Klir (1967), Jiri, and Miroslav Valach, Cybernetic Modelling, Iliffe, SNTL 1965, 1967 Preface: 'The principal purpose of this book is to show the part played by cybernetic modelling in the solution of problems common to the animate and inanimate world. The system, its behaviour and structure are used here as fundamental concepts forming the basis of a wide approach that utilizes the model as a methodological instrument. ...' J Klir and M Valach, Prague, 1965.back

Lonergan (1992), 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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Nielsen (2000), Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2000 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002. 
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Tomonaga (1997), Sin-itiro, The Story of Spin, University of Chicago Press 1997 Jacket: 'The Story of Spin, as told by Sin-itiro Tomonaga and lovingly translated by Takeshi Oka, is a brilliant and witty account of the development of modern quantum theory, which takes electron spin as a pivotal concept. Reading these twelve lectures on the fundamental aspects of physics is a joyful experience that is rare indeed.' Laurie Brown, Northwestern University. 
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Wilczek (2008), 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 & Reuters, Ukraine war: Russia’s propaganda warriors are arguing for use of nuclear weapons, Nobel laureate warns , ' Russian journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov decried on Tuesday Russian propaganda arguing for using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict, warning that would signal “the end of humanity”. . . . Speaking at an event marking the World Press Freedom Day, Muratov, whose own Novaya Gazeta newspaper has been forced to suspend publication amid Moscow’s military intervention, warned that the Kremlin’s “propaganda warriors” were striving to make nuclear weapons use more palatable to the Russian public.' back

Alon Pinkas, Analysis | Israel’s Ukraine Policy Isn't Only Immoral. It's Also Unwise , ' Fumfering – a word we get from Yiddish – means to mumble, mutter, murmur, dither, waffle, be evasive, temporize and stall. Fumfering is also the right term to describe Israel’s immoral and imprudent policy on the Ukraine crisis and war. In a week when Russia has escalated the fighting and rattled its nuclear weapons once again, while the U.S. president has asked Congress for $33 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel’s policy seems to transcend fumfering and is just untenably unwise and morally embarrassing.' back

Ashtekar & Schilling (1997), Geometrical Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, ' States of a quantum mechanical system are represented by rays in a complex Hilbert space. The space of rays has, naturally, the structure of a Kähler manifold. This leads to a geometrical formulation of the postulates of quantum mechanics which, although equivalent to the standard algebraic formulaion, has a very different appearance. In particular, states are now represented by points of a symplectic manifold (which happens to have, in addition, a compatible Riemannian metric), observables are represented by certain real- valued functions on this space and the Schrödinger evolution is captured by the symplectic flow generated by a Hamiltonian function.' back

Cantor's paradox - Wikipedia, Cantor's paradox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In set theory, Cantor's paradox is derivable from the theorem that there is no greatest cardinal number, so that the collection of "infinite sizes" is itself infinite. The difficulty is handled in axiomatic set theory by declaring that this collection is not a set but a proper class; in von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory it follows from this and the axiom of limitation of size that this proper class must be in bijection with the class of all sets. Thus, not only are there infinitely many infinities, but this infinity is larger than any of the infinities it enumerates.' back

Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematical set theory, Cantor's theorem is a fundamental result which states that, for any set A , the set of all subsets of A, the power set of A, has a strictly greater cardinality than A itself. For finite sets, Cantor's theorem can be seen to be true by simple enumeration of the number of subsets. Counting the empty set as a subset, a set with n elements has a total of n 2>sup> subsets, and the theorem holds because n2>sup> > nfor all non-negative integers. Much more significant is Cantor's discovery of an argument that is applicable to any set, and shows that the theorem holds for infinite sets also.' back

Florian Humpenöder et al, Projected environmental benefits of replacing beef with microbial protein, ' Ruminant meat provides valuable protein to humans, but livestock production has many negative environmental impacts, especially in terms of deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, water use and eutrophication1. In addition to a dietary shift towards plant-based diets2, imitation products, including plant-based meat, cultured meat and fermentation-derived microbial protein (MP), have been proposed as means to reduce the externalities of livestock production3–7. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have estimated substantial environmental benefits of MP, produced in bioreactors using sugar as feedstock, especially compared to ruminant meat3,7. Here we present an analysis of MP as substitute for ruminant meat in forward-looking global land-use scenarios towards 2050. Our study complements LCA studies by estimating the environmental benefits of MP within a future socio-economic pathway. Our model projections show that substituting 20% of per-capita ruminant meat consumption with MP globally by 2050 (on a protein basis) offsets future increases in global pasture area, cutting annual deforestation and related CO2 emissions roughly in half, while also lowering methane emissions. However, further upscaling of MP, under the assumption of given consumer acceptance, results in a non-linear saturation effect on reduced deforestation and related CO2 emissions—an effect that cannot be captured with the method of static LCA.' back

Jalgris Hodson, If Elon Musk succeeds in his Twitter takeover, it would restrict, rather than promote, free speech, ' In various research projects since 2018, we have interviewed scholars who have experienced online harassment, surveyed academics about their experiences with harassment, conducted in-depth reviews of literature detailing how knowledge workers experience online harassment, and reached out to institutions that employ knowledge workers who experience online harassment. Overwhelmingly, throughout our various projects, we’ve noticed some common themes: Individuals are targeted for online harassment on platforms like Twitter simply because they are women or members of a minority group (racialized, gender non-conforming, disabled or otherwise marginalized). The topics people post about matter less than their identities in predicting the intensity of online harassment people are subjected to. Men who experience online harassment, often experience a different type of harassment than women or marginalized people. Women, for example, tend to experience more sexualized harassment, such as rape threats. When people experience harassment, they seek support from their organizations, social media platforms and law enforcement, but often find the support they receive is insufficient. When people do not receive adequate support from their organizations, social media platforms and law enforcement, they adopt strategies to protect themselves, including withdrawing from social media.' back

John D. Norton (2022), Home Page, ' My research interests in history of physics began with close scrutiny of Einstein's discovery of the general theory of relativity. Einstein's "Zurich notebook gives us extraordinary insight into Einstein's step by step reflections at a decisive moment in the discovery of the theory.' back

Keith E. Yandell, Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881–1955), ' Pierre Teilhard de Chardin taught that the evolutionary process is governed by a ‘law of complexification’ which dictates that inorganic matter will reach ever more complex forms, resulting in inorganic matter being followed by organic matter and organic matter being followed by conscious life forms.' back

Kendall-Taylor & Frantz, Opinion | Is Russia Better Off Without Putin? The Answer is Changing. , ' We have studied autocratic regimes for many years, and the empirical record increasingly supports the conclusion that a Russia with Putin is likely to be worse than one without him. In our research, we have analyzed the leadership transitions of autocrats who have been in power for 20 years or more, as Putin has been, to gauge what is likely to happen once Putin leaves power.' back

Nick Toscano, Power struggle: The fight for the soul of Australia’s largest polluter, ' AGL, Cannon-Brookes said, was headed down a path that would “entrench” fossil fuels in our economy and was wholly inconsistent with limiting global warming. Through a controversial demerger, AGL’s board is proposing to spin out its carbon-heavy power stations into a standalone company that would continue burning coal until 2045 – more than 20 years away. The demerger is going to a shareholder vote on June 15. And Mike Cannon-Brookes is prepared to do everything he can to stop it.' back

Niko Vorobyov, Patriarch Kirill: Putin ally faces backlash after ‘blessing’ war, ' On March 16, Pope Francis held a video meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the 75-year-old leader of the Russian Orthodox Church and a longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin. The head of the Catholic church warned the Russian patriarch against hiding behind religion to justify armed aggression and conquest. “Once upon a time there was also talk in our churches of holy war or just war,” the pope said, according to the Vatican press office. “Today we cannot speak like this.” Ten days earlier, in a sermon, Patriarch Kirill appeared to endorse Moscow’s so-called “special peacekeeping operation,” as the war on Ukraine is officially called in Russia. “We have entered into a struggle that has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance,” the patriarch said.' back

Rita Ferrone, At Least Take the Bodies, ' Vladimir Putin’s political interests are served by keeping the body count a secret and suppressing evidence of Russian losses. A stream of corpses returning to the villages and towns of the Russian Federation would falsify his preferred narrative of a swift and successful “special military operation.” As the number of casualties continues to mount, so does the pressure to conceal them. Statistics on this question are impossible to verify, but on March 24 NATO estimated that between seven thousand and fifteen thousand Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine, whereas Russia’s defense ministry has admitted to only 1,351 deaths.' back

Russell's paradox - Wikipedia, Russell's paradox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'According to naive set theory, any definable collection is a set. Let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. If R is not a member of itself, then its definition dictates that it must contain itself, and if it contains itself, then it contradicts its own definition as the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. This contradiction is Russell's paradox.' back

Sian Powell, Escape from Hong Kong: The locals starting new lives in Australia, ' Sophie Mak will probably never go home. She has been too vocal and too critical of both China’s and Hong Kong’s governments over the years, using Twitter to comment on the unfolding tragedy in her homeland, Hong Kong. With long black hair, a short-sleeved, bright red dress and a surprisingly deep and husky voice, Mak, 24, is a typical Hongkonger: enthusiastic, committed to democracy, and deeply aware of the dangers threatening her home.' back

Spin (physics) - Wikipedia, Spin (physics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In quantum mechanics and particle physics, spin is an intrinsic form of angular momentum carried by elementary particles, composite particles (hadrons), and atomic nuclei.
Spin is one of two types of angular momentum in quantum mechanics, the other being orbital angular momentum. Orbital angular momentum is the quantum-mechanical counterpart to the classical notion of angular momentum: it arises when a particle executes a rotating or twisting trajectory (such as when an electron orbits a nucleus). The existence of spin angular momentum is inferred from experiments, such as the Stern–Gerlach experiment, in which particles are observed to possess angular momentum that cannot be accounted for by orbital angular momentum alone.' back

Supererogation - Wikipedia, Supererogation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, "works of supererogation" (also called "acts of supererogation") are those performed beyond what God requires. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7, Saint Paul says that while everyone is free to marry, it is better to refrain from marriage and remain celibate to better serve God. The Roman Catholic Church holds that the counsels of perfection are supererogatory acts, which specific Christians may engage in above their moral duties.' back

Triple-alpha process - Wikipedia, Triple-alpha process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The triple-alpha process is a set of nuclear fusion reactions by which three helium-4 nuclei (alpha particles) are transformed into carbon.' back