Babur (2020), Zahiru'd-din Mohammad, and Annette Susannah Beveridge (Translator) and William Dalrymple (Introduction), The Babur Nama, Knopf / Penguin Random House 2020 Jacket: 'Zahiru'd-din Mohammad Babu (1485-1530) a poet-prince from central Asia, was the first Mughal emperor and author of one of the most remarkable autobiographies in world Literature. The Babur Nama reveals its author as not only a military genius but also a ruler unusually magnanimous for his time, cultured, witty and possessing a talent for poetry, an adventurous spirit and an acute eye for natural beauty.' 
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Hiaasen (2001), Carl, Basket Case, Macmillan 2001 'Jack Tagger is a frustrated journalist. His outspoken views have relegated him to the obituary page and the newspaper's florid owner, Race Maggad III, has decreed that his byline will never again discrace the front page. But Jack has stumbled across a whale of a story that might just resurrect his career . . .  
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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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Nielsen (2016), Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2016 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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Al Jazeera and Agencies, Sixth boy charged in 1989 Central Park jogger case is exonerated, ' A codefendant of the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino teenagers whose convictions in a notorious 1989 rape of a jogger in New York City were thrown out more than a decade later, has had his conviction on a related charge overturned. A New York judge exonerated Steven Lopez on Monday in response to requests by both Lopez’s lawyer and prosecutors. Lopez was 15 when he was first named in the indictment along with five other Black and Latino teenagers for the night-time rape and attempted murder of Trisha Meili, an investment banker whose horrific injuries became the subject of sensationalist media coverage.' back

Charles Babour, Irony machine: why are AI researchers teaching computers to recognise irony?, ' In other words, we can all imagine Blake Lemoine being deceptive. And we can do so because we assume there is a difference between his inward convictions – what he genuinely believes – and his outward expressions: what he claims to believe. Isn’t that difference the mark of consciousness? Would we ever assume the same about a computer? back

Chen Ning Yang & Robert L. Mills, Isotopic spin conservation and a generalized gauge invariance, ' It is pointed out that the usual principle of invariance under isotopic spin rotation is not consistant with the concept of localized fields. The possibility is explored of having invariance under local isotopic spin rotations. This leads to formulating a principle of isotopic gauge invariance and the existence of a b field which has the same relation to the isotopic spin that the electromagnetic field has to the electric charge. The b field satisfies nonlinear differential equations. The quanta of the b field are particles with spin unity, isotopic spin unity, and electric charge ±e or zero.' back

Christian Caryl, Opinion Russia locked up Vladimir Kara-Murza for telling the truth about Ukraine, ' Initially, he was detained on a spurious charge: disobeying the police. But on April 22, 11 days after his arrest, Kara-Murza was indicted on a charge of “spreading deliberately false information” under a law passed in the wake of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. It’s a charge that could bring 10 years in prison. The charging document cited a speech that Kara-Murza, a Post contributing columnist, had given weeks earlier to the Arizona House of Representatives. His remarks accused Russian forces of dropping cluster bombs on residential areas in Ukraine and staging airstrikes on maternity wards, hospitals and schools. He did not mince words: “These are war crimes that are being committed by the dictatorial regime in the Kremlin against a nation in the middle of Europe.” The atrocities Kara-Murza described have been verified by news organizations around the world and have led to international war crimes investigations. But Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin couldn’t bear the spectacle of a Russian citizen airing these uncomfortable facts — so it locked him up for telling the truth.' back

Computer-generated imagery - Wikipedia, Computer-generated imagery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the application of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, computer animation and VFX in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The images may be dynamic or static, and may be two-dimensional (2D), although the term "CGI" is most commonly used to refer to the 3-D computer graphics used for creating characters, scenes and special effects in films and television, which is described as "CGI animation".' back

David Smith, Unstuck in Time: the Kurt Vonnegut documentary 40 years in the making, ' It is a beguiling film about the author of Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Mother Night and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater who was described as an “oracle for the baby boomer generation” when he died aged 84 in 2007. Such is the easy intimacy between film-maker and subject that the viewer feels like they have spent a couple of hours’ in Vonnegut’s affable, smart and funny company. back

Diffeomorphism - Wikipedia, Diffeomorphism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, a diffeomorphism is an isomorphism of smooth manifolds. It is an invertible function that maps one differentiable manifold to another such that both the function and its inverse are smooth.' back

Elizabeth Gibney, Nuclear-fusion reactor smashes energy record, ' A 24-year-old nuclear-fusion record has crumbled. Scientists at the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, UK, announced on 9 February that they had generated the highest sustained energy pulse ever created by fusing together atoms, more than doubling their own record from experiments performed in 1997. “These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all,” said Ian Chapman, who leads the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), where JET is based, in a statement. The UK Atomic Energy Authority hosts JET, but its scientific programme is run by a European collaboration called EUROfusion.' back

Federico lombardi, SJ, Why is the Pope Going to Canada?, 'In the days between March 28 and April 1 of this year, a delegation of representatives of the indigenous peoples of Canada traveled to Rome with some of their bishops for several meetings with Pope Francis. He promised to travel personally to Canada later this summer to continue the dialogue in their “indigenous territories.” ] back

Fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, Fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, a fixed point theorem is a result saying that a function F will have at least one fixed point (a point x for which F(x) = x), under some conditions on F that can be stated in general terms. Results of this kind are amongst the most generally useful in mathematics. The Banach fixed point theorem gives a general criterion guaranteeing that, if it is satisfied, the procedure of iterating a function yields a fixed point. By contrast, the Brouwer fixed point theorem is a non-constructive result: it says that any continuous function from the closed unit ball in n-dimensional Euclidean space to itself must have a fixed point, but it doesn't describe how to find the fixed point (See also Sperner's lemma).' back

Gerardus 't Hooft, Nobel Lecture 1999: A Confrontation with Infinity, ' Early attempts at constructing realistic models of the weak interaction were offset by the emergence of infinite, hence meaningless expressions when one tried to develop radiative corrections. When models based on gauge theories with Higgs mechanism were discovered to be renormalizable, the bothersome infinities disappeared - they cancelled out. If this success seemed to be due to sorcery, it may be of interest to explain the physical insights on which it is actually based.' back

Helena Horton, James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis, dies on 103rd birthday, ' James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, has died on his 103rd birthday. The climate scientist died at home on Tuesday surrounded by loved ones, his family said. Lovelock, who was one of the UK’s most respected independent scientists, had been in good health until six months ago, when he had a bad fall. . . . His Gaia hypothesis posits that life on Earth is a self-regulating community of organisms interacting with each other and their surroundings. He said two years ago that the biosphere was in the last 1% of its life.' back

Ignoramus et ignorabimus - Wikipedia, Ignoramus et ignorabimus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Latin maxim ignoramus et ignorabimus, meaning "we do not know and will not know", represents the idea that scientific knowledge is limited. It was popularized by Emil du Bois-Reymond, a German physiologist, in his 1872 address "Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens" ("The Limits of Science"). . . . David Hilbert, a widely-respected German mathematician, suggested that such a conceptualization of human knowledge was too pessimistic, and that by considering questions unsolvable we limit our understanding. In 1900, . . . He declared, "in mathematics there is no ignorabimus", and he worked with other formalists to establish foundations for mathematics during the early 20th century.' back

Jack Shafer (2022/07/25), Opinion | Why Rupert Murdoch Is Finally Done with Donald Trump , ' The slow learners at the New York Post and Wall Street Journal editorial pages had a revelation on Friday. As if synchronized to sing the same tune at the same time by their owner, Rupert Murdoch, they cited the proceedings of the Jan. 6 Committee to conclude that Donald Trump had failed to uphold his oath to defend and protect the Constitution. . . . Currently dissolving his fourth marriage to model Jerry Hall, the 91-year-old Murdoch is practiced in ending partnerships that no longer benefit him. In the United Kingdom, he has switched his editorial support back and forth between the Tories and Labour, depending on which party was willing to serve him better. He performs similar political puppetry in Australia.' back

Jeff Tollefson, Exclusive: Laser-fusion facility heads back to the drawing board, ' Nearly one year ago, scientists at the world’s largest laser-fusion facility announced a landmark achievement: it had shattered all records and produced, if only for a fraction of a second, an energetic fusion reaction of the kind that powers stars and thermonuclear weapons. Yet efforts to replicate that experiment have fallen short. . . . The turn of events has renewed debate about the future of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a US$3.5-billion device that is housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a branch of the US Department of Energy that manages nuclear weapons. The NIF’s primary mission is to create high-yield fusion reactions, and to inform maintenance of the US weapons stockpile.' back

Karl Weierstrass - Wikipedia, Karl Weierstrass - Wikipedia. the free encyclopedia, ' Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (German: Weierstraß 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the "father of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied mathematics and trained as a teacher, eventually teaching mathematics, physics, botany and gymnastics. Weierstrass formalized the definition of the continuity of a function, proved the intermediate value theorem and the Bolzano–Weierstrass theorem, and used the latter to study the properties of continuous functions on closed bounded intervals.' back

Kirill Martynov, Editor in Chief, Novaya Gazeta Europe, ' Become our Friend: Russia's censorship has effectively banned independent media, but there is no way to obliterate the freedom of speech. Join “Novaya Gazeta. Europe” to support freedom and overthrow tyranny. Help our journalists by donating us any amount of money and become friends with “Novaya Gazeta. Europe”! ' back

Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.' A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, Essai philosophique dur les probabilites introduction to the second edition of Theorie analytique des probabilites based on a lecture given in 1794. back

Luke Modelson, The Desperate Lives Inside Ukraine’s “Dead Cities”, ' Russian officials, far from being humbled by that ordeal, have insisted on their continued determination not only to seize Ukrainian land and resources but also to punish and terrorize Ukrainians and their supporters. “I hate them,” Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, wrote on social media in early June. “They are bastards and scum,” he went on. “As long as I live, I will do everything to make them disappear".' back

Nick Taylor-Vaisey, Pope’s views on Ukraine war worry some in Canada, ' “As easy as it is to say it’s all Vladimir Putin’s fault, Putin didn’t rape women and children in Bucha and Mariupol,” he said. “A lot of those atrocities that came to light after the Russians withdrew were not committed by Vladimir Putin. They were committed by your average Russian soldier.” Broda recalled a massive pro-war rally at a Moscow stadium in March that attracted 200,000 people and various shows of support for Putin’s invasion in European nations with a large Russian diaspora. “Those are people who live in the West and have access to all the information in the world, and they still choose to support the war,” he said.' back

Nicole Winfield & Peter Smith, Pope apologizes for ‘catastrophic’ school policy in Canada, ' While the pope acknowledged blame, he also made clear that Catholic missionaries were merely cooperating with and implementing the government policy, which he termed the “colonizing mentality of the powers.” Notably he didn’t refer to 15th-century papal decrees that provided religious backing to European colonial powers in the first place. . . . Jeremy Bergen, a church apology expert and professor of religious and theological studies at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario, said Francis made clear he was asking forgiveness for the actions of “members of the church” but not the institution in its entirety. “The idea is that, as the Body of Christ, the church itself is sinless,” he said via email. “So when Catholics do bad things, they are not truly acting on behalf of the church,” Bergen added, noting it’s a controversial idea on which many Catholic theologians disagree.' back

Sam Baron, A new book about 12 experiments that changed the world sidelines the role of beautiful theory in physics, ' Why experiments? This is a question I kept asking myself throughout the book. Ultimately, the answer appears to be a political one. The book works hard to impress upon the reader the importance of experimental physics. Experiments are where the action is in science. Progress can only be made through gathering empirical data. This focus on the experimenter as the pioneer, forging a path into new scientific terrain, is at best, a half truth. Companion to the experimenter is the theoretician. Theoretical work and experimental work generally go hand-in-hand. Theoretical physics, however, seems to be downplayed throughout the book. This is perplexing, given that theories are essential to experimental work twice-over.' back

Yang-Mills theory - Wikipedia, Yang-Mills theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Yang–Mills theory is a gauge theory based on the SU(N) group, or more generally any compact, reductive Lie algebra. Yang–Mills theory seeks to describe the behavior of elementary particles using these non-Abelian Lie groups and is at the core of the unification of the electromagnetic force and weak forces (i.e. U(1) × SU(2)) as well as quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong force (based on SU(3)). Thus it forms the basis of our understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics.' back