Berndt (1978), 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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von Neumann (2018), John, and Nicholas A. Wheeler (editor), Robert T Beyer (translator), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 2018 ' Quantum mechanics was still in its infancy in 1932 when the young John von Neumann, who would go on to become one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, published Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics--a revolutionary book that for the first time provided a rigorous mathematical framework for the new science. Robert Beyer's 1955 English translation, which von Neumann reviewed and approved, is cited more frequently today than ever before. But its many treasures and insights were too often obscured by the limitations of the way the text and equations were set on the page. In this new edition of this classic work, mathematical physicist Nicholas Wheeler has completely reset the book in TeX, making the text and equations far easier to read. He has also corrected a handful of typographic errors, revised some sentences for clarity and readability, provided an index for the first time, and added prefatory remarks drawn from the writings of Léon Van Hove and Freeman Dyson. The result brings new life to an essential work in theoretical physics and mathematics.' 
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Adam Raz (2026_06_04), 'We Were Ordered to Kill': The 1967 Nakba That Israelis Don't Know About, ' Unpublished testimonies from soldiers who fought in the Six-Day War expose a stark gap between Israel's collective memory and what actually happened in 1967. Newly uncovered documents indicate that 300,000 Arabs were expelled or displaced from the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights amid violence, looting and destruction | An investigation. [. . .]
IIn December 1967, six months after the war, the Foreign Ministry's legal adviser, Theodor Meron, sent a letter to the ministry's director general concerning "expulsions of Arabs to the East Bank." This dramatic letter, published here for the first time, serves as evidence that government ministers were involved in the expulsions. Dayan was not a rogue, freewheeling actor in this matter.
"The expulsions constitute a serious violation of the Geneva Convention," Meron wrote, "and especially in light of the extensive publicity, they are likely to cause complications." He added that Military Advocate General Meir Shamgar also agreed "that the expulsions violate the Convention." One sentence he wrote succinctly sums up the history of the conflict: "The Ministerial Committee for Security Affairs nevertheless decided to approve the polic".' Adam Raz is a researcher at the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research back

Alex Lo (2026_06_07), China’s Confucian AI vs America’s oligarchic version, ' The so-called Magnificent Seven have been the biggest AI investors breaking the trillion-dollar mark this year. By sheer market cap, they have held up the US stock market while the rest have been going mostly sideways.
Authoritarian Chinese officials and bosses have shown a deep Confucian sense of social responsibility towards citizens and workers alike. In the US, the oligarchic billionaire tech bros openly express contempt for them. They will take AI wherever they want so long as superior geniuses like themselves and their families come out on top.' back

Baryon asymmetry - Wikipedia, Baryon asymmetry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In physical cosmology, the baryon asymmetry problem, also known as the matter asymmetry problem or the matter–antimatter asymmetry problem, is the observed imbalance in baryonic matter (the type of matter experienced in everyday life) and antibaryonic matter in the observable universe. Neither the standard model of particle physics, nor the theory of general relativity provides a known explanation for why this should be so, and it is a natural assumption that the universe is neutral with all conserved charges. The Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Since this does not seem to have been the case, it is likely some physical laws must have acted differently or did not exist for matter and antimatter. Several competing hypotheses exist to explain the imbalance of matter and antimatter that resulted in baryogenesis. However, there is as of yet no consensus theory to explain the phenomenon, which has been described as "one of the great mysteries in physics".' back

Berni Hobbs (2016_06_23), The antimatter mystery: Annihilation and a universe that shouldn't exist, ' The standard post-Big Bang production of matter/antimatter from cooling of high-energy photons results in equal amounts of both, so photons are not the source of unevenness.
With high-energy photons out of contention, the strongest candidates for a process that gives slightly more matter than antimatter are a couple of incredibly heavy particles of matter — the heavy neutrino and the beauty quark. (Beauty is its stage name — it also goes by "bottom quark", a name still favoured by older physicists, the British and nine-year-olds). [. . .]
The suspicion is that the antimatter versions of these superheavy particles decay slightly differently from the matter versions.
It's predicted the heavy neutrino (if it exists) would result in one extra matter particle for every billion matter/antimatter pairs. That's just 10 times more than the amount of leftover matter needed post-Big Bang to give us our universe — a pretty good result in this vast field of unknowns. [. . .]
And detectors in Japan and at CERN are looking for any trace of asymmetry in the particle/anti-particle output as these unstable, heavy particles decay.
Symmetry is big in physics. And asymmetric behaviour at this scale doesn't fit with the mathematical Standard Model, so finding it wouldn't just help explain why the universe isn't a sea of light, it would mean an edit or rewrite of the Standard Model itself. And that would look great on any physicist's CV.' back

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brahim Al-Marashi (2026_06_11), ‘2,500 years of tyranny and submission’: what we can learn from reading Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis during the Iran War, 'Comic book author Marjane Satrapi passed away last week in Paris at age 56, just before conflict between Israel and her native Iran re-erupted. While her work has enjoyed enduring fame, the present conflict has made it more relevant than ever before.
Satrapi’s work is unique for how it weaves her own personal story with Iran’s history and politics. In her comics and film Persepolis, for instance, there is a scene where the Iranian officer Reza Khan overthrows the Qajar Shah after the First World War, seeking to establish a secular republic. The British, who had installed monarchies in Iraq and Jordan, encouraged him instead to declare himself Shah in 1925. This gave rise to the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran, which would in turn be overthrown during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Satrapi’s characters inhabit these historical moments. They are influenced by them, and their lives are determined by their outcomes. Her stories are built on a deep understanding of Iranian resentment of foreign interference, told through a bold, monochrome comic format. But they haven’t always been to everyone’s liking.' back

Carol Yang (2026_06_12), China’s ports are by far the most efficient in the world: World Bank study, ' China’s ports continued to dominate global efficiency rankings in 2025, with seven Chinese trade hubs placing in the top 10, according to a study by the World Bank and S&P Global released on Wednesday.
The latest edition of the annual report comes at a time when ports are playing a more vital role in the global economy than ever, as facilities strive to handle intense disruptions to global supply chains amid the aftermath of the Red Sea crisis and the ongoing fallout from the US-Israel war on Iran.
Launched in 2020, the Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) compares the efficiency of more than 400 ports around the world by measuring how long vessels spend in each trade hub on average, as a longer processing time indicates a higher chance of delays and supply bottlenecks.' back

Chen Ning Yang (1957_12_11)z, Nobel Lecture: December 11, 1957: The Law of Parity Conservation and Other Symmetry Laws of Physics, ' The existence of symmetry laws is in full accordance with our daily experience. The simplest of these symmetries, the isotropy and homogeneity of space, are concepts that date back to the early history of human thought. The invariance of physical laws under a coordinate transformation of uniform velocity, also known as the invariance under Galilean transformations, is a more sophisticated symmetry that was early recognized, and formed one of the corner-stones of Newtonian mechanics. Consequences of these symmetry principles were greatly exploited by physicists of the past centuries and gave rise to many important results. A good example in this direction is the theorem that in an isotropic solid there are only two elastic constants.' back

Chen Ning Yang & Tsung-Dao Lee, The Nobel Prize in Physics 1957, ' The Nobel Prize in Physics 1957 was awarded jointly to Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee "for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles." ' back

Claude Shannon (1949), Communication in the prsence of noise, 'A method is developed for representing any communication system geometrically. Messages and the corresponding signals are points in two “function spaces,” and the modulation process is a mapping of one space into the other. Using this representation, a number of results in communication theory are deduced concerning expansion and compression of bandwidth and the threshold effect. Formulas are found for the maximum rate of transmission of binary digits over a system when the signal is perturbed by various types of noise. Some of the properties of “ideal” systems which transmit at this maximum rate are discussed. The equivalent number of binary digits per second for certain information sources is calculated.' [C. E. Shannon , “Communication in the presence of noise,” Proc. IRE, vol. 37, pp. 10–21, Jan. 1949.] back

Corbin Hiar, Lesley Clark & Chelsea Harvey, Inside the campaign to discredit a key climate science report, ' Oil industry allies are quietly targeting a field of climate research that could cost fossil fuel companies billions of dollars.
In the crosshairs is a forthcoming report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that will examine research into the ways corporate climate pollution is intensifying natural disasters.
The conservative offensive could weaken the report’s perceived credibility at a time when it threatens to raise the legal jeopardy facing Exxon Mobil and other energy giants that are accused of contributing to fatal catastrophes in dozens of lawsuits, according to lawyers and scientists tracking the cases.
The heightened scrutiny — which involves a secretive opposition research group scouring scientists’ emails — has prompted two people to leave the 15-person panel tasked with producing the report. The findings are expected to be released as soon as this month, according to three people who were granted anonymity to speak about the panel’s work.
“The goal is to keep attribution science out of court. We see a pattern of that,” said Alice Hill, a former federal prosecutor and California state judge who worked on climate policy in the Obama White House, referring to the conservative effort. “And what is the ultimate reason for that? To shield the fossil fuel companies from liability.”
The offensive against what’s known as extreme weather attribution comes as scientists have improved methods for determining how climate pollution from sources like cars and power plants are leading to stronger and longer disasters, such as heat waves and hurricanes. The burgeoning field produces studies showing how corporate giants are supercharging specific catastrophes. Previously, scientists were unable to determine whether a single weather event had been worsened by human-caused climate change.
The scientific strides stand to send shock waves through the energy sector. The studies are sporadically being used to help build climate liability cases against oil and gas companies. But lawyers, scientists and insurers expect them to increasingly appear in court filings.
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CPT Symmetry - Wikipedia, CPT Symmetry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Charge, parity, and time reversal symmetry is a fundamental symmetry of physical laws under the simultaneous transformations of charge conjugation (C), parity transformation (P), and time reversal (T). CPT is the only combination of C, P, and T that is observed to be an exact symmetry of nature at the fundamental level.The CPT theorem says that CPT symmetry holds for all physical phenomena, or more precisely, that any Lorentz invariant local quantum field theory with a Hermitian Hamiltonian must have CPT symmetry.' back

CRISPR -Wikipedia, CRISPR -Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' CRISPR (acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. Each sequence within an individual prokaryotic CRISPR is derived from a DNA fragment of a bacteriophage that had previously infected the prokaryote or one of its ancestors. These sequences are used to detect and destroy DNA from similar bacteriophages during subsequent infections. Hence these sequences play a key role in the antiviral (i.e. anti-phage) defense system of prokaryotes and provide a form of heritable, acquired immunity. CRISPR is found in approximately 50% of sequenced bacterial genomes and nearly 90% of sequenced archaea. back

David Gulpilil - Wikipedia, David Gulpilil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' David Dhalatnghu Gulpilil AM (1 July 1953 – 29 November 2021) was a Yolngu Indigenous Australian actor and dancer. He was known for his roles in the films Walkabout (1971), Storm Boy (1976), The Last Wave (1977), Crocodile Dundee (1986), Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), The Tracker (2002) and Australia (2008).
He was raised in a traditional lifestyle in Arnhem Land. A skilled dancer, he was noticed by British filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, who cast him in his first feature film role in Walkabout (1971). He also made several appearances on stage.
Recognised as one of Australia's greatest actors and a trailblazer for Indigenous Australians in film, he was honoured with numerous awards and honours, including a lifetime achievement award at the 2019 NAIDOC Awards. After his death, for a short period, he was posthumously referred to as David Dalaithngu, at his family's request, to conform to Indigenous practices that avoid naming the dead. ' back

Erin Brannigan (2026_006_07), Bangarra’s Sheltering is a powerful showcase of First Nations dance and creativity, ' Frances Rings’ artistic directorship of Bangarra Dance Theatre’s shines through the company’s new triple-bill production, Sheltering.
Rings demonstrates a commitment to uplifting company members and First Nations creatives, with a coherent curatorial vision that shows care for diverse audiences.
This triple-bill is a beautiful sampler of what this important company has to offer to the cultural, political and creative facets of our nation. back

Haidamous, Kelly, Nover & El Chamaa (2026_06_07), An airstrike trapped a journalist. She died as rescuers waited for permission to save her., ' BEIRUT — For two hours on April 22, rescuers waited five miles away from where Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was taking refuge, injured and bleeding but still alive inside a building that had been leveled by an Israeli airstrike.
Responders from the Lebanese army, civil defense and Red Cross awaited clearance from international intermediaries. But the Israel Defense Forces was not giving the green light, according to two people familiar with the approval discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.
The rescuers first approached the building just before 6 p.m., but they retreated when a stun grenade went off near the team. By the time the IDF sent approval to intermediaries, at roughly 8:15 p.m., Khalil, 42, had succumbed to her injuries.' back

Isospin - Wikipedia, Isospin - Wikipedia, the free ncyclopedia, ' In nuclear physics and particle physics, isospin ( I ) is a quantum number related to the up- and down quark content of the particle. Isospin is also known as isobaric spin or isotopic spin. Isospin symmetry is a subset of the flavour symmetry seen more broadly in the interactions of baryons and mesons.
The name of the concept contains the term spin because its quantum mechanical description is mathematically similar to that of angular momentum (in particular, in the way it couples; for example, a proton–neutron pair can be coupled either in a state of total isospin 1 or in one of 0[1]). But unlike angular momentum, it is a dimensionless quantity and is not actually any type of spin.
Before the concept of quarks was introduced, particles that are affected equally by the strong force but had different charges (e.g. protons and neutrons) were considered different states of the same particle, but having isospin values related to the number of charge states.[2] A close examination of isospin symmetry ultimately led directly to the discovery and understanding of quarks and to the development of Yang–Mills theory. Isospin symmetry remains an important concept in particle physics.' back

Karen Stollznow (2026_06_09), Where did language come from? Nobody really knows, but the theories are fascinating, Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary worlds and endless combinations of meaning. But how did we get there?
The origins of language have fascinated philosophers, scientists and storytellers for thousands of years. Despite all our advances in linguistics, archaeology and cognitive science, we still don’t know exactly how language began.
That uncertainty hasn’t stopped people from trying to solve the mystery. In fact, some of the earliest theories of language’s origins are among the strangest and most entertaining ideas in the history of science.
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Mary Reynolds (2021), My Name Is Gulpilil, In his final film, the great Australian actor David Dalaithngu faces his extraordinary, dizzying past and, staring down death, his own, mortal future. back

Michelle Goldberg (2026_06_12), Some Leftists Are Boycotting This Film. Everyone Should Watch It., ' In 2021, the Israeli film director Nadav Lapid moved to France because, he told me, he felt his country was in a state of “total moral collapse.” After Oct. 7, as Israel ground much of Gaza into dust, Lapid returned to Israel to make “Yes,” an impossibly scathing, bitterly surreal attempt to capture that collapse on film.
“Yes” tells the story of a struggling pianist and party entertainer known only as Y who is commissioned to write a new national anthem celebrating genocide in Gaza. (The song borrows from a real one in a video by an Israeli nationalist group.) Lapid’s film is a vision of a traumatized country where life has become a frenzy of orgiastic partying and histrionic self-righteousness. It’s like “The Zone of Interest,” the 2023 film about the banal life of a Nazi family living next to Auschwitz, with Eurovision aesthetics. Though of course, as Lapid has pointed out, “The Zone of Interest” wasn’t made while the Holocaust was happening. In “Yes,” you can sometimes see and hear the real-world annihilation of Gaza in the distance.[. . .]
“Yes” has been furiously denounced by leaders in Israel. The night of the Ophir awards — Israel’s version of the Oscars — police officers detained its star, the left-wing performance artist Ariel Bronz, on dubious grounds. (They said they were investigating whether a poem he’d posted on Facebook months earlier incited terrorism.) [. . .]
But since then, he said, the film industry has rallied around him. Open letters supporting Lapid have been signed by leading figures in French cinema, as well as by the Palestinian intellectual Elias Sanbar and the actress Natalie Portman. The letter signed by Portman calls Israel a criminal state but argues — I think irrefutably — that its dissident artists should be treated like those from any other rogue regime. “Russian, Israeli and Iranian filmmakers should not be threatened with erasure to atone for crimes committed by governments they often fiercely oppose,” it says.' back

Oliver Chaseling (2025_09_13), Journey Home, David Gulpilil shows the film icon's remote homeland 'for the first time', ' WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images of a person who has died.
The late actor's family has granted permission to use his name and image.
As he was dying of lung cancer, legendary Yolŋu actor David Gulpilil set in motion the process of sharing a part of himself the world had never seen.
In his decades-long career, Gulpilil appeared in some of Australia's biggest films — including Crocodile Dundee, Australia and Rabbit-Proof Fence.
But he had also aspired for many years to bring cameras into his tiny homeland of Gupulul, deep in north-east Arnhem Land's picturesque wetlands.
"No one knows that place, no one knows the people, no one knows the tribes, no one knows the stories, the songs, the dances," his son, Jida Gulpilil, said. "And now you're seeing it for the first time".' back

Reza Aslan (2026_06_020, The Many Revolutions That Almost Freed Iran, Reciew of STOLEN REVOLUTION: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran, by Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin
' Before the bombs began falling on Iran earlier this year, the war was sold by its advocates as a possible catalyst for regime change — a final blow against a government already weakened by years of economic crisis and political unrest. To many outside observers, the Islamic Republic appeared vulnerable to collapse. Yet the coordinated bombing campaign by the United States and Israel has only strengthened the most hard-line elements of the Iranian state.
Those of us who have spent years studying modern Iran understood that this was always the more likely outcome. Again and again, moments that seemed poised to break the system instead became the conditions through which it adapted and endured. It is a recurring pattern that the New York Times journalist Yeganeh Torbati and the veteran Iran correspondent Bozorgmehr Sharafedin trace in “Stolen Revolution,” their deeply reported and quietly devastating account of half a century of upheaval in the country. The result is one of the most perceptive books on modern Iran in years, capturing not only the machinery of repression but the fragile forms of hope that survive beneath it.[. . .]
As power narrowed into the hands of a clerical elite around Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, what followed was not the triumph of one coherent ideology so much as the gradual exclusion of competing visions. The religious regime hunted, expelled and jailed its former allies. “A revolution that was launched with egalitarian ideals and immense hopes,” Torbati and Sharafedin write, “has resulted in a mafia state. [. . .]
Read in the midst of the war, the book’s title takes on a double meaning. In a country forged through struggle against foreign influence, pressure from outside does not loosen the system. With Khamenei and much of his cohort dead, the Revolutionary Guard have emerged more entrenched than ever. Civil society faces renewed suspicion and the already fragile space for reform — in poetry nights and street protests — has narrowed once more under the cloud of national security. back

Sydney Drell Review T.D. Lee book. , Particle Physics and Introduction to Field Theory, book Review: 865 pp. Harwood, New York, 1981. $59.50 cloth, $19.50 paper
This excellent book evolved from lectures on particle physics that T. D. Lee first gave in Beijing in 1979. It is the first in a new series called Concepts in Contemporary Physics that is "addressed to the professional physicist and to the serious student of physics." With its authoritative and lucid presentation of the whole gamut of modern particle physics, this book will serve as an indispensable reference for researchers in particle physics.' back

Tsung-Dao Lee (1957_12_11), Weak interactions and nonconservation of parity, ' In the previous talk Professor Yang has outlined to you the position of our understanding concerning the various symmetry principles in physics prior to the end of last year. Since then, in the short period of one year, the proper roles of these principles in various physical processes have been greatly clarified. This remarkably rapid development is made possible only through the efforts and ingenuity of many physicists in various laboratories all over the world. To have a proper perspective and understanding of these new experimental results it may be desirable to review very briefly our knowledge about elementary particles and their interactions.' back

Weixuan Ning et al. (2026_05_18), Genomic diversity and the domestication history of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum), ' Abstract Gossypium hirsutum is the leading fiber crop globally, but its origin as a domesticated plant and patterns of diversity in the wild remain to be elucidated. Here, we use extensive sampling of wild populations and comparative genome sequence data to illuminate the scope and patterning of wild cotton diversity across its native range. Analyses confirm the hypothesis that the Yucatán Peninsula (México) is the center of domestication, from which the original perennial forms and later modern annualized cultivars were derived. Population structure and phylogenomic analyses indicate that northwestern Yucatán harbors greater genetic diversity relative to smaller, geographically dispersed populations in northeastern Yucatán and the Caribbean basin. Genetic load and transposable element burden also are the lowest in northwestern Yucatán relative to other regions, consistent with its greater diversity and reflecting the effects of historical genetic bottlenecks in other populations. Populations from Florida and elsewhere in the Caribbean basin maintain unique pockets of diversity. Analyses of selection suggest that cotton domestication entailed long-term accumulation of mutations with relatively minor phenotypic effects, as opposed to a more punctuated process involving major domestication genes. Our study quantifies the scope and scale of genomic diversity in wild cotton, the origin of the cultivated gene pool, and the likely ecological and anthropogenic processes that shaped extant diversity and modern geographic patterning.' back

William J. Watkins Jr (2026_06_11), Celebrate the Fourth of July. But don’t forget the Twelfth of June., ' Naturally, the main event of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations will be the Fourth of July, in honor of the Declaration of Independence. But a little tailgate party would be appropriate for the Twelfth of June. For it was on that date, 250 years ago, that Virginia’s Declaration of Rights was adopted.
Written primarily by George Mason, Virginia’s declaration inspired Thomas Jefferson in writing the nation’s founding document. It set forth in plain language America’s first principles and provided guideposts for the establishment of a republican government.
It’s no accident that this seminal declaration originated in Virginia. Jamestown, founded in 1607, put many of those principles and structures into action well before 1776. As Lyon Gardiner Tyler — son of President John Tyler and himself president of William & Mary from 1888 to 1919 — observed, “jury trial, courts for the administration of justice, popular elections in which all the ‘inhabitants’ took part, and a representative Assembly” were created in the Old Dominion “before any other English settlement was made on this continent.” back

Wolfram (film) - Wikipedia, Wolfram (film) - Wikipedia, the free ncyclopedia, ' Wolfram is a 2025 Australian Western drama film directed by Warwick Thornton. It is a sequel to Thornton's 2017 film Sweet Country, reprising several of the same characters. It stars Deborah Mailman, Pedrea Jackson, Thomas M. Wright and Luka May Glynn-Cole. The title refers to the Hatches Creek wolfram field in the Northern Territory, where Aboriginal Australian children were exploited for their labour, digging tungsten out of the ground.
The film had its world premiere at the 2025 Adelaide Film Festival on 26 October, followed by its international premiere at the main competition of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival on 17 February 2026, where it was nominated for the Golden Bear.
Based on a real story and set in 1932, the film centres on a mother longing for the return of her stolen children.[2] It looks at the exploitation of Indigenous Australian child labour[3] at the Hatches Creek wolfram field, a tungsten mine in the Northern Territory of Australia.' back