linear space to which the usual rules of calculus apply. If the charts are suitably compatible (namely, the transition from one chart to another is differentiable), then computations done in one chart are valid in any other differentiable chart. back

Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, Mark Zukrberg's admiration for Emperor Augustus is misplced. Here's why, ' Augustus repeatedly conducted murderous as well as bloodless purges of the aristocracy from November 43 through to 29 BCE, repressing all political opposition. Late in 43, he and his then allies Mark Antony and Lepidus ruthlessly proscribed over 300 senators and 2,000 equestrians (the lower aristocracy and business elite). Many were hunted down and butchered in plain view, including the great orator and republican Marcus Cicero.' back

General relativity - Wikipedia, General relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalises special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the four-momentum (mass-energy and linear momentum) of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential equations.' back

Hannah Bartlett, Curious Kids: how do eyes grow?, ' How do eyes grow? – Annette, age seven, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK: Thanks for this brilliant question, Annette. Human beings’ eyes are quite unusual, because they are almost full sized when we are born. They do grow a bit bigger – but only by a few millimetres. But that’s not all that happens – when we are very young, our brains also learn to make images from the messages it gets from our eyes, and that’s how we learn to see.' back

Hilbert space - Wikipedia, Hilbert space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The mathematical concept of a Hilbert space, named after David Hilbert, generalizes the notion of Euclidean space. It extends the methods of vector algebra and calculus from the two-dimensional Euclidean plane and three-dimensional space to spaces with any finite or infinite number of dimensions. A Hilbert space is an abstract vector space possessing the structure of an inner product that allows length and angle to be measured. Furthermore, Hilbert spaces are complete: there are enough limits in the space to allow the techniques of calculus to be used.' back

J B S Haldane - Wikipedia, J B S Haldane - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS (5 November 1892 – 1 December 1964[1]), known as Jack (but who used 'J.B.S.' in his printed works), was a British-born geneticist and evolutionary biologist generally credited with a central role in the development of neo-Darwinian thinking (popularized by Richard Dawkins' 1976 work titled The Selfish Gene). A staunch Marxist, he was critical of Britain's role in the Suez Crisis, and chose to leave Britain, move to India and become an Indian citizen. He was also one of the founders (along with Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright) of population genetics.' back

Josh Gabbatiss, Scientists fix photosynthesis 'glitch' in plants and boost crop growth by 40%, ' Around 20 per cent of the time Rubisco mistakenly grabs oxygen instead of CO2, resulting in the production of a toxic substance that must be removed by photorespiration. Photorespiration uses a large amount of energy as the substances involved follow a lengthy path that travels through three compartments in the plant cell. To cut down on energetic costs, Dr South and his colleagues created plants with much shorter pathways, a feat of plant engineering they compared to the Panama Canal in the way it boosted efficiency.' back

Lancelot Hogben - Wikipedia, Lancelot Hogben - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Lancelot Thomas Hogben FRS[1] (9 December 1895 – 22 August 1975) was a versatile British experimental zoologist and medical statistician. He is best known for developing the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) as a model organism for biological research in his early career, attacking the eugenics movement in the middle of his career, and popularising books on science, mathematics and language in his later career.' back

Li Yuan, Censoring China's Internet, for Stability and Profit, ' Like many young people in China, the 24-year-old recent college graduate knew little about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. He had never heard of China’s most famous dissident, Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died in custody two years ago. Now, after training, he knows what to look for — and what to block. He spends his hours scanning online content on behalf of Chinese media companies looking for anything that will provoke the government’s wrath. He knows how to spot code words that obliquely refer to Chinese leaders and scandals, or the memes that touch on subjects the Chinese government doesn’t want people to read about.' back

Martin Well, Roy Glauber.Nobel-winning physicist who applied quantum mechanics to optics dies at 93, ' Roy J. Glauber, an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize for helping lay the foundations of quantum optics, providing an expanded and modern explanation of the properties of light, died Dec. 26. He was 93.' back

Max Koslowski, 'We're not gonna take it": Twisted Sister accused Clive Palmer of using famed anthem in political ads, 'American metal band Twisted Sister claims that Clive Palmer has ripped off their 1980s hit We're not gonna take it in advertisements for his new political set-up, United Australia Party, and is preparing to sue. Band manager and guitarist John "Jay Jay" French declared he was not going to take it any more on Wednesday.' back

Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney: The president shapes the public character of the nation. Trump's character falls short, ' The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a “sucker” in world affairs all defined his presidency down.' back

Motorola 6809 - Wikipedia, Motorola 6809 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopdia, 'The Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit (with some 16-bit features) microprocessor CPU from Motorola, designed by Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced 1978. It was a major advance over both its predecessor, the Motorola 6800, and the related MOS Technology 6502.' back

Ordinal number - Wikipedia, Ordinal number - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Whereas the notion of cardinal number is associated with a set with no particular structure on it, the ordinals are intimately linked with the special kind of sets that are called well-ordered (so intimately linked, in fact, that some mathematicians make no distinction between the two concepts). A well-ordered set is a totally ordered set (given any two elements one defines a smaller and a larger one in a coherent way) in which there is no infinite decreasing sequence (however, there may be infinite increasing sequences); equivalently, every non-empty subset of the set has a least element. Ordinals may be used to label the elements of any given well-ordered set (the smallest element being labelled 0, the one after that 1, the next one 2, "and so on") and to measure the "length" of the whole set by the least ordinal that is not a label for an element of the set. This "length" is called the order type of the set.' back

Peter McPhee, Friday Essay: what is it about Versailles?, ' The construction of the palace at Versailles, about 20 km from Paris, was the initiative of Louis XIV (king of France 1643-1715). The project lasted a half-century, from about 1660 to 1710, but by 1682 sufficient work had been done for Louis to move his capital there from Paris. At the death of the Sun King in 1715, the village of Versailles – with a population of just 1,000 at the time of his accession in 1643 – had turned into a city of approximately 30,000 inhabitants.' back

Quantum entanglement - Wikipedia, Quantum entanglement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon which occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the other(s), even when the particles are separated by a large distance—instead, a quantum state must be described for the system as a whole. . . . Entanglement is considered fundamental to quantum mechanics, even though it wasn't recognized in the beginning. Quantum entanglement has been demonstrated experimentally with photons, neutrinos, electrons, molecules as large as buckyballs, and even small diamonds. The utilization of entanglement in communication and computation is a very active area of research.' back

R. F. Streater and A. S. Wightman, PCT, Spin, Statistics and All That, Preface: ' The idea of this book arose in a conversation with H.A. Bethe, who remarked that a little book about modem field theory which contained only Memorable Results would be a Good Thing. In the field of historical research this approach led to the publication of a treatisef which has become a standard text for serious students. Although it is often dangerous to use the tried and true methods of one subject in another field of research, the application to physics of the principles of that book has led to at least one good result: we have eliminated all theorems whose proofs are non-existent.' back

Renormalization group - Wikipedia, Renormalization group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In theoretical physics, renormalization group (RG) refers to a mathematical apparatus that allows one to investigate the changes of a physical system as one views it at different distance scales. In particle physics it reflects the changes in the underlying force laws as one varies the energy scale at which physical processes occur. A change in scale is called a "scale transformation" or "conformal transformation." The renormalization group is intimately related to "conformal invariance" or "scale invariance," a symmetry by which the system appears the same at all scales (so-called self-similarity).' back

Spurnng Erdogan's Vision, Turks Leave in Drovrd, Draining Money and Talent, Carlotta Gall, 'ISTANBUL — For 17 years, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won elections by offering voters a vision of restoring the glories of Turkey’s Ottoman past. He extended his country’s influence with increased trade and military deployments, and he raised living standards with years of unbroken economic growth. But after a failed 2016 coup, Mr. Erdogan embarked on a sweeping crackdown. Last year, the economy wobbled and the lira plunged soon after he won re-election with even greater powers. As cronyism and authoritarianism seep deeper into his administration, Turks are voting differently — this time with their feet.' back

Valerie Strauss, Educator: In Finland, I realized how 'mean-spirited the U.S. education system really is, 'If you have paid any attention to the education debate in this country during the past dozen years or so, you’ve heard that students in Finland score at or near the top of international test scores, time and time again. You may know that, among other things, Finland has no standardized tests, starts formal reading instruction at age 7, requires all general teachers to have a master’s degree and makes sure no student goes hungry.' back

Washngton Post Editorial Board, The perfect New Year's resolution for 2019 was written 154 years ago, ' “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds . . . and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” ' back