Brillouin (1962), Leon, Science and Information Theory, Academic 1962 Introduction: 'A new territory was conquered for the sciences when the theory of information was recently developed. . . . Physics enters the picture when we discover a remarkable likeness between information and entropy. . . . The efficiency of an experiment can be defined as the ratio of information obtained to the associated increase in entropy. This efficiency is always smaller than unity, according to the generalised Carnot principle. . . . ' 
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McGregor (2010), Richard, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, Harper 2010 Amazon editorial review: From Publishers Weekly 'McGregor, a journalist at the Financial Times, begins his revelatory and scrupulously reported book with a provocative comparison between China's Communist Party and the Vatican for their shared cultures of secrecy, pervasive influence, and impenetrability. The author pulls back the curtain on the Party to consider its influence over the industrial economy, military, and local governments. McGregor describes a system operating on a Leninist blueprint and deeply at odds with Western standards of management and transparency. Corruption and the tension between decentralization and national control are recurring themes--and are highlighted in the Party™s handling of the disturbing Sanlu case, in which thousands of babies were poisoned by contaminated milk powder. McGregor makes a clear and convincing case that the 1989 backlash against the Party, inexorable globalization, and technological innovations in communication have made it incumbent on the Party to evolve, and this smart, authoritative book provides valuable insight into how it has--and has not--met the challenge. ' Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 
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Rovelli (2017), Carlo, and Simon Carnell & Erica Sere (Translators), Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, Allen Lane Penguin 2017 ' Be prepared for your intellectual foundations to be vaporized . . . Carlo Rovelli will melt your synapses with this exploration of physical reality and what the universe is formed of at the very deepest level . . . Quantum gravity is so new that there aren't many popular books about it. You couldn't be in better hands than Rovelli, a world expert.' Tara Shears, The Times Higher Edcation 
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Sisman (2015), Adam, John le Carré: The Biography, Bloomsbury 2015 ' Written with exclusive access to David Cornwell himself, to his private archive and to the most important people in his life – family, friends, enemies, intelligence ex-colleagues and ex-lovers – and featuring a wealth of previously unseen photographic material, Adam Sisman's extraordinarily insightful and constantly revealing biography brings in from the cold a man whose own life has been as complex and confounding and filled with treachery as any of his novels. 'I'm a liar, Cornwell has written. 'Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as a novelist.' 
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Agence France-Presse in Baghdaf, ‘Honour’ killing of YouTube star sparks outrage in Iraq, ' Tiba al-Ali, 22, was killed by her father on 31 January in the southern province of Diwaniya, interior ministry spokesperson Saad Maan said on Twitter on Friday. Police had attempted to mediate between Ali – who lived in Turkey and was visiting Iraq – and her relatives to “resolve the family dispute in a definitive manner”, Maan said. Ali’s father was reported to have been unhappy about her decision to live alone in Turkey. Maan said that after the police’s initial encounter with the family “we were surprised the next day … with the news of her killing at the hands of her father, as he admitted in his initial confessions”. He did not give further details on the nature of the dispute.' back

Austen Iverleigh, The Anti-Francis Gatekeepers, ' The passing of Benedict XVI—ninety-five and long ailing—on December 31 was followed by the unexpected death on January 10 of a giant figure of conservative Catholicism, Cardinal George Pell, eighty-one, who had concelebrated Benedict’s funeral just five days earlier. What made this one of the most turbulent months of the past decade was not just these two deaths but what they exposed: the tactics and mindset of a group of conservatives who, smelling the end of the Francis era, are determined to secure its reversal in the next conclave. Yet by playing their hand too hard and too early—confident that a papal transition was imminent—they have been exposed as disloyal and unecclesial.' back

Catholic Catechism, p1, s2, c1, a1, p7, The Fall, '391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing." ' back

Hausdorff space - Wikipedia, Hausdorff space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In topology and related branches of mathematics, a Hausdorff space, separated space or T2 space is a topological space where for any two distinct points there exist neighbourhoods of each which are disjoint from each other. Of the many separation axioms that can be imposed on a topological space, the "Hausdorff condition" (T2) is the most frequently used and discussed. It implies the uniqueness of limits of sequences, nets, and filters. Hausdorff spaces are named after Felix Hausdorff, one of the founders of topology. Hausdorff's original definition of a topological space (in 1914) included the Hausdorff condition as an axiom. .' back

James Meadway, Bad economics at the BBC enabled Tory austerity and its aftermath – and it knows as much, ' Independent experts Andrew Dilnot and Michael Blastland state clearly that “too many” BBC journalists lack an understanding of “basic economics”. This particularly affects reporting on the central political issue of government debt, with “some journalists” apparently “instinctively” believing all debt to be inherently bad – and therefore failing to appreciate that the role of government debt is “contested and contestable” . . . The review singles out “household analogies” for the government debt, in particular, as “dangerous territory” , , , , Government borrowing has little in common with the borrowing that you or I engage in since, as the review puts it, “states don’t tend to retire or die, or pay off their debts entirely”.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1987), A theory of Peace, ' The argument: I began to think about peace in a very practical way during the Viet Nam war. I was the right age to be called up. I was exempted because I was a clergyman, but despite the terrors that war held for me, I think I might have gone. It was my first whiff of the force of patriotism. To my amazement, it was strong enough to make even me face death.
In the Church, I became embroiled in a deeper war. Not a war between goodies and baddies, but the war between good and evil that lies at the heart of all human consciousness. Existence is a struggle. We need all the help we can get. Religion is part of that help and theology is the scientific foundation of religion.' back

Jim Chalmers, Capitalism after the crises , ' The 2022 election, then, was as much about new beginnings as it was about ending a wasted decade, and as much about a change of mindset as a change of government. We see this in an appetite for straight talk about our national challenges; in a willingness to talk up not down to each other, and to try to work together; in efforts to repair relationships here and across the world; and in recognition that hard decisions will accompany hard times ahead. . . . . In well-functioning democracies, leaders listen or lose power. Autocracies have no such mechanism. Dictators exist in an echo chamber, with sycophants reinforcing existing biases and judgements in ways that can only lead to mistakes, instability and economic stagnation.' back

John C. Eccles, Innovation in Science: The Physiology of Imagination, ' Our task here is to see how far our present ideas on the working of the brain can be related to the experiences of mind. The way to the imagination, the highest level of mental experience, lies through the lower levels of sensory experience, imagery, hallucination and memory, and that is the path we shall traverse. All that we shall learn must itself, of course, be the product of perceiving, reasoning and imagining by our brains! back

John le Carré, Opinion: The United States of America Has Gone Mad, back

Jules and Jim - Wikipedia, Jules and Jim - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Jules and Jim (French: Jules et Jim is a 1962 French New Wave romantic drama film, directed, produced and written by François Truffaut. Set before and after World War I, it describes a tragic love triangle involving French Bohemian Jim (Henri Serre), his shy Austrian friend Jules (Oskar Werner), and Jules's girlfriend and later wife Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). The film is based on Henri-Pierre Roché's 1953 semi-autobiographical novel describing his relationship with young writer Franz Hessel and Helen Grund, whom Hessel married. . . . The film won the 1962 Grand Prix of French film prizes, the Étoile de Cristal, and Jeanne Moreau won that year's prize for best actress. The film ranked 46 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.' back

Julie Andrews & Richard Broome, The 1881 Maloga petition: a call for self-determination and a key moment on the path to the Voice , ' The Maloga mission, a small and under-resourced pioneering farming settlement, was managed by missionaries Daniel and Janet Matthews. In July 1881, 42 men from the Maloga mission addressed a petition to the NSW governor. In their 1881 petition, the Maloga mission men who sought greater freedom from missionary control called for the government to grant them their own parcel of land. They argued their native game had been reduced or exterminated by settlers and their sheep, reducing them to “beggary”. Sheep had eaten out yams and other foods and trampled and fouled waterholes on their land, and the settlers had chased off other game. These men wanted their land back so they “could cultivate and raise stock” and believed “we could, in a few years support ourselves by our own industry”. At first, this petition seemed to fall on deaf ears. But later in the 1880s, the NSW government set aside about 730 hectares across the river from Maloga as a government reserve.' back

Katharine Day, After years of austerity, Revive writes the next chapter in Australian literary culture, ' The Albanese government’s Revive is Australia’s first national cultural policy in ten years. The last was the Gillard government’s Creative Australia in 2013. Revive promises to “empower our talented artists and arts organisations”, reaching new audiences “and telling stories in compelling new ways”. At this morning’s launch, there was a particular emphasis on support for the literary sector, which Arts Minister Tony Burke – who famously starts his day reading poetry – acknowledged has been deeply underfunded in the past. ' back

Liz Sly & Serhiy Morgunov, 66,000 war crimes have been reported in Ukraine. It vows to prosecute them all., ' KYIV, Ukraine — The 25 Russians convicted so far of war crimes in Ukrainian courts include a soldier who forced two Ukrainians at gunpoint to hand over laptops and money, four who beat and tortured Ukrainian soldiers and two who admitted shelling residential buildings in the first weeks of the war. Over 66,000 additional alleged war crimes have been reported to Ukrainian authorities since the Russian invasion last February, according to Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General. . . . It’s a staggering number of cases, one that would overwhelm any judicial system anywhere, legal experts say. But Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, has vowed to investigate all of them and to bring to trial all those in which enough evidence can be gathered. President Volodymyr Zelensky has made justice for the victims of war crimes one of his conditions for eventual peace with Russia. The issue is as important for Ukraine as defeating the Russians militarily if Russia is to be deterred forever from attacking Ukraine, Kostin said.' back

Massimo Fagioli, The Church’s Memory Problems: Trying to reckon with the past—and the present, ' Similar to a post-civil war period, the mix of scandal and culture-war mentality has created a divided memory, with opposing sides viewing the other as criminal. This phenomenon is visible both within the Church and outside of it. And it means that parties on either end of the ideological spectrum each see something in the institutional Church that they can decry as the enemy. During the Cold War, it was said that to be a Kremlinologist you just needed to be a criminologist. It’s unfortunate that these days the study of the Church has been reduced to “Vaticanology,” and that Vaticanology is in danger of becoming criminology. This is not the “Church of mercy” that Pope Francis has been talking about for the past ten years.' back

Nick McKenzie, Property grab: AFP smashes alleged $10 billion Chinese money-laundering operation, ' Federal agents have dismantled an alleged Chinese-Australian money laundering organisation that moved an estimated $10 billion offshore while amassing a blue-chip property portfolio comprising Sydney mansions, a luxury city building and hundreds of acres of land near Sydney’s second airport. On Wednesday, Australian Federal Police officers seized properties and luxury assets worth at least $150 million and arrested and charged nine suspects, including two alleged Chinese-Australian gangsters in Sydney with a combined personal fortune estimated at more than $1 billion.' back

P versus NP problem - Wikipedia, P versus NP problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The P versus NP problem is a major unsolved problem in computer science. It asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified (technically, verified in polynomial time) can also be solved quickly (again, in polynomial time). The underlying issues were first discussed in the 1950s, in letters from John Forbes Nash Jr. to the National Security Agency, and from Kurt Gödel to John von Neumann. The precise statement of the P versus NP problem was introduced in 1971 by Stephen Cook in his seminal paper "The complexity of theorem proving procedures" and is considered by many to be the most important open problem in the field.' back

Socrates - Wikipedia, Socrates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Socrates (. . . 470/469 – 399 BC) was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. . . . Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. . . . Plato's Socrates also made important and lasting contributions to the field of epistemology, and his ideologies and approach have proven a strong foundation for much Western philosophy that has followed.' back

Tensor - Wikipedia, Tensor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects related to a vector space. Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other tensors. There are many types of tensors, including scalars and vectors (which are the simplest tensors), dual vectors, multilinear maps between vector spaces, and even some operations such as the dot product. Tensors are defined independent of any basis, although they are often referred to by their components in a basis related to a particular coordinate system.' back