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.' 
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Carey, John, and (editor), The Faber Book of Reportage, Faber and Faber 1987 Jacket: 'What was it like to be caught in the firestorm that buried Pompeii in volcanic ash? To have dinner with Attila the Hun? To witness human sacrifice among the Aztecs? To stifle in the Black Hole of Calcutta? To watch the Charge of the Light Brigade from the heights of Balaclava? To see the Titanic slide beneath the waves? To be in the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki? John Carey has chosed the eye-witness accounts in this book from hundred of memoirs, letters and travel books, as well as from newspapers. The time span reaches from ancient Greece (Thucydides account of Athens stricken by plague) to February 1986 when James Fenton, in the Philippines, joins the crowds ramapging through President Marcos's hastily vacated palace.' 
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Greene, Graham, The Human Factor, Penguin Classics 2008 'The Human Factor is Greene’s most extensive attempt to incorporate into fiction what he had learned of espionage when recruited by MI6 during World War II . . . What it offers is a veteran excursion into Greene’s imaginative world . . . Sometimes seen as a brooding prober into the dark recesses of the soul where sins and scruples alike fester, he is equally at home in sending a narrative careering along at break-neck pace . . . Raising the demarcation line between ‘serious’ fiction and fast-plotted entertainment, Greene ensures that components of both jostle energizingly together in his pages.” –from the Introduction by Peter Kemp --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.' 
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Pais, Abraham, Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press 1986 Preface: 'I will attempt to describe what has been discovered and understood about the constituents of matter, the laws to which they are subject and the forces that act on them [in the period 1895-1983]. . . . I will attempt to convey that these have been times of progress and stagnation, of order and chaos, of belief and incredulity, of the conventional and the bizarre; also of revolutionaries and conservatives, of science by individuals and by consortia, of little gadgets and big machines, and of modest funds and big moneys.' AP 
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Veltman, Martinus, Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics, World Scientific 2003 'Introduction: The twentieth century has seen an enormous progress in physics. The fundamental physics of the first half of the century was dominated by the theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of gravitation and the theory of quantum mechanics. The second half of the century saw the rise of elementary particle physics. . . . Through this development there has been a subtle change in point of view. In Einstein's theory space and time play an overwhelming dominant role. . . . The view that we would like to defend can perhaps best be explaned by an analogy. To us, space-time and the laws of quantum mechanics are like the decor, the setting of a play. The elementary articles are the actors, and physics is what they do. . . . Thus in this book the elementary particles are the central objects.' 
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Aquinas 45, Whether this is a good definition of eternity, "The simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life"., I answer that, As we attain to the knowledge of simple things by way of compound things, so must we reach to the knowledge of eternity by means of time, which is nothing but the numbering of movement by "before" and "after". For since succession occurs in every movement, and one part comes after another, the fact that we reckon before and after in movement, makes us apprehend time, which is nothing else but the measure of before and after in movement. Now in a thing bereft of movement, which is always the same, there is no before or after. As therefore the idea of time consists in the numbering of before and after in movement; so likewise in the apprehension of the uniformity of what is outside of movement, consists the idea of eternity. Further, those things are said to be measured by time which have a beginning and an end in time, because in everything which is moved there is a beginning, and there is an end. But as whatever is wholly immutable can have no succession, so it has no beginning, and no end. Thus eternity is known from two sources: first, because what is eternal is interminable--that is, has no beginning nor end (that is, no term either way); secondly, because eternity has no succession, being simultaneously whole. back

Asher Judah, A playbook for Victoria's Liberals (tip: do what Labor does), 'Hang the leader. Shoot the president. Skin the state director. The mood in the Liberal Party is clear, but it won’t change the scoreboard. One win since 1996, three since 1982. If we are to get back on track, our party will need to do more than organise a lynching. We will need to set a new course for the future.' back

Atomic orbital - Wikipedia, Atomic orbital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In atomic theory and quantum mechanics, an atomic orbital is a mathematical function that describes the wave-like behavior of either one electron or a pair of electrons in an atom.[1] This function can be used to calculate the probability of finding any electron of an atom in any specific region around the atom's nucleus. The term atomic orbital may also refer to the physical region or space where the electron can be calculated to be present, as defined by the particular mathematical form of the orbital.' back

David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, Snowden Used Low Cost Tools to Best N.S.A., 'WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials investigating how Edward J. Snowden gained access to a huge trove of the country’s most highly classified documents say they have determined that he used inexpensive and widely available software to “scrape” the National Security Agency’s networks, and kept at it even after he was briefly challenged by agency officials. Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, Mr. Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, according to a senior intelligence official.' back

K. Scarlett Kingsley & Richard Parry (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Empedocles, ' In the middle of the fifth century BCE, Empedocles of Acragas formulated a philosophical program in hexameter verse that pioneered the influential four-part theory of roots (air, water, earth, and fire) along with two active principles of Love and Strife, which influenced later philosophy, medicine, mysticism, cosmology, and religion. The philosophical system responded to Parmenides’ rejection of change while embracing religious injunctions and magical practices. As a result, Empedocles has occupied a significant position in the history of Presocratic philosophy as a figure moving between mythos and logos, religion and science.' back

Peter Hartcher, First People's triumph or two-edged sword?, ' The Morrison government said that Aboriginality was irrelevant. It ordered that two men, claiming to be Aboriginal but born overseas and lacking Australian citizenship, be deported for failing to meet the test of good character. Both were convicted criminals. But the two men took their case to the High Court. And the seven judges, by a majority of four to three, decided that Aboriginal people cannot be "alien" because they have a deeper connection to this land than citizenship can bestow. So the federal government had no authority to deport them, even though they were not citizens. The court's 1992 decision in the Mabo case already recognised that Indigenous Australians had a unique connection, predating British colonisation, to the land and waters of Australia. Now, as one of the majority judges, James Edelman, put it, this connection is “an underlying fundamental truth that cannot be altered or deemed not to exist by legislation”.' back

Potential well - Wikipedia, Potential well - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' A potential well is the region surrounding a local minimum of potential energy. Energy captured in a potential well is unable to convert to another type of energy (kinetic energy in the case of a gravitational potential well) because it is captured in the local minimum of a potential well. Therefore, a body may not proceed to the global minimum of potential energy, as it would naturally tend to due to entropy.' back

Ross Gittins, All jokes aside, econocrats take it too seriously, 'They say if you still believe at 50 what you believed when you were 15, you haven't lived. Just this week I've now worked at Fairfax Media as an economic journalist for 40 years. Those ages don't quite fit, but my views today are certainly very different from what they were when I started.' Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/all-jokes-aside-econocrats-take-it-too-seriously-20140207-327ck.html#ixzz2smsIz9x8 back