Gillet (1933), Martinus, Antiphonarium Ordinis Praedicatorium Vol I: Psalter, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis 1933 ' In hoc Antiphonario cantus Vesperarum et Completorii cum pracedenti eorum editione consonant. Pro ceteris Horis modulos musicos antiquiores ex Codice nostro Prototypo fideliter transcriptimus. Recentiores cantus, archetypo deficiente, ex antiquioribus manuscriptis, vel ex ultima Antiphonarii editione sumpsimus, cantilenam ad formal originalem reducentes. back

Larsson (2009), Stieg, and Reg Keeland (translator), The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest: Millennium III, Maclehose Press Quercus 2009 'Jacket: The Trial: Lisbeth Salander – outsider and apparent enemy of society – is charged with attempted murder. . . . The Enermy: Pulling the strings is the powerfuk inner circle of Säpo, the state security police. Determined t protect the secrets and corruption at Sweden's rotten core, Säpo is not an adverdary to take on alone. . . . Only with the help of Mikael Blomkvist and the journalists at Millemmium ,agazine can Salander avoid the fate that has been decided for her. Together they form a complelling and dynamic a;;iance. This final volume of the Millennium Trilogy is the culminayion of one of the most mesmerizing fictional achievements of our time.' 
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Macmillan (2020), Margaret, War: How Conflict Shaped Us, Profile Books 2020 ' In War, Professor Margaret MacMillan explores the deep links between society and war and the questions they raise. We learn when war began - whether among early homo sapiens or later, as we began to organise ourselves into tribes and settle in communities. We see the ways in which war reflects changing societies and how war has brought change - for better and worse. Economies, science, technology, medicine, culture: all are instrumental in war and have been shaped by it - without conflict it we might not have had penicillin, female emancipation, radar or rockets. Throughout history, writers, artists, film-makers, playwrights, and composers have been inspired by war - whether to condemn, exalt or simply puzzle about it. If we are never to be rid of war, how should we think about it and what does that mean for peace?'  
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Agence France-Presse (2022_10_8), Iran says Mahsa Amini died of illness rather than ‘blows’, as protests rage on , ' Iran said on Friday an investigation into the death in custody of Mahsa Amini found she lost her life to illness rather than reported beatings that sparked three weeks of bloody protests. Amini, 22, died on September 16, three days after falling into a coma following her arrest in Tehran by the morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women. "At least 92 protesters in the Mahsa Amini rallies have been killed so far, said IHR, which has been working to assess the death toll despite internet outages and blocks on WhatsApp, Instagram and other online services." (AFP 2022_10_3) Despite security personnel using lethal force, the women-led protests have continued for 21 consecutive nights.' back

Alexandra Petri, Opinion Parody is an act of optimism, ' Democracy, like parody, presumes that people are capable of noticing when someone is trying to dupe them. I have to think this is among the reasons autocrats distrust parody; not just because it shows them in a bad light, but because its underlying assumption is that people can see what is in front of them. Obviously, bad satire exists. Sometimes, if people don’t understand what you’re doing, it is not because they are goofs but because you haven’t done your job as a satirist correctly. But, broadly, we write parody with the belief that people can laugh, and laugh at themselves. Satire says that deep down, we are reasonable. At its best, it’s like the package of art and music and scientific facts we put into the Voyager capsule and sent into space: a vote of confidence that someone out there is capable of understanding what we’re putting down. And, we hope, not showing up to arrest us.' back

Andrew Higgins, Russians Fleeing the Draft Find an Unlikely Haven, ' Rents are skyrocketing, luxury hotels and grimy hostels don’t have beds to spare. And on the dusty, sunny streets of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, bands of young migrants, nearly all men, wander aimlessly, dazed at their world turned upside down — and their hasty, self-imposed exile to a poor, remote country that few could previously place on a map. After leaving often well-paying jobs and families in Moscow and Vladivostok and many places in between, tens of thousands of young Russians — terrified of being dragooned into fighting in Ukraine — are pouring into Central Asia by plane, car and bus. The influx has turned a country long scorned in Russia as a source of cheap labor and backward ways into an unlikely and, for the most part, welcoming haven for Russian men, some poor, many relatively affluent and highly educated — but all united by a desperate desire to escape being caught up in President Vladimir V. Putin’s war in Ukraine. “I look up at the clear sky every day and give thanks that I am here,” said Denis, an events organizer from Moscow who on Friday joined scores of fellow Russians at a bar in Bishkek to rejoice at their escape and trade tips on places to sleep, getting Kyrgyz residency papers and finding work.' back

Campaign for the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church, The ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church, 'We love our family, the Catholic Church. We fully accept the authority of the Pope. We respect his personal integrity as an outstanding spiritual leader. But we are convinced that the Pope and his advisors in Rome are making a serious mistake by dismissing women as priests. We feel obliged in conscience to make our carefully considered reasons known, fulfilling our duty to speak out as our present Pope has repeatedly told us to do.' back

Cloe Read, ‘He placed his penis on her desk’: Avalanche of damning police behaviour exposed, back

Davide Castelvecchi & Heidi Ledford , Chemists who invented revolutionary ‘click’ reactions win Nobel, ' Three chemists who pioneered a useful technique called ‘click chemistry’ to efficiently join molecules together have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Barry Sharpless at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, and Morten Meldal at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark laid the foundation for click chemistry and independently discovered a pivotal reaction that could be used to link two molecules — an azide and an alkyne — with relative ease1,2,3. This reaction has been applied to develop a host of different molecules, including modified plastics and potential pharmaceuticals. The third winner, Carolyn Bertozzi at Stanford University in California, used click chemistry to map the complex sugar-based polymers called glycans on the surface of living cells without disturbing cell function4. To do this, she developed reactions called bioorthogonal reactions, which are now being used to aid cancer drug development.'˜ back

Davide Foffa et al, Scleromochlus and the early evolution of Pterosauromorpha, ' Abstract Pterosaurs, the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight, were key components of Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems from their sudden appearance in the Late Triassic until their demise at the end of the Cretaceous. However, the origin and early evolution of pterosaurs are poorly understood owing to a substantial stratigraphic and morphological gap between these reptiles and their closest relatives6, Lagerpetidae. Scleromochlus taylori, a tiny reptile from the early Late Triassic of Scotland discovered over a century ago, was hypothesized to be a key taxon closely related to pterosaurs8, but its poor preservation has limited previous studies and resulted in controversy over its phylogenetic position, with some even doubting its identification as an archosaur. Here we use microcomputed tomographic scans to provide the first accurate whole-skeletal reconstruction and a revised diagnosis of Scleromochlus, revealing new anatomical details that conclusively identify it as a close pterosaur relative1 within Pterosauromorpha (the lagerpetid + pterosaur clade). Scleromochlus is anatomically more similar to lagerpetids than to pterosaurs and retains numerous features that were probably present in very early diverging members of Avemetatarsalia (bird-line archosaurs). These results support the hypothesis that the first flying reptiles evolved from tiny, probably facultatively bipedal, cursorial ancestors. back

E. J Dionne Jr., Opinion: A partisan Supreme Court is 2022’s other incumbent, ' What makes this midterm election different from every other? Most midterms are about the party in charge. But in this one, two parties count as incumbents: the Democrats who control the White House and Congress, and the Republicans who control the Supreme Court. . . . I know, I know, we are regularly lectured by justices that we are supposed to think of the court as nonpartisan. But that sentiment is belied by the ferociously partisan nature of the court’s recent rulings — and the highly partisan way this conservative majority was created. . . . If Roe jolted a right-to-life movement into existence half a century ago, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision scrapping Roe has unleashed an equal and opposite effect on supporters of abortion rights, who happen to constitute a majority of the electorate' back

Ewen Callaway & Heidi Ledford, Geneticist who unmasked lives of ancient humans wins medicine Nobel, ' This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded for pioneering studies of human evolution that harnessed precious snippets of DNA found in fossils that are tens of thousands of years old. The work of Svante Pääbo, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany, led to the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome and the discovery of a new group of hominins called the Denisovans, and also spawned the fiercely competitive field of palaeogenomics. By tracing how genes flowed between ancient hominin populations, researchers have been able to trace these groups’ migrations, as well as the origins of some aspects of modern human physiology, including features of the immune system and mechanisms of adaptation to life at high altitudes.' back

Ezra Klein (2021_06_03), ‘The Point Was to Win,’ Barack Obama Writes, ' “My entire politics is premised on the fact that we are these tiny organisms on this little speck floating in the middle of space,” Barack Obama told me, sitting in his office in Washington. I was the one who had introduced the cosmic scale, asking how proof of alien life would change his politics. But Obama, in a philosophical mood, used the question to trace his view of humanity. “The differences we have on this planet are real,” he said. “They’re profound. And they cause enormous tragedy as well as joy. But we’re just a bunch of humans with doubts and confusion. We do the best we can. And the best thing we can do is treat each other better, because we’re all we got".' back

Flora Lewis (1973), Scientists Meet on Solar Energy, ' PARIS, July 1 — Several hundred scientists from three ‘dozen countries have gathered here for a conference on what many of them consider the woefully belated effort to make the sun, solve the earth's impending energy crisis. In theory, the sun, which was the initial source of all terrestrial energy, is the ideal answer to the growing shortage of fuel and fear of the atom. Sunlight costs nothing, it is pollution‐free, and it requires no transportation. In fact, according to Dr. T. A. Lawand of McGill University in Montreal, it is the least developed,’ often most costly and least researched form of energy known although it has been available since before life began.' back

Henry Reynolds, Recognising the warriors: Henry Reynolds on the war memorial’s surprising change of direction, ' It was a sudden and unexpected announcement. Late last week, the chairman of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson, declared the governing council had decided to develop a much broader, a much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people, initially by British, then by pastoralists, then by police, and then by Aboriginal militia. The statement was made in the presence of the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Matt Keogh who has administrative responsibility for the memorial. Keogh observed that the current $550 million expansion of the institution would allow for a greater recognition of the frontier wars. He added the recognition and reflection on frontier conflict is a responsibility for all our cultural institutions, not just here at the war memorial. . . . The memorial’s resistance to acknowledging the frontier wars that occurred here over 140 years had seemed implacable.' back

Jack Tamisiea, Fossils Reveal Pterosaur Relatives Before They Evolved Wings, ' Few creatures were built to soar like pterosaurs. Tens of millions of years before the earliest birds, these Mesozoic reptiles had pioneered flight with sail-shaped wings and lightweight bones. Eventually pterosaurs the size of small planes would take to the sky, pushing the boundaries of animal aviation. . . . For decades, paleontologists have postulated that the earliest pterosaurs dwelled in trees and experimented with gliding before flying. But Dr. Foffa and his colleagues may have discovered a more ground-bound origin for these ancient aviators. In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the researchers reanalyzed a cache of fossils and concluded that the earliest pterosaur relatives were off to a running start long before they took off. ' back

Jamelle Bouie (2022_10_07), We Had to Force the Constitution to Accommodate Democracy, and It Shows, ' Americans, in short, had forced the Constitution to accommodate their democratic impulses, as would be the case again and again, up to the present. The question, today, is whether there’s any room left to build a truly democratic political system within the present limits of our constitutional order. In his new book “Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy is Flawed, Frightening — and Our Best Hope,” the legal scholar Jedediah Purdy says the answer is, essentially, no. “Our mainstream political language still lacks ways of saying, with unapologetic conviction and even patriotically, that the Constitution may be the enemy of the democracy it supposedly sustains,” Purdy writes.' back

Katya Orlova Novaya Gazeta Europe, Prisoner number one, ' Russian politician Alexey Navalny, who returned to Russia even after having been poisoned, has been imprisoned for almost two years. Since then, there have been at least eight new criminal cases initiated against him, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and Navalny’s Headquarters (regional organisations founded by the politician — translator’s note) have been deemed extremist organisations by the government, and the politician himself has been transferred to the Melekhovo penitentiary, where he has been constantly placed in solitary confinement and prohibited from communicating with his lawyers in confidence. Novaya Gazeta. Europe has gathered all the available information about the pressure being put on the “prisoner number one”.' back

Lily Hyde (2022_10_04), ‘A kind of murder’: Putin’s draft targets Crimea’s Tatars, ' Since Russia’s so-called partial mobilization, announced after Russian forces suffered a heavy defeat in northeastern Ukraine, Ukrainian monitoring groups say several thousand draft notices have been distributed in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia occupied and annexed from Ukraine in 2014. At least 1,500 draft notices have been handed out in settlements inhabited primarily by Crimean Tatars, a Turkic Muslim minority who opposed Russian annexation and make up about 13 percent of Crimea’s population of 2 million. . . . Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on all Ukrainians in occupied territories to dodge the draft or, if they do end up on the frontline, to save their lives and avoid fighting fellow Ukrainians by surrendering.' back

Lisa Cox, Australia announces plan to halt extinction crisis and save 110 species, ' The federal government has set a goal to prevent any new extinctions of Australian wildlife. It is the first time a federal government has announced a zero extinctions target for the country’s plants and animals. The goal forms part of a 10-year plan to improve the trajectory of 110 species and 20 places, and protect an additional 50m hectares of land and sea area by 2027. The environment and water minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the government was setting “the strongest targets we’ve ever seen” to try to turn around the nature crisis documented in the State of the Environment report this year.' back

Nature Editorial: 2022_09_16, How fast fashion can cut its staggering environmental impact, ' Clothes were once used until they fell apart — repaired and patched to be re-used, ending their lives as dishcloths and oil rags. Not today. In high-income countries in particular, clothing, footwear and upholstered furniture are increasingly frequently bought, discarded and replaced with new fashions, which are themselves soon discarded and replaced. . . . .But incredibly, more than 50 billion garments are discarded within a year of being made, according to a report from an expert workshop convened by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), published in May.' back

Phil Christman, A Change of Hart?, ' What, exactly, is David Bentley Hart’s deal? One asks the question in awe. How does he produce so many books—as of this writing, eighteen of them, spanning theology, cultural criticism, and fiction, not counting his translation of the New Testament, his co-translation with John R. Betz of Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis, his uncollected articles (there must still be a few) and his Substack posts? When did he have time to learn so many languages, that he can refer familiarly to the literatures of Europe, China, Japan, India, and the Americas, and to fine details of theological controversy in several faiths? Where does he find a moment to floss, to do housework, to keep up with his beloved Baltimore Orioles? ' back

Robert Frost, 'A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.', ' As quoted by Guy Davenport (The Geography of the Imagination) at page x in A Liberal Education by Abbott Gleason (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, Tide Pool Press, 2010). As quoted by Harvey Shapiro “Story of the Poem”, 15 January 1961, New York (NY) Times, Section SM page 6. An earlier unattributed version of this quip appeared in What Man Can Make of Man (1942) by William Ernest Hocking: "He lends himself to the gibe that he is 'so very liberal, that he cannot bring himself to take his own side in a quarrel.'" Source: Barry Popik (December 6, 2009): The Big Apple: “A liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel”. back

Sarah Shaffi, Annie Ernaux wins the 2022 Nobel prize in literature, ' Ankita Chakraborty in the Guardian said Ernaux’s Getting Lost, a book recording her obsessive affair with a Russian diplomat, would “become a kind of totem for lovers: a manual to help them find their centre when, like Ernaux, they are lost in love”. Chakraborty wrote: “The quality that distinguishes Ernaux’s writing on sex from others in her milieu is the total absence of shame. Desire in her brings forth more desire, the impulse of death, happiness, and even past trauma, like her abortion, but never humiliation. Reading her is to thoroughly purge yourself of the notion that shame could be a possible outcome of wanting sex".' back

Sathya, Dreier & Ranney, To prevent gun injury, build better research, ' From 2001 to 2020, US cancer death rates fell by 27%. The nation’s traffic fatality rates per 100,000 people fell by about 21%, even counting a small rise in 2020. By contrast, US gun death rates went up: by 24% for suicide and by 48% for homicide1 (see ‘Deaths up’). In 2020, firearms became the leading cause of death for US children2. Yet firearm injury is among the least researched and worst funded of the leading causes of death in the United States3,4 (see ‘Dollars by death rate’). . . . .The lack is largely due to two decades of firearm injury being treated more as a political topic than as a public-health problem. In 1996, Congress slashed the budget for firearm-injury prevention research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and passed legislation known as the Dickey Amendment, stating that CDC funds for injury prevention could not “be used to advocate or promote gun control”.' back

Taras Grescoe, This miracle plant was eaten into extinction 2,000 years ago—or was it?, ' From before the rise of Athens to the height of the Roman Empire, one of the most sought-after products in the Mediterranean world was a golden-flowered plant called silphion. For ancient Greek physicians, silphion was a cure-all, prized for everything from stomach pain to wart removal. . . . During the reign of Julius Caesar, more than a thousand pounds of the plant was stockpiled alongside gold in Rome’s imperial treasuries, and silphion saplings were valued at the same price as silver. But just seven centuries after the adored plant was first documented growing along the coast of Cyrenaica, in what is now modern Libya (according to one chronicler, it was in 638 B.C. after a “black rain” fell) silphion disappeared from the ancient Mediterranean world. back

The Civil Servant, Spare a thought for your civil servants, trying to cope with Truss’s malignant cult, ' At stake now is the delivery of public services, which will continue to disintegrate – growth or no growth – if ministers continue to fetishise ideological loyalty over objectivity and honesty. Government policies have to work in the real world. Not in Downing Street, Narnia, or wherever it was that Kwasi Kwarteng partied with hedge fund managers in the hours after his mini-budget announcement went ballistic: fund managers who reportedly, behind his back, labelled him their “useful idiot”. This is why almost every government department has a chief scientist and a chief economist. In fact, the whole Civil Service Code revolves around the idea that reality matters. back

William Parlett, Why increasing support for Ukraine is critical to Australia’s security as a ‘middle power’, ' Support for Ukraine is normally described in ideological or moral terms as a duty to support democracies in the face of resurgent totalitarianism. This is an important consideration. But since Russia’s declared annexation of Ukraine’s sovereign land last week, there’s now a hard-headed security rationale for supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. Russia’s brutal invasion and claimed annexation is a clear breach of an international law rule that is critical to the security of smaller and middle powers like Australia. This has clear implications for Australia’s security position. As China grows more powerful in Asia and our ally the United States weakens, Australia will rely increasingly on Article 2’s strong international law norm against warlike acquisition of territory for its territorial integrity. Australia’s support for Ukraine so far has been limited. And Russia’s claimed annexations was met with a muted response from the Australian government. This is a mistake.' back