Berndt, Ronald M, Love Songs of Arnhem Land, 1978 Jacket: Love Songs of Arnhem Land is a contribution towards an increasing interest within and outside Australia in understanding Australian Aboriginal Culture. . . . The song-poetry itself is hauntingly beautiful. Its traditional imagery creates a special and unique atmosphere. Men and women are agents in a divine plan in which they play a crucial role, working in harmony with the forces of nature symbolized by the mythic beings. . . . ' 
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Butler, E M, The Myth of the Magus, Cambridge University Press 1993 Amazon product description: 'The Magus, a legendary magician of superhuman powers, is an archetype central to myth and religion across many cultures. Identifying its anthropological origins in ancient rituals performed by a shaman or wizard to ensure the prosperity of his tribe, E. M. Butler goes on to trace its subsequent development in pre-Christian religious and mystic philosophers, in medieval sorcerers and alchemists, and finally in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century occult revival. From Zoroaster to Solomon, Merlin to Faust, Cagliostro to Rasputin, legends of the Magus are explored and where possible compared with the historical record in this fascinating account, first published in 1948, of one of the major figures in religious and occult mythology.' 
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Comparetti, Domenico, and E F M Bernecke (translator), Vergil in the Middle Ages, Princeton University Press 1872-1996 Amazon Product Description 'From its first complete Italian printing in 1872 up to the present day, Domenico Comparetti's Vergil in the Middle Ages has been acknowledged as a masterpiece, regarded by some critics as "a true and proper history of European consciousness from antiquity to Dante." Treating Vergil's poetry as a foundation of Latin European identity, Comparetti seeks to give a complete history of the medieval conception of the preeminent poet. Scholars of the time had transformed Vergil into a sage and a seer, a type of universal philosopher--even a Christian poet and a guide of a Christian poet. In the mid-twelfth century, there surfaced legends that converted Vergil into a magician, endowing him with supernatural powers. Comparetti explores the ongoing interest in Vergil's poetry as it appeared in popular folklore and legends as well as in medieval classical scholarship. This great synthesizing work, which has been unavailable for over twenty years, is now back in print, based on E.F.M. Benecke's 1895 translation of the Italian second edition.' 
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Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Life of Merlin, Vita Merlini, Forgotten Books (January 9, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 1605064831 ISBN-13: 978-1605064833 2008 Amazon product description: 'Vita Merlini, or The Life of Merlin, is a work by Geoffrey of Monmouth composed in Latin around AD 1150. It retells incidents from the life of the Brython Merlin, and is based on traditional material about the character. Merlin is referred to as a prophet, king and law-giver in the text. There are multiple episodes in which he losing his mind and lives in the wilderness like a wild animal, similar to Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel. It is also the first work to describe the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, as Morgen.' 
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Goddard, Peter (editor), and Abraham Pais, Maurice Jacob, David Olive, Michael Atiyah and Stephen Hawking, Paul Dirac, The Man and His work, Cambridge University Press 1998 Amazon Product Description 'Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was one of the founders of quantum theory. He is numbered alongside Newton, Maxwell and Einstein as one of the greatest physicists of all time. Together the lectures in this volume, originally presented on the occasion of the dedication ceremony for a plaque honoring Dirac in Westminster Abbey, give a unique insight into the relationship between Dirac's character and his scientific achievements. The text begins with the dedication address given by Stephen Hawking at the ceremony. Then Abraham Pais describes Dirac as a person and his approach to his work. Maurice Jacob explains how Dirac was led to introduce the concept of antimatter, and its central role in modern particle physics and cosmology. This is followed by David Olive's account of the origin and enduring influence of Dirac's work on magnetic monopoles. Finally, Sir Michael Atiyah explains the deep and widespread significance of the Dirac equation in mathematics.' 
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Misner, Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. . . . this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity. . . . ' 
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Monk, Ray, Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Vintage ex Jonathan Cape 1990 Review: 'With a subject who demands passionate partisanship, whose words are so powerful but whose actions speak louder, it must have been hard to write this definitive, perceptive and lucid biography. Out goes Norman Malcolm's saintly Wittgenstein, Bartley's tortured, impossibly promiscuous Wittgenstein, and Brian McGuinness's bloodless, almost bodiless Wittgenstein. This Wittgenstein is the real human being: wholly balanced and happily eccentric . . . ' The Times 
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Popper, Karl Raimund, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972 Preface: 'The way in which knowledge progresses, and expecially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests.' [p viii]  
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Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Divine Milieu, Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2001 ' "The volume includes a scholarly and most helpful Foreword by Jesuit scholar Thomas M. King, who outlines the life of Teilhard de Chardin and helps the reader to understand the context in which The Divine Milieu was written. He writes of a Jesuit priest whose work did not sit easily with the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the early twentieth century. He portrays a man in some spiritual turmoil, living through events of great magnitude, who is seeking to make sense of all that is around him and of his own reaction to those events. The Divine Milieu was not written for those who were comfortable in their Catholic faith, but for the doubters and waverers – those for whom classical expressions of religious faith had long lost their meaning. I commend this volume.” —Rev. Adrian Burdon, Religion and Theology' 
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Whitehead, Alfred North, and Bertrand Arthur Russell, Principia Mathematica (Cambridge Mathematical Library), Cambridge University Press 1910, 1962 The great three-volume Principia Mathematica is deservedly the most famous work ever written on the foundations of mathematics. Its aim is to deduce all the fundamental propositions of logic and mathematics from a small number of logical premisses and primitive ideas, and so to prove that mathematics is a development of logic. Not long after it was published, Goedel showed that the project could not completely succeed, but that in any system, such as arithmetic, there were true propositions that could not be proved.  
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Wiener, Norbert, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, MIT Press 1996 The classic founding text of cybernetics. 
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Mlot, Christine, "Antibiotics in Nature: Beyond Biological Warfare", Science, 324, 5935, 26 June 2009, page 1637-1639. Science: Microbiology: 'A body of evidence emerges that the infection-quelling miracle drugs of biomedicine play more basic roles in the metabolism of microbial communities.'. back

Adam Gartrell, Julie Bishop v Malcolm Turnbull on Islamic State threat, 'Of course, Turnbull wasn't just taking aim at Bishop; he was responding more broadly to the overblown national security rhetoric his government – from the Prime Minister down – can't seem to resist. The Lowy Institute's Sam Roggeveen put it best. "Terrorism is a tactic of the weak designed to provoke over-reaction from the strong," he wrote recently. "And rising to such provocation – even if only rhetorically – helps the terrorists." ' back

Allesandro R Demaio, Planetary and human health- one coilm two sides, 'Released this week in the global medical journal, The Lancet, is the The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health. A major piece of research and the outcome of 2 years of work from a global team of scientists, this commission focuses on the health of the planet and its links to our own health as humans. It outlines the serious consequences for us all should we allow Climate Change to continue unchecked, and puts it in clear global health terms.' back

Aluf Benn, 'There's No Alternative to Netanyahu; Our Democracy is Safe,' Says Israel's Top Public Policy Expert, ' No danger Israel will slide into fascism ■ Iran should have been attacked ■ Expelling the Arabs in 1948 was superb statesmanship ■ Trump's peace plan is the best deal Israelis and Palestinians will get ■ A world government of geniuses is needed ■ We need to get used to the idea of having sex with robots ■ At age 92, Prof. Yehezkel Dror publishes his ‘great valedictory work’' back

Andrew Sheng, Why America's pandemic carnage is a tragedy of global proportions, ' Global cooperation is the rational option, but cannot be achieved when everyone with a different view is emotionally attacked, inviting retaliation and escalation of tensions. Rational or scientific views cannot prevail when everyone is emotionally traumatised. This is why the American carnage is a real global tragedy. National security is taking precedence over economic logic. When the leading economy and military power feels vulnerable and insecure, there can be no global peace.' back

Apostolic succession - Wikipedia, Apostolic succession - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Apostolic succession is the doctrine in some of the more ancient Christian communions that the succession of bishops, in uninterrupted lines, is historically traceable back to the original Twelve Apostles[1] Within Catholic Christianity it "is one of four elements which define the true Church of Jesus Christ" [2] and legitimizes the existing sacramental offices, as it is considered necessary for a bishop to perform legitimate or "valid" ordinations of priests, deacons, and other bishops. Apostolic succession is transmitted during episcopal consecrations (the ordination of bishops) by the laying on of hands of bishops previously consecrated within the apostolic succession.' back

Barak Ravid, Nuclear restrictions and inspections in echange for lifting of sanctions: The details of the Iran deal, 'Implementation of the deal will begin no later than three months after the resolution is passed. A crucial part of the implementation phase will be the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report on whether Iran has met all its commitments regarding the limits placed on its nuclear program. Only after the IAEA confirms this will international sanctions on Iran be removed.' back

Ben Hubard and Mayy El Sheikh, Wikileaks Shows a Saudi Obsession with Iran, 'BEIRUT, Lebanon — For decades, Saudi Arabia has poured billions of its oil dollars into sympathetic Islamic organizations around the world, quietly practicing checkbook diplomacy to advance its agenda. But a trove of thousands of Saudi documents recently released by WikiLeaks reveals in surprising detail how the government’s goal in recent years was not just to spread its strict version of Sunni Islam — though that was a priority — but also to undermine its primary adversary: Shiite Iran.' back

Best, Burke & Jotzo, Carbon pricing efficacy: cross country evidence, ' Abstract: To date there has been an absence of cross-country empirical studies on the efficacy of carbon pricing. In this paper we present estimates of the contribution of carbon pricing to reducing national carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fuel combustion, using several econometric modelling approaches that control for other key policies and for structural factors that are relevant for emissions. We use data for 142 countries over a period of two decades, 43 of which had a carbon price in place at the national level or below by the end of the study period. We find evidence that the average annual growth rate of CO2 emissions from fuel combustion has been around two percentage points lower in countries that have had a carbon price compared to countries without. An additional euro per tonne of CO2 in carbon price is associated with a reduction in the subsequent annual emissions growth rate of approximately 0.3 percentage points, all else equal. While it is impossible to fully control for all relevant influences on emissions growth, our estimates suggest that the emissions trajectories of countries with and without carbon prices tend to diverge over time.' back

Cathy Gere, The Drama of the Commons, ' For Klein and many others on the green left, nature is caught in a Manichean struggle between the forces of light and darkness. For me, the chiaroscuro is a good deal less intense. From annual long-haul flights to the laptop upon which I type these words, my own incessant contributions to ecosystem destruction make it hard for me to divide the world into friends and enemies. I don’t see rampant capitalist greed versus selfless socialist generosity; I see most of us muddling along, full of contradictions, trying to be reasonably good people, telling ourselves self-justifying stories about our actions and motivations, full of fierce opinions about the state of the world, but principally focused at the day-to-day level on those people whose happiness we directly affect.' back

Chris Buckley, Chinese Authorities Detail and Denounce Rights Lawyers, 'HONG KONG — At least five Chinese lawyers from a firm that specialized in rights cases have been detained by the police in Beijing and accused of running a criminal syndicate to smear the Communist Party and “create social chaos” through their litigation, state-run news media said on Saturday. The accusations bear the hallmarks of a concerted operation, and signaled one of the most high-profile efforts by the party under President Xi Jinping to discredit the “rights defense movement,” which has tried to challenge state power through litigation and publicity, said experts and rights advocates.' back

Complete metric space - Wikipedia, Complete metric space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematical analysis, a metric space M is called complete (or a Cauchy space) if every Cauchy sequence of points in M has a limit that is also in M or, alternatively, if every Cauchy sequence in M converges in M. Intuitively, a space is complete if there are no "points missing" from it (inside or at the boundary). For instance, the set of rational numbers is not complete, because e.g. √2 is "missing" from it, even though one can construct a Cauchy sequence of rational numbers that converges to it (see further examples below). It is always possible to "fill all the holes", leading to the completion of a given space, . . . ' back

David Crowe, 'Momentous': Palace Letters tipped to set off new republic debate, ' While the initial focus will be on the contested events of November 1975, Professor Hocking said the details in the letters would raise questions over "royal secrecy" claims for the Queen and whether Australia should become a republic. "Inevitably, it will reflect upon how we feel having, as our head of state, a queen who is resident elsewhere and is not an Australian citizen," she said. "If we see that the system that we are told is not broken actually was broken in 1975, then I think people will think about whether we can do it better – without that murky, quasi-imperial notion of royal secrecy.' back

David Olusoga, The history of British slave ownership has been buried: now its scale can be revealed, 'The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 formally freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. What is less well known is that the same act contained a provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their “property”. The compensation commission was the government body established to evaluate the claims of the slave owners and administer the distribution of the £20m the government had set aside to pay them off. That sum represented 40% of the total government expenditure for 1834. It is the modern equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn.' back

Emir Suljagic, In Srbrenica, a new war is waged, ' Recently, as part of research I have been working on, I came into possession of the transcripts of 57 sittings of the secessionist Bosnian Serb "assembly" which had been established in October 1991 by Radovan Karadzic. It is a common assumption, even among the scholars of genocide that genocidal intent is born and discussed in small, conspiratorial circles. In this case, however, it was openly discussed in a forum of between 60 and 80 individuals, their discussions recorded for posterity on purpose. Every single aspect of the eradication of the Muslim population was debated in detail. Support for the "radical solution", as Karadzic once referred to the genocidal operation in and around Srebrenica, was so overwhelming that the entire enterprise could safely be named "genocide by plebiscite".' back

Euripides, Bacchae, 'First production posthumously in 403BCE At City Dionysia 1st Prize Translated by George Theodoridis © 2005 back

Frieden, Koplan, Satcher & Besser, We ran the CDC. No president has politicized its science more than the way Trump has., ' As America begins the formidable task of getting our kids back to school and all of us back to work safely amid a pandemic that is only getting worse, public health experts face two opponents: covid-19, but also political leaders and others attempting to undermine the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the debate last week around reopening schools more safely showed, these repeated efforts to subvert sound public health guidelines introduce chaos and uncertainty while unnecessarily putting lives at risk.' back

Giles Parkinson, The Coalition's push against renewables is bizarre, contradictory, risky nonsense, back

Gilles de Rais - Wikipedia, Gilles de Rais - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Gilles de Rais (1404 – 1440), was a Breton knight, the companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc, and a Marshal of France, but is best known as a prolific serial killer of children. He was born in late 1404 to Guy de Laval and Marie de Craon, but grew up under the tutelage of his maternal grandfather Jean de Craon following the deaths of his parents in 1415.' back

Honore de Balzac, Father Goriot, back

Ibrahim Al-Marashi, The 3 myths: how the Iran deal impacts the Middle East, 'The nuclear agreement signed in Vienna is a major breakthrough for the United States-Iran relations, and despite warnings, it will not result in further instability in the Middle East. However, if you listen to political elites and media commentators, both in the US and the Middle East, you would believe the world is about to enter into an age of utter catastrophe - a catastrophe centred around Middle Eastern instability - prompted by Iran and its array of influential powers. These myths are not grounded in any actual understanding of regional history or political dynamics, but rather are the products of fear tactics with the underlying intent of appealing to domestic constituencies - particularly those of the US and Israel.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls, Prolegomenon to Scientific Theology, ' This thesis is an attempt to carry speculative theology beyond the apogee it reached in the medieval work of Thomas Aquinas into the world of empirical science (Aquinas 2019). Since the time of Aquinas, our understanding of the Universe has increased enormously. The ancient theologians not only conceived a perfect God, but they also saw the world as a very imperfect place. Their reaction was to place God outside the world. I will argue that we live in a Universe which approaches infinity in size and complexity, is as perfect as can be, and fulfils all the roles traditionally attributed to God, creator, lawmaker and judge.' back

Jim Yardly and Binyamin Appelbaum, In Fiery Speeches, Francis excoriates Global Capitalism, 'The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution. “This is not theology as usual; this is him shouting from the mountaintop,” said Stephen F. Schneck, the director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic studies at Catholic University of America in Washington.' back

John von Neumann, The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, ' Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by John von Neumann translated from the German by Robert T. Beyer (New Edition) edited by Nicholas A. Wheeler
Princeton UP Princeton & Oxford Preface: ' This book is the realization of my long-held intention to someday use the resources of TEX to produce a more easily read version of Robert T. Beyer’s authorized English translation (Princeton University Press, 1955) of John von Neumann’s classic Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik (Springer, 1932). This content downloaded from 129.127.145.240 on Sat, 30 May 2020 22:38:31 UTC
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Lebesgue integration - Wikipedia, Lebesgue integration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, Lebesgue integration refers to both the general theory of integration of a function with respect to a general measure, and to the specific case of integration of a function defined on a sub-domain of the real line or a higher dimensional Euclidean space with respect to the Lebesgue measure. This article focuses on the more general concept.' back

Lorena Allam, Victoria to set up Australia's first truth and justice commission to recognise wrongs against Aboriginal people, ' Victoria will set up a truth and justice process to “formally recognise historical wrongs and ongoing injustices” against Aboriginal people, the first state or territory to undertake such a commission. The process will work in parallel with the treaty process currently under way, and will be designed and led by the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria. The terms of reference for a truth-telling process are yet to be determined but the “work will begin immediately”, the minister for Aboriginal affairs, Gabrielle Williams, said.' back

Marclo Duhalde & Brian Wang, The slave trade, ' The shocking video of George Floyd being killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis earlier this year provoked a wave of protests in the United States and around the world. Several countries have been forced to reckon with issues of systemic racism and injustice, as well as the ugliest aspects of colonialism, including slavery, which brought millions of Africans to the New World, enduring inhuman conditions both in transit and on arrival. ' back

Matthew Beard, Ethics isn't just useful, its our only hope for moral progress, 'Moral progress refers to the idea that although we live in an unjust society in many respects, it is at least growing - slowly - less unjust thanks to growing awareness of and recognition for our moral responsibilities toward others. This is precisely the conclusion that Kwame Anthony Appiah deals with in The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, which focuses not on the presence of unjust social practices, but on the fact that these were eventually rejected. That they ever existed is rightly the subject of criticism, but the fact that they were overthrown should give us faith in ethics, not despair of its usefulness.' back

Matthew Boudway, Piketty, Sachs, Wren-Lewis: Stop bleeding Greece, 'As most of the world knew it would, the financial demands made by Europe have crushed the Greek economy, led to mass unemployment, a collapse of the banking system, made the external debt crisis far worse, with the debt problem escalating to an unpayable 175 percent of GDP. The economy now lies broken with tax receipts nose-diving, output and employment depressed, and businesses starved of capital. The humanitarian impact has been colossal—40 percent of children now live in poverty, infant mortality is sky-rocketing and youth unemployment is close to 50 percent.' back

National Cancer Institute, Angiogenesis, 'Cancer researchers studying the conditions necessary for cancer metastasis have discovered that one of the critical events required is the growth of a new network of blood vessels. This process of forming new blood vessels is called angiogenesis.' back

Nick Cohen, Anne Applebaum: how my old friends paved the way for Trump and Brexit, Review of Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends; 'Readers should be glad she bided her time. Applebaum can bring a candle into the darkness of the populist right precisely because she stayed on the right for so long. She does not know whether it can be beaten. She’s a journalist not a soothsayer. But I know that if you want to fight it, her writing is an arsenal that stores the sharpest weapons to hand.' back

Passion (2012 film) - Wikipedia, Passion (2012 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Passion is a 2012 erotic thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace. It is an English-language remake of Alain Corneau's 2010 thriller film Love Crime, but with the ending greatly altered. The film is an international co-production between France and Germany. The film was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival. ' back

Procrustes - Wikipedia, Procrustes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In Greek mythology, Procrustes (Προκρούστης) or "the stretcher [who hammers out the metal]", also known as Prokoptas or Damastes (Δαμαστής) "subduer", was a rogue smith and bandit from Attica who physically attacked people by stretching them or cutting off their legs, so as to force them to fit the size of an iron bed. In general, when something is Procrustean, different lengths or sizes or properties are fitted to an arbitrary standard.' back

Robert S. Mueller III, Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so, ' The work of the special counsel’s office — its report, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions — should speak for itself. But I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office. The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.' back

Separable space - Wikipedia, Separable space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics a topological space is called separable if it contains a countable, dense subset; that is, there exists a sequence { x _nn = 1 ^∞ of elements of the space such that every nonempty open subset of the space contains at least one element of the sequence. Like the other axioms of countability, separability is a "limitation on size", not necessarily in terms of cardinality (though, in the presence of the Hausdorff axiom, this does turn out to be the case; see below) but in a more subtle topological sense. In particular, every continuous function on a separable space whose image is a subset of a Hausdorff space is determined by its values on the countable dense subset.' back

Stalinism - Wikipedia, Stalinism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Stalinism is the means of governing and related policies implemented by Joseph Stalin. Stalinist policies in the Soviet Union included: state terror, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, a centralized state, collectivization of agriculture, cult of personality, and subordination of interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—deemed by Stalinism to be the most forefront vanguard party of communist revolution at the time.' back

Suzannah Henty, My family have been celebrated as pioneers but I know their colonial history wasn't fully told, ' The words that would correctly describe what happened, ethnic cleansing and genocide, were never used. We were certainly never told that this was written into the current system of Australian governance. . . . The state of Victoria was not discovered, as the history books tell us, it was established following a violent war between the British and Gunditjmara peoples.' back

Tensor - Wikipedia, Tensor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Tensors are geometric objects that describe linear relations between vectors, scalars, and other tensors. Elementary examples of such relations include the dot product, the cross product, and linear maps. Vectors and scalars themselves are also tensors. A tensor can be represented as a multi-dimensional array of numerical values.' back

The Bacchae - Wikipedia, The Bacchae - Wikipedia, 'The Bacchae (Greek: Βάκχαι / Bakchai; also known as The Bacchantes) is an ancient Greek tragedy by the Athenian playwright Euripides. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BCE as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which Euripides' son or nephew probably directed. It won first prize in the City Dionysia festival competition.' back

Tim Dunlop, Tony Abbott's stretegy to bring an end to Egalitarian Australia, 'But this is where the Abbott Government is qualitatively different, even from previous rightwing governments. This Government does not accept the premise of Egalitarian Australia and from day one has sought to destroy it. The three prongs of the strategy to do this are: (1) actual attacks on the institutions of equalisation and redistribution, from healthcare to education to retirement; (2) closing down wherever possible the means of democratic debate; and (3), the demonisation of political opponents in ways more ruthless than any government of the modern era has dared.' back

University College London, Legacies of British Slave-ownership, 'Colonial slavery shaped modern Britain and we all still live with its legacies. The slave-owners were one very important means by which the fruits of slavery were transmitted to metropolitan Britain. We believe that research and analysis of this group are key to understanding the extent and the limits of slavery's role in shaping British history and leaving lasting legacies that reach into the present. The stories of enslaved men and women, however, are no less important than those of slave-owners, and we hope that the encyclopaedia produced in the first phase of the project, while at present primarily a resource for studying slave-owners, will also provide information of value to those researching enslaved people.' back

Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia, Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The term Variety was introduced by W. Ross Ashby to denote the count of the total number of states of a system. The condition for dynamic stability under perturbation (or input) was described by his Law of Requisite Variety. Ashby says: Thus, if the order of occurrence is ignored, the set {c, b, c, a, c, c, a, b, c, b, b, a} which contains twelve elements, contains only three distinct elements- a, b, c. Such a set will be said to have a variety of three elements. He adds The observer and his powers of discrimination may have to be specified if the variety is to be well defined. Variety can be stated as an integer, as above, or as the logarithm to the base 2 of the number i.e. in bits.' back

Wesam Ahmad, To resolve the Palestinian question we need to end colonialism, ' . . . Israel's threat to formally annex parts of occupied Palestinian territory presents yet another international crisis in the making. This is because, with this outrageous move, the Israeli government threatens to unravel the rules-based system of international relations. Today's international law regime was established in the first half of the 20th century not only to regulate relations between states but also to assist the movements for self-determination across the world and oversee the end of colonialism. The looming Israeli annexation of Palestinian land and the global inaction on it evidence the failure of this regime to help end colonialism and put its very raison d'etre in question.' 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.' back