Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 1956, 1964 'This book is intended to provide [an introduction to cybernetics]. It starts from common-place and well understood concepts, and proceeds step by step to show how these concepts can be made exact, and how they can be developed until they lead into such subjects as feedback, stability, regulation, ultrastability, information, coding, noise and other cybernetic topics.' 
Amazon   back

Chaitin, Gregory J, Information, Randomness & Incompleteness: Papers on Algorithmic Information Theory, World Scientific 1987 Jacket: 'Algorithmic information theory is a branch of computational complexity theory concerned with the size of computer programs rather than with their running time. ... The theory combines features of probability theory, information theory, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, and recursive function or computability theory. ... [A] major application of algorithmic information theory has been the dramatic new light it throws on Goedel's famous incompleteness theorem and on the limitations of the axiomatic method. ...' 
Amazon   back

Cleese, John, So, Anyway . . . , Random House 2014 Jacket" 'Candid and brilliantly funny, this is the story how a tall shy youth from Weston-super-Mare went on to become a self-confessed legend. . . . ' 
Amazon   back

Darwin, Charles, The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches, Penguin Classics: Abridged edition 1989 Book description: '"The Voyage of the Beagle" is Charles Darwin's account of the momentous voyage which set in motion the current of intellectual events leading to "The Origin of Species". This "Penguin Classics" edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Janet Brown and Michael Neve. When HMS Beagle sailed out of Devonport on 27 December 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two and setting off on the voyage of a lifetime. His journal, here reprinted in a shortened form, shows a naturalist making patient observations concerning geology, natural history, people, places and events. Volcanoes in the Galapagos, the Gossamer spider of Patagonia and the Australasian coral reefs - all are to be found in these extraordinary writings.' 
Amazon   back

Kauffman, Stuart, At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Complexity, Oxford University Press 1995 Preface: 'As I will argue in this book, natural selection is important, but it has not laboured alone to craft the fine architectures of the biosphere . . . The order of the biological world, I have come to believe . . . arises naturally and spontaneously because of the principles of self organisation - laws of complexity that we are just beginning to uncover and understand.'  
Amazon   back

Neuenschwander, Dwight E, Emmy Noether's Wonderful Theorem, Johns Hopkins University Press 2011 Jacket: A beautiful piece of mathematics, Noether's therem touches on every aspect of physics. Emmy Noether proved her theorem in 1915 and published it in 1918. This profound concept demonstrates the connection between conservation laws and symmetries. For instance, the theorem shows that a system invariant under translations of time, space or rotation will obey the laws of conservation of energy, linear momentum or angular momentum respectively. This exciting result offers a rich unifying principle for all of physics.' 
Amazon   back

Otto, Rudolf, and John W. Harvey (translator), The Idea of the Holy, Oxford University Press, USA 1958 Amazon customer review: 'Traditional theology has usually concerned itself with doctrine, with focus on the rational aspects of God. Otto, following the tradition of mystics, gave careful consideration to an oft-neglected aspect of theology: the non-rational aspects of God. In doing so, he coined the word "numinous" to depict that which transcends or eludes comprehension in rational terms. It suggests that which is holy, awesome, and 'wholly other.' He also applies the expression "mysterium tremendum" to the numinous, describing that which is hidden, esoteric, beyond conception or understanding, awe-inspiring, fear-instilling or uncanny, an absolute overpoweringness of an ineffable transcendent Reality.' David Graham 
Amazon   back

Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature, Bantam 1984 Foreword: 'Order Out of Chaos is a brilliant, demanding, dazzling book -- challenging for all and richly rewarding for the attentive reader. It is a book to study, to savour, to reread -- and to question yet again. It places science and humanity back in a world where ceteris paribus is a myth -- a world in which other things are seldom held steady, equal or unchanging. In short it projects science into today's revolutionary world of instability, disequilibrium and turbulence. In so doing, it serves the highest creative function -- it helps us create fresh order.' Alvin Toffler, xxvi 
Amazon   back

Scholem, Gershom G, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Schocken Books 1995 'Gershom Scholem was professor of Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem until his death in 1982. He is also the author of The Messianic Idea in Judaism, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead and Zohar.

"A crucially vital work in the long history of Jewish esoteric spirituality. Aside from its intrinsic importance, the book's influence has been enormous, and is likely to continue all but indefinitely."--Harold Bloom, Yale University' 
Amazon   back

Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse-Five, Dell 1991 ' Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922. He studied at the universities of Chicago and Tennessee and later began to write short stories for magazines. His first novel, Player Piano, was published in 1951 and since then he has written many novels, among them: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1961), Cat's Cradle (1963), God Bless You Mr Rosewater (1964), Welcome to the Monkey House; a collection of short stories (1968), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Slapstick, or Lonesome No More (1976), Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galapagos (1985), Bluebeard (1988) and Hocus Pocus (1990). During the Second World War he was held prisoner in Germany and was present at the bombing of Dresden, an experience which provided the setting for his most famous work to date, Slaughterhouse Five (1969). He has also published a volume of autobiography entitled Palm Sunday (1981) and a collection of essays and speeches, Fates Worse Than Death (1991).' 
Amazon   back

Awschalom, David D., et al, "Qunatum Spintronics: Engineering and Manipulating Atom-Like Spins in Semiconductors", Science, 339, 6124, 8 March 2013, page 1174[1179. 'ABSTRACT The past decade has seen remarkable progress in isolating and controlling quantum coherence using charges and spins in semiconductors. Quantum control has been established at room temperature, and electron spin coherence times now exceed several seconds, a nine–order-of-magnitude increase in coherence compared with the first semiconductor qubits. These coherence times rival those traditionally found only in atomic systems, ushering in a new era of ultracoherent spintronics. We review recent advances in quantum measurements, coherent control, and the generation of entangled states and describe some of the challenges that remain for processing quantum information with spins in semiconductors.'. back

Monroe, C., J. Kim, "Scaling the Ion Trap Quantum Processor", Science, 339, 6124, 8 March 2013, page 1164-1169. 'ABSTRACT Trapped atomic ions are standards for quantum information processing, serving as quantum memories, hosts of quantum gates in quantum computers and simulators, and nodes of quantum communication networks. Quantum bits based on trapped ions enjoy a rare combination of attributes: They have exquisite coherence properties, they can be prepared and measured with nearly 100% efficiency, and they are readily entangled with each other through the Coulomb interaction or remote photonic interconnects. The outstanding challenge is the scaling of trapped ions to hundreds or thousands of qubits and beyond, at which scale quantum processors can outperform their classical counterparts in certain applications. We review the latest progress and prospects in that effort, with the promise of advanced architectures and new technologies, such as microfabricated ion traps and integrated photonics.'. back

Stern, Ady, Netanial H Lindner, "Topological Quantum Computation = From Basis Concepts to First Experiments", Science, 339, 6124, 8 March 2013, page 1179-1184. 'ABSTRACT Quantum computation requires controlled engineering of quantum states to perform tasks that go beyond those possible with classical computers. Topological quantum computation aims to achieve this goal by using non-Abelian quantum phases of matter. Such phases allow for quantum information to be stored and manipulated in a nonlocal manner, which protects it from imperfections in the implemented protocols and from interactions with the environment. Recently, substantial progress in this field has been made on both theoretical and experimental fronts. We review the basic concepts of non-Abelian phases and their topologically protected use in quantum information processing tasks. We discuss different possible realizations of these concepts in experimentally available solid-state systems, including systems hosting Majorana fermions, their recently proposed fractional counterparts, and non-Abelian quantum Hall states.'. back

Abraham Abulafia - Wikipedia, Abraham Abulafia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia, the founder of the school of "Prophetic Kabbalah", was born in Zaragoza, Spain, in 1240, and died sometime after 1291, in Comino, Maltese archipelago.' back

Benny Ziffer, Sex Parties, Drugs and Gay Escorts at the Pope's Residence: Undercover in the Vatican, ' Martel's 600 fact-packed pages pull no punches about what, in the author’s view, is a central reason for the immense catastrophe that has befallen the Catholic hierarchy in the past generation. In Martel’s opinion, the direct responsibility lies with none other than the veiled and repressed homosexuality of the clergy, which forces them to live a chronic lie. In other words, to long for the company of men while preaching to their flocks against any such attraction and cravings of the flesh as such.' back

Bible: Exodus, Exodus 20:3, 'You shall have no other gods before me.' back

Bible: Ezechiel, Ezechiel, from the Holy Bible, King James version, ' 1: Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. 2: In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's captivity, 3: The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.' back

Bible: Psalms, Psalm 34:9, 'Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.' back

Book of Enoch - Wikipedia, Book of Enoch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch[1]) is an ancient Jewish religious work, traditionally ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. It is not part of the biblical canon as used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel. It is regarded as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, but no other Christian group. back

Brouwer fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, Brouwer fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Brouwer's fixed-point theorem is a fixed-point theorem in topology, named after Luitzen Brouwer. It states that for any continuous function f with certain properties there is a point x₀ such that f(x₀) = x₀. The simplest form of Brouwer's theorem is for continuous functions f from a disk D to itself. A more general form is for continuous functions from a convex compact subset K of Euclidean space to itself. back

Colin Klein, The 'painless woman' helps us see how anxiety and fear fit in the big picture of pain, ' Pain plays a vital protective role. It protects us from injury. It limits our motion when parts of our body are damaged. Without that inbuilt system, the weight of unhealed injuries can eventually overwhelm us. . . . The key to her unusual experience may have to do with another striking fact about her experience: her lack of anxiety or fear. Even a recent car crash appears to have left her unmoved.' back

Gary Dorrien, The Birth of Social Democracy, ' Democratic socialism is an ascending idea in the United States, despite its marginal American history and also because of it. In Europe, democratic socialism has a rich and complex record of achievements and failures through continental social-democratic parties and the British Labour Party. In the United States, only a modicum of social-democratic decency has ever been achieved and now even those modest gains are threatened, yielding a surge of interest in democratic socialism.' back

Hans Kung, A Vatican Spring, 'THE Arab Spring has shaken a whole series of autocratic regimes. With the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, might not something like that be possible in the Roman Catholic Church as well — a Vatican Spring? . . . To this day the Curia, which in its current form is likewise a product of the 11th century, is the chief obstacle to any thorough reform of the Catholic Church, to any honest ecumenical understanding with the other Christian churches and world religions, and to any critical, constructive attitude toward the modern world.' back

Ian Sample, Archaeologists discover 'exceptional' site at Lake Titicaca, ' One of the major questions surrounding Tiwanaku state is how it expanded so effectively across the Titicaca basin in the first millennium. . . . Charles Stanish, an anthropologist on the team from the University of South Florida, said that pilgrimages leading up to elaborate ceremonies were a crucial part of the state structure.“Ritual and religion were profoundly important in ancient states. It is not some new age-y thing,” said Stanish. “Ritual and religion structured people’s lives, it structured the economy and the whole of society. This is how these people were able to create spectacular ways to get along and have a very successful society.” ' back

James R Davila, Hekhalot Literature and Shamanism, 'The Hekhalot literature is a bizarre conglomeration of Jewish esoteric and revelatory texts produced sometime between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The documents have strong connections with earlier apocalyptic and gnostic literature and claim to describe the self-induced spiritual experiences of the "descenders to the chariot" that permitted these men to view Ezekiel's chariot vision (the Merkavah) for themselves, as well as to gain control of angels and a perfect mastery of Torah through theurgy. This material is of particular interest for the study of divine mediation and mystical/revelatory experiences, because the Hekhalot documents claim to detail actual practices used to reach trance states, gain revelations, and interact with divine mediators.' back

John Paul II, Fides et Ratio: On the relationship between faith and reason , para 2: 'The Church is no stranger to this journey of discovery, nor could she ever be. From the moment when, through the Paschal Mystery, she received the gift of the ultimate truth about human life, the Church has made her pilgrim way along the paths of the world to proclaim that Jesus Christ is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).' back

John Preskill, Lecture Notes on Quantum Computation, Indistinguishable particles in two dimensions that are neither bosons nor fermions are called anyons. Anyons are a fascinating theoretical construct, but do they have anything to do with the physics of real systems that can be studied in the laboratory? The remarkable answer is: “Yes!” back

Kate Brown, Chernobyls disastrous cover-up is a warning for the next nucear age, ' If Operation Cyclone had not been top secret, the headline would have been spectacular: “Scientists using advanced technology save Russian cities from technological disaster!” Yet, as the old saying goes, what goes up must come down. No one told the Belarusians that the southern half of the republic had been sacrificed to protect Russian cities. In the path of the artificially induced rain lived several hundred thousand Belarusians ignorant of the contaminants around them.' back

Keith Taillon, Cleopatra, Napoleon, Queen Victoria and a Vanderbilt: How , ' Former US Secretary of State William Evarts summed up the pillaging best when he declared in 1881, “These obelisks, great and triumphant structures, […] mark a culmination of the power and glory of Egypt, and every conqueror has seemed to think that the final trophy of Egypt’s subjection and the proud pre-eminence of his own nation could be shown only by taking an obelisk—the chief mark of Egyptian pomp and pride—to grace the capital of the conquering nation.” ' back

Lisa McClain, How the Catholic Church came to oppose birth control, 'This month [July 2018] marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI’s strict prohibition against artificial contraception, issued in the aftermath of the development of the birth control pill. At the time, the decision shocked many Catholic priests and laypeople. . . . And although Catholic moral theology has consistently condemned contraception, it has not always been the church battleground that it is today.' back

Merkabah mysticism - Wikipedia, Merkabah mysticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Merkabah/Merkavah mysticism (or Chariot mysticism) is a school of early Jewish mysticism, c.100 BCE - 1000 CE, centered on visions such as found in the Book of Ezekiel chapter 1, or in the hekhalot ("palaces") literature, concerning stories of ascents to the heavenly palaces and the Throne of God.' back

Mirs Adler-Giles, The Nazis shut down the Bauhaus, but the school's legacy lived on in the Third Reich, ' The story of the encounter between modernism and the Nazis has always been one of irreconcilable conflict. The Nazis condemned the movement as a symptom of a disease spread by Jews and communists that was contaminating the German body politic. And they derided as "degenerate" artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky — both teachers at the Bauhaus, the influential German art, architecture and design school founded in Weimar in 1919. One hundred years on, the school's functional, industrial aesthetic endures, from sleek, minimalist smart phones to mass-produced modular furniture. back

Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem - Wikipedia, Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In the field of digital signal processing, the sampling theorem is a fundamental bridge between continuous-time signals (often called "analog signals") and discrete-time signals (often called "digital signals"). It establishes a sufficient condition for a sample rate that permits a discrete sequence of samples to capture all the information from a continuous-time signal of finite bandwidth.' back

Olver Miman, Climate change grou scrapped by Trump reassembles to issue warning, ' A US government climate change advisory group scrapped by Donald Trump has reassembled independently to call for better adaptation to the floods, wildfires and other threats that increasingly loom over American communities.' back

Persona - Wikipedia, Persona - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A persona (plural personae or personas), in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask.[citation needed] The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον (prosōpon). Its meaning in the latter Roman period changed to indicate a "character" of a theatrical performance or court of law, when it became apparent that different individuals could assume the same role, and legal attributes such as rights, powers, and duties followed the role. The same individuals as actors could play different roles, each with its own legal attributes, sometimes even in the same court appearance.' back

Rainbow Nation - Wikipedia, Rainbow Nation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Rainbow Nation is a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to describe post-apartheid South Africa, after South Africa's first fully democratic election in 1994.' back

Richard Hinds, Eddie McGuire's criticism pf coin-tosser reveals rapid degeneration of sports commentary and analysis, ' The pertinent question about McGuire's comments, quite rightly posed by the ABC's national sport editor, David Mark, was not about the remarks themselves. It was why McGuire would make them during a sports broadcast. "Eddie McGuire's disdainful comments about Cynthia Banham are so typical of the usual blokey and boring commentary bullshit in which put-downs and mocking in-jokes are the only schtick," tweeted Mark.' back

Stacy Schiff, Vladimir Nabokov, Literary Refugee, ' On seizing power the Bolsheviks made their first victims the intellectuals who had preceded them. In a scene that sounds to have been lifted from one of his son’s future novels, Nabokov’s father managed a narrow escape; he turned out to have been high on the Bolshevik list of deputies to be shot. From Russian shores that year began one of the great exoduses that would mark the century. Nabokov was never to mourn the immense wealth from which he had been separated, only the lost, liberal chapter of Russian history, obliterated by Soviet propaganda.' back

Van Morrison, Into the Mystic, Comment: 'sq8188u 4 days ago Van Morrison is truly one of the greats. That inimitable style, the strain in his voice, that sweet, edgy baritone. Life is more bearable and perhaps explanable having Morrison to ease the anguish.' back