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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Huizinga, Johan , Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Beacon Press 1986 Jacket: 'A writer with a sharp and powerful intelligence, helped by a gift of expression and exposition which is very rare, Huizinga assembles and interprets one of the most fundamental elements of human culture, the instinct for play. Reading this volume, one suddenly discovers how profoundly the achievements in law, science, poverty, war, philosophy and in the arts, are nourished by the instinct of play.' Roger Caillois. 
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Lawrence, David Herbert, and David Farmer (editor) Lindeth Vasey (editor) Amit Chaudari (Introduction), Women in Love, Penguin Classics 2007 Amazon Editorial Review From Library Journal "The published editions of Women in Love , probably Lawrence's greatest novel, have always been remarkably corrupt due to a lengthy, complex process of revision and transcription, a threatened libel suit, and numerous unauthorized bowdlerizations. The editors of this new Cambridge Edition have labored scrupulously to produce an authoritative text. What emerges, if not dramatically different, is fresher and more immediate. The introduction provides a valuable history of the novel's composition, revision, publication, and reception, and though the elaborate textual apparatus is strictly for advanced students of bibliography, the notes are splendid. Lawrence's 1919 Foreword and two early discarded chapters are also included. The recovery of a modern classic.' Keith Cushman, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. 
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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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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.' 
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Popper, Karl Raimund, The Open Society and its Enemies (volume 1) : The Spell of Plato, Routledge 1966 Introduction: 'This book ...attempts to show that [our civilisation] has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth - the transition from tribal or 'closed society', with its submission to magical forces, to the 'open society' which sets free the critical powers of man. ... It further tries to examine the application of the critical and rational methods of science to the problems of the open society.'  
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Russell, Bertrand, Mortals and Others: American Essays 1931-1935 Volume 1, George Allen and Unwin 1975 Jacket: 'No one this century has written essays more trenchantly than Bertrand Russell—to instruct, to inform and to entertain. But the essays published in books during his lifetime represent a fraction if those he actually composed. . . . Mortals and Others serves as a splendid fresh introduction to the compassionate eclecticism of Bertrand Russell's mind.' 
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Wilczek, Frank, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, Basic Books 2008 ' In this excursion to the outer limits of particle physics, Wilczek explores what quarks and gluons, which compose protons and neutrons, reveal about the manifestation of mass and gravity. A corecipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, Wilczek knows what he’s writing about; the question is, will general science readers? Happily, they know what the strong interaction is (the forces that bind the nucleus), and in Wilczek, they have a jovial guide who adheres to trade publishing’s belief that a successful physics title will not include too many equations. Despite this injunction (against which he lightly protests), Wilczek delivers an approachable verbal picture of what quarks and gluons are doing inside a proton that gives rise to mass and, hence, gravity. Casting the light-speed lives of quarks against “the Grid,” Wilczek’s term for the vacuum that theoretically seethes with quantum activity, Wilczek exudes a contagious excitement for discovery. A near-obligatory acquisition for circulating physics collections.' --Gilbert Taylor  
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Agence France-Presse, Coronavirus" Obama calls Trump's handling of pandemic a 'chaotic disaster', ' “What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy – that has become a stronger impulse in American life,” Obama told his former staffers. . . . “It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset – of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ – when that mindset is operationalised in our government,” he said. back

Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World (1948), ' Wyeth’s neighbor Anna Christina Olson inspired the composition, which is one of four paint­ings by Wyeth in which she appears. As a young girl, Olson developed a degenerative muscle condition—possibly polio—that left her unable to walk. She refused to use a wheelchair, preferring to crawl, as depicted here, using her arms to drag her lower body along. “The challenge to me,” Wyeth explained, “was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless.” ' back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 50, 4, Do the angels differ in species?, 'I answer that, Some have said that . . . all the angels of one hierarchy, or even of one order, are of the one species. But this is impossible. For such things as agree in species but differ in number, agree in form, but are distinguished materially. If, therefore, the angels be not composed of matter and form, as was said above (Article 2), it follows that it is impossible for two angels to be of one species; just as it would be impossible for there to be several whitenesses apart, or several humanities, since whitenesses are not several, except in so far as they are in several substances.' back

Christopher Shields (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), The Active Mind of De Anima III 5 , ' After characterizing the mind (nous) and its activities in De Animaiii 4, Aristotle takes a surprising turn. In De Anima iii 5, he introduces an obscure and hotly disputed subject: the active mind or active intellect (nous poiêtikos). Controversy surrounds almost every aspect of De Anima iii 5, not least because in it Aristotle characterizes the active mind—a topic mentioned nowhere else in his entire corpus—as ‘separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality’ (chôristos kai apathês kai amigês, tê ousia energeia; DA iii 5, 430a17–18) and then also as ‘deathless and everlasting’ (athanaton kai aidion; DA iii 5, 430a23). This comes as no small surprise to readers of De Anima, because Aristotle had earlier in the same work treated the mind (nous) as but one faculty (dunamis) of the soul (psuchê), and he had contended that the soul as a whole is not separable from the body (DA ii 1, 413a3–5). back

Denise Gellene, Overlooked No More: June Almeida, Scientist Who Identified the First Coronavirus, back

Eric Roston, Mira Rojanasakul, Paul Murray, Brittany Harris, Demetrios Pogkas and Andre Tartar, Bloomberg Data Dash: A Live Climate Scoreboard for the World, ' These are the numbers that matter. A difficult global transition is happening right now, away from fossil fuels, deforestation, greenhouse-gas pollution and melting ice. It can be measured with precision and clarity. The processes described by this data dashboard are occurring on a planetary scale, and yet our progress can be measured this minute, in parts per million, in metric tons, in fractions of a degree. This is Bloomberg Green’s guide to the worldwide goal of slowing and stopping warming temperatures. This is a record of how far we have to go, and a tool to assess how much we can change.' back

Eugene Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, 'The first point is that the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it. Second, it is just this uncanny usefulness of mathematical concepts that raises the question of the uniqueness of our physical theories.' back

Hikmet Karcic, Why Is the Catholic Church Sanctifying Nazi-collaborating Mass Murderers?, ' This weekend, Sarajevo Cathedral will host a Mass honoring murderous and fiercely anti-Semitic WWII fascists. It’s the latest spike in a long-term project of historical revisionism by Bosnian Croat leaders, Croatia and the Catholic Church ' back

Itay Stern, We Used Gay-friendly Eurovision to Hide the Truth, That We're a Racist and Conservative Country , ' Orna Ben Dor has never watched Eurovision. She once tried to watch, and all she can remember is Izhar Cohen winning for Israel back in 1978. Still, her lack of interest didn’t make her reject the offer she got two years ago – document Eurovision 2019 in Tel Aviv. She had little idea of what she was getting into. Only when she arrived at the scene did she start to understand the scope of this mammoth event, probably the largest ever produced in Israel. The result is the series “We Dared to Dream” on Kan 11 television, which produced Eurovision itself exactly a year ago. The series’ title is derived from the 2019 competition’s slogan, “Dare to Dream,” itself a play on Theodor Herzl’s famous saying, “If you will it, it is no dream.” ' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (2020), Cogntive cosmology, ' The idea here is to lay the foundation for a world order based on a theology that identifies god and the universe. If the Universe is divine, all our experience is experience of god so theology can become a real evidence based science. Since there is but one universe, science will unify theology, as it has unified other disciplines like physics and biology. The unification of theology is a step toward the unification of religion. The unification religion is a step toward the unification of humanity. Finally, the unification of humanity is a step toward respecting and sharing Earth as our true home. With current scientific knowledge and adequate political motivation we have shown that we can, at least locally, radically improve both our condition and the condition of the planet. The principal evils standing in the way of global improvement are ignorance and the greed of those who work purely for profit.' back

Jon Hilsenrath & Jon Kamp, How a Johns Hopkins Professor and Her Chinese Studentd Tracked Coronavirus, back

Leopold Kronecker - Wikipedia, Leopold Kronecker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Leopold Kronecker (December 7, 1823 – December 29, 1891) was a German mathematician who worked on number theory and algebra. He criticized Cantor's work on set theory, and was quoted by Weber (1893) as having said, "God made natural numbers; all else is the work of man".' back

Meryl Kornfield & Hannah Knowles, Obama says end to Michael Flynns case puts rue of law at risk, calls covid-19 response a 'disaster'., ' Former president Barack Obama shared deep worries Friday about the Justice Department’s decision to drop its prosecution of ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn, telling old aides on a call that “our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk,” according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News and confirmed by an Obama spokesperson. Obama also appeared to slam the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster,” offering the sort of blistering criticisms he’s rarely aired in public. Obama said shortly before Trump took office that he would only weigh in on his predecessor’s actions when he believes “our core values may be at stake.” ' back

Michael-Shawn Fletcher, This rainforest was once a grassland savannah maintained by Aborigial people - until colonisation, ' If you go to the Surrey Hills of northwest Tasmania, you’ll see a temperate rainforest dominated by sprawling trees with genetic links going back millions of years. It’s a forest type many consider to be ancient “wilderness”. But this landscape once looked very different. The only hints are a handful of small grassy plains dotting the estate and the occasional giant eucalypt with broad-branching limbs. This is an architecture that can only form in open paddock-like environments – now swarmed by rainforest trees. . . . Our new research shows these grasslands were the result of Palawa people who, for generation upon generation, actively and intelligently manicured this landscape against the ever-present tide of the rainforest expansion we see today. This purposeful intervention demonstrates land ownership. It was their property. Their estate.' back

Paul Krugman, Covid-19 Reality Has a Liberal Bias, ' Indeed, virus trutherism — insisting that Covid-19 deaths are greatly exaggerated and may reflect a vast medical conspiracy — is already widespread on the right. We can expect to see much more of it in the months ahead. At one level, this turn of events shouldn’t surprise us. The U.S. right long ago rejected evidence-based policy in favor of policy-based evidence — denying facts that might get in the way of a predetermined agenda. Fourteen years have passed since Stephen Colbert famously quipped that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” ' back

Platonic epistemology - Wikipedia, Platonic epistemology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Plato's epistemology holds that knowledge of Platonic Ideas is innate, so that learning is the development of ideas buried deep in the soul, often under the midwife-like guidance of an interrogator. In several dialogues by Plato, the character Socrates presents the view that each soul existed before birth with the Form of the Good and a perfect knowledge of Ideas. Thus, when an Idea is "learned" it is actually just "recalled." ' back

Quantum - Wikipedia, Quantum - Wikipedia, the ffree encyclopedia, 'In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction. Behind this, one finds the fundamental notion that a physical property may be "quantized," referred to as "the hypothesis of quantization". This means that the magnitude can take on only certain discrete values. back

Rolf Landauer, Information is a Physical Entity, 'Abstract: This paper, associated with a broader conference talk on the fundamental physical limits of information handling, emphasizes the aspects still least appreciated. Information is not an abstract entity but exists only through a physical representation, thus tying it to all the restrictions and possibilities of our real physical universe. The mathematician's vision of an unlimited sequence of totally reliable operations is unlikely to be implementable in this real universe. Speculative remarks about the possible impact of that on the ultimate nature of the laws of physics are included.' back

Schwinger's quantum action principle - Wikipedia, Schwinger's quantum action principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Schwinger's quantum action principle is a variational approach to quantum field theory introduced by Julian Schwinger. In this approach, the quantum action is an operator. Although it is superficially different from the path integral formulation where the action is a classical function, the modern formulation of the two formalisms are identical.' back

Thomas Kitching, Cosmology is in crisis - but not for the reason you may think, ' A study that surveyed all the published cosmological literature between the years 1996 and 2008 showed that the statistics of the results were too good to be true. In fact, the statistical spread of the results was not consistent with what would be expected mathematically, which means cosmologists were in agreement with each other – but to a worrying degree. This meant that either results were being tuned somehow to reflect the status-quo, or that there may be some selection effect where only those papers that agreed with the status-quo were being accepted by journals.' back

Tony Walker, Australian has dug itself into s hole in it's relationship with China. It's time to find a way out, ' Why Morrison decided to pursue such an intervention immediately after a call to the White House remains a mystery. In the annals of Australian diplomacy, this may well go down as one of the more questionable forays into international diplomacy. One would have to go back to Robert Menzies’s vainglorious efforts on behalf of Australia’s imperial masters to mediate the Suez Crisis in 1956 to find an apt parallel. . . . Morrison needs to pay less attention to a China-obsessed national security establishment and give more credence to advisers who actually know something about China. Most importantly, he should stop digging.' back

William Zheng, Chinese scholar calls for political reform, criticising 'tight control' over Covid-19. A day later, police came for him, ' A constitutional scholar has been taken away by China’s authorities after writing an open letter to representatives of the country’s legislature, criticising the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and calling for freedom of speech. . . . His letter, posted on WeChat on Saturday and addressed to deputies of the National People’s Congress (NPC), was widely circulated online as China prepares to convene its most important parliamentary sessions in less than two weeks’ time. . . . In his WeChat post, Zhang, 43, wrote alongside his attached letter: “The best way to fight for freedom of expression is for everyone to speak as if we already have freedom of speech.” ' 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