Burns, William J., The Back Channel, Random House 2019 Jacket: 'Over the course of more than three decades as an American diplomat, William J. Burns played a central role in the most consequential episodes of the time—from the bloodless end to the Cold War to the collapse of post-cold War relations with Putin's Russia, from the post-9/11 tumult in the Middle East to the secret nuclear talks with Iran. Burns is widely admiredas one of themost distinguished and admired American statesmen of the last half century.' 
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Damasio, Antonio R, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Harcourt Brace 1999 Jacket: 'In a radical departure from current views on consciousness, Damasio contends that explaining how we make mental images or attend to those images will not suffice to elucidate the mystery. A satisfactory hypothesis for the making of consciousness must explain how the sense of self comes to mind. Damasio suggests that the sense of self does not depend on memory or on reasoning or even less on language. [it] depends, he argues, on the brain's ability to portray the living organism in the act of relating to an object. That ability, in turn, is a consequence of the brain's involvement in the process of regulating life. The sense of self began as yet another device aimed an ensuring survival.' 
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McGregor, Richard, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, Harper 2010 Amazon editorial review: From Publishers Weekly 'McGregor, a journalist at the Financial Times, begins his revelatory and scrupulously reported book with a provocative comparison between China's Communist Party and the Vatican for their shared cultures of secrecy, pervasive influence, and impenetrability. The author pulls back the curtain on the Party to consider its influence over the industrial economy, military, and local governments. McGregor describes a system operating on a Leninist blueprint and deeply at odds with Western standards of management and transparency. Corruption and the tension between decentralization and national control are recurring themes--and are highlighted in the Party™s handling of the disturbing Sanlu case, in which thousands of babies were poisoned by contaminated milk powder. McGregor makes a clear and convincing case that the 1989 backlash against the Party, inexorable globalization, and technological innovations in communication have made it incumbent on the Party to evolve, and this smart, authoritative book provides valuable insight into how it has--and has not--met the challenge. ' Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 
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Russell, Bertrand, Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Routledge 2009 ' Logical Atomism is a philosophy that sought to account for the world in all its various aspects by relating it to the structure of the language in which we articulate information. In The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Bertrand Russell, with input from his young student Ludwig Wittgenstein, developed the concept and argues for a reformed language based on pure logic. Despite Russell’s own future doubts surrounding the concept, this founding and definitive work in analytical philosophy by one of the world’s most significant philosophers is a remarkable attempt to establish a novel way of thinking.' 
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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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Ai Weiwei, China's censorship can never defeat the internet, 'The internet is uncontrollable. And if the internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It's as simple as that.' back

Amy Remeikis, Alastair Campbell on the 'populist virus' and why Bill Shorten lost, ' “And I think the media changes, not just social media, but the mainstream media has been part of this as well, with the 24/7 news and the way that has changed the nature of news. I think newspapers – not least the influence of Murdoch and others – I think that absolute politicisation, and polarisation of the news media debate, has been exploited and exasperated by populism.” ' back

Ariana Grande, One Love Manchester (June 4th 2017), '
Ariana Grande source Official
Ariana Grande source Offical
6 months ago
[05:55] Mumford & Sons - Timshel
[09:23] Take That - Shine
[13:10] Take That - Giants
[17:44] Take That - Rule the world
[22:40] Robbie Williams - Strong
[28:35] Robbie Williams - Angels
[34:40] Pharrel Williams & Marcus Mumford - Get Lucky
[39:10] Pharrel Williams & Miley Cyrus - Happy
[45:06] Miley Cyrus - Inspired
[49:00] Nial Horan - Slow Hands
[53:08] Nial Horan - This town
[1:02:25] Ariana Grande - Be Alright
[1:06:30] Ariana Grande - Break Free
[1:12:24] Little Mix - Wings
[1:17:55] Ariana Grande & Victoria Monet - Better Days
[1:20:50] Ariana Grande & Black Eyed Peas - Where is the love?
[1:28:30] Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
[1:34:12] PARRS Woods Highschool Choir & Ariana Grande - My Everything

[1:38:17] Mac Miller & Ariana Grande - The Way
[1:42:07] Mac Miller & Ariana Grande - Dang! [1:48:25] Ariana Grande & Miley Cyrus - Don't Dream It's Ov
[1:54:14] Ariana Grande - Side to Side
[2:00:25] Katy Perry - Part of me
[2:04:43] Katy Perry - Roar
[2:11:35] Justin Bieber - Love Yourself
[2:14:54] Justin Bieber - Cold Water
[2:19:44] Ariana Grande - Love me harder
[2:27:00] ColdPlay & Ariana Grande - don't look back in anger
[2:31:50] ColdPlay - Fix You
[2:37:20] Coldplay - Vida La Vida
[2:41:25] Chainsmokers & Coldplay - Something Just Like This
[2:49:05] Liam Gallagher - Rock n Roll Star
[2:53:55] Liam Gallagher - Wall of Glass
[2:57:50] Liam Gallagher - Live Forever
[3:03:36] Ariana Grande - One Last Time
[3:08:30] Ariana Grande - Somewhere over the rainbow
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Claire Smith, Gary Jackson & Jordan Ralph, Budj Bim's world heritage lsting is an Australian first - what other Indigenous cultural sites could be next?, ' Could the Budj Bim listing open the door to other Australian Indigenous sites obtaining a World Heritage listing? Here are five that certainly deserve greater attention. When considering them it’s important to understand how ancestral beings inhabit living Indigenous landscapes, which they created during the era known as the Dreaming. Today, these beings continue to live in the land. They are seen by Indigenous people as powerful and intelligent, with the capacity to hurt those who don’t act in the right way. They can be in different places at the same time. And they see everything.' 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.' [C. E. Shannon , “Communication in the presence of noise,” Proc. IRE, vol. 37, pp. 10–21, Jan. 1949.] back

Codec - Wikipedia, Codec - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder-decoder or, less commonly, compressor-decompressor.' back

Commonwealth of Australia, National Heritage Places - Dampier Archipelago (including Burrup Peninsula), ' On the magnificent Dampier Archipelago in Western Australia, where the striking red earth of the Burrup Peninsula meets the blue Indian Ocean, rock engravings thought to number in the millions and other significant sites are helping us learn more about our Indigenous heritage. . . . The Archipelago was formed 6-8000 years ago when rising sea levels flooded what were once coastal plains. The underlying rocks are amongst the oldest on earth, formed in the Archaean period more than 2400 million years ago. Indigenous significance This is a sacred place, home to Indigenous Australians for tens of thousands of years. Ngarda-Ngarlie people say ancestral beings created the land during the Dreamtime, and the spirits of Ngkurr, Bardi and Gardi continue to live in the area. They have left their mark in features like the Marntawarrura, or 'black hills,' said to be stained from the blood of the creative beings.' back

Constant Mews, Explainer: what Western civilization owes to Islamic cultures, ' Algebra, alchemy, artichoke, alcohol, and apricot all derive from Arabic words which came to the West during the age of Crusades. Even more fundamental are the Indo-Arabic numerals (0-9), which replaced Roman numerals during the same period and revolutionised our capacity to engage in science and trade. This came about through Latin discovery of the ninth-century Persian scholar, Al-Khwarizmi (whose name gives us the word algorithm). This debt to Islamic civilisation contradicts the claim put forward by political scientist Samuel Huntington in his book The Clash of Civilizations some 25 years ago, that Islam and the West have always been diametrically opposed. ' back

Debugging - Wikipedia, Debugging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Debugging is the process of finding and resolving defects or problems within the program that prevent correct operation of computer software or a system.' back

Erin Blakemore, Colorful, fantastical and divine: How real and imaginary animals reveal Christian faith in the Middle Ages, ' Animals don’t just stalk through jungles or soar through the air. They inhabit the human imagination, too. And in medieval times, they shaped how humans thought of their relationships to God. Bestiaries — books that described real and imaginary animals — were ornate, illuminated manuscripts full of information on a variety of beasts, accompanied by descriptions of their moral significance within Christianity. “Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World,” at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, dives into those tomes. It reveals how human relationships with fantastical and real-life creatures have — and haven’t — changed over the centuries.' back

Gregory J. Chaitin, Randomness and Mathematical Proof, 'Although randomness can be precisely defined and can even be measured, a given number cannot be proved to be random. This enigma establishes a limit to what is possible in mathematics.'
Scientific American 232, No. 5 (May 1975), pp. 47-52 back

Gurrumul (film) - Wikipedia, Gurrumul (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedis, ' Gurrumul is a 2018 Australian documentary film about the life of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. . . . Celebrated by audiences at home and abroad, indigenous artist Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu was one of the most important and acclaimed voices to ever come out of Australia. Blind from birth, he found purpose and meaning through songs and music inspired by his community and country on Elcho Island in far North East Arnhem Land. Living a traditional Yolngu life, his breakthrough album Gurrumul brought him to a crossroads as audiences and artists around the world began to embrace his music.' back

Isabel Oakeshott & Glen Owen, Trump axed deal to spite Obama. How the Bitish ambassador called the President's action 'diplomatic vandalism fueled by 'personality reasons' - as revealed in more explosive cables that has sparked free speech row while Iran tensions mount, ' Donald Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal as an act of ‘diplomatic vandalism’ to spite his predecessor Barack Obama, Britain’s Ambassador to Washington wrote in a bombshell memo to Downing Street. . . . The new revelation comes after an extraordinary row over the freedom of the press blew up this weekend, with Mr Johnson and leadership rival Jeremy Hunt leading the condemnation of Scotland Yard over its threats to prosecute this newspaper.' back

J. Paul Getty Museum, Bookof Beast: The Bestiary in the Medieval World, 'Animals tumble, soar, and race through the pages of the bestiary, a popular type of medieval book describing the beasts of the world. Abounding with vibrant and fascinating images, the bestiary brought real and fantastical creatures to life for readers. So cherished were these vividly imagined beasts, they often “escaped” from manuscripts to inhabit other art works made during the medieval period, and even up to the present day.' back

Josh Taylor, Quantum leap from Australian research promises super-fast computing power. , ' An Australian research team led by the renowned quantum physicist Prof Michelle Simmons has announced a major breakthrough in quantum computing, which researchers hope could lead to much greater computing power within a decade. Simmons, a former Australian of the Year, and her team at the University of New South Wales announced in a paper published in Nature journal on Thursday that they have been able to achieve the first two-qubit gate between atom qubits in silicon, allowing them to communicate with each other at a 200 times faster rate than previously achieved at 0.8 nanoseconds.' back

Kirchoff's law of thermal radiation - Wikipedia, Kirchoff's law of thermal radiation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Kirchhoff's law states that: For a body of any arbitrary material, emitting and absorbing thermal electromagnetic radiation at every wavelength in thermodynamic equilibrium, the ratio of its emissive power to its dimensionless coefficient of absorption is equal to a universal function only of radiative wavelength and temperature, the perfect black-body emissive power. back

Lesley Russell, Five tis to get the governments started on real health reform, 'Since the election, the Turnbull government has received a great deal of advice on how to counter the pervasive public scepticism about its ongoing commitment to the universality of Medicare. While the impacts of the so-called Mediscare campaign, the Medicare rebate freeze and the “zombie” policies left over from the 2014-15 budget have driven these calls for Coalition action, the real issue is that the previous Abbott-Turnbull government had no health policy agenda, other than budget cuts and the covert exploration of privatisation and competition in the delivery of health-care services.' back

Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty, She Walks in Beauty
George Gordon Byron - 1788-1824

I.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

II.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

III.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

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Mark Joseph Stern, Carter's Quiet Revolution, ' It’s hard to overstate just how uniform the federal judiciary was as Carter took office. Less than 2 percent of Gerald Ford’s nominees had been women and less than 10 percent nonwhite. Before that, less than 1 percent of Richard Nixon’s nominees had been women and 4 percent nonwhite. For Carter, ensuring that 15 percent of his nominees were women and 22 percent nonwhite was not just a dramatic change—he had to overcome institutional obstacles, racism, and sexism to make it happen.' back

Massimo Fagioli, Reform or Dismantle, ' One of the effects of the sex-abuse crisis is the current moment of institutional iconoclasm—the temptation to get rid of the institutional element of the Catholic Church. The failures of the church’s institutions are now on full display, even more so than after the revelations of the Spotlight investigation. It is hypocritical, however, to interpret the abuse crisis as a clerical abuse crisis rather than a Catholic abuse crisis. back

Minkowski space - Wikipedia, Minkowski space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematical physics, Minkowski space or Minkowski spacetime is a combination of Euclidean space and time into a four-dimensional manifold where the spacetime interval between any two events is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which they are recorded. Although initially developed by mathematician Hermann Minkowski for Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, the mathematical structure of Minkowski spacetime was shown to be an immediate consequence of the postulates of special relativity.' back

Nick O'Malley, How Germany closed its coal industry without sacking a single miner, ' While Australia continues to open new coal mines, Germany is in the midst of closing down its entire coal sector. The last of the country’s black coal mines was decommissioned last year, the victim of the economic reality that nations like Australia could dig the stuff up cheaper than the Germans could. Now Germany is beginning the process of ending its brown coal industry and shutting down the energy plants that it feeds so it can meet its agreements under the Paris climate accord. Some see Germany’s audacious decommissioning of the industry as a model from which Australian has much to learn. Others believe that Australia is simply politically and culturally ill-equipped to do so. back

Planck's Law - Wikipedia, Planck's Law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, Planck's law describes the spectral radiance of electromagnetic radiation at all wavelengths from a black body at temperature T. As a function of frequency ν. back

Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Ian Moffat, Justin W. Adams & Luca Fiorenza, Teeth 'time capsule reveals that 2 million yars ago, early humans breastfed for up to 6 years, ' Humans’ distant ancestor Australopithecus africanus had a unique approach to raising their young, as shown in our new research published today in Nature. Geochemical analysis of four teeth shows they exclusively breastfed infants for about 6-9 months, before supplementing breast milk with varying amounts of solid food until they were 5-6 years old. The balance between milk and solid food in this period varied cyclically, probably in response to seasonal changes in food availability.' back

Rudolf Nureyev - Wikipedia, Rudolf Nureyev - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, back

The White Crow - Wikipedia, The White Crow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The White Crow is a 2018 British film written by David Hare and directed by Ralph Fiennes starring Oleg Ivenko as the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.[1] It is inspired by the book Rudolf Nureyev: The Life by Julie Kavanagh.' back

UNDP, Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating opportunites for future generations, Jacket: '... the report concludes that Arab countries need to embark on rebuilding their societies on the basis of: Full respect for human rights and freedoms as the cornerstone of good governance, leading to human development; the complete empowerment of Arab women, taking advantage of all opportunities to build their capabilities and to enable them to exercise those capabilities to the full; [and] the consolidation of knowledge acquisition and its effective utilisation. As a key driver of progress, knowledge must be brought to bear efficiently and productively in all aspects of society, with the goal of enhancing human well being across the region. back

William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course, 'The definition of Psychology may best be given in the words of Professor Ladd, as the description and explanation of states of consciousness as such. By state of consciousness are meant such things s sensations desires emotions cognitions, reasonings, decisions, volitions, and the like. Their 'explanation' must of course include the study of their causes, conditions, and immediate consequences, as far as these can be ascertained. back

Zsuzsanna Csereklyei, Wind and Solar cut rather than boost Australia's wholesale electricity prices, Colleagues Songze Qu and Tihomir Ancev from the University of Sydney and I have examined the contribution of each type of generator to wholesale prices, half hour by half hour over the eight years between November 1, 2010 and June 30, 2018. We find that, rather than pushing prices up, each extra gigawatt of dispatched wind generation cuts the wholesale electricity price by about A$11 per megawatt hour at the time of generation, while each extra gigawatt of utility-scale solar cuts it A$14 per megawatt hour.' back