The cultural spaces of Siegfried Kracauer: The many surfaces of Berlin

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A Biblical View Of Library Administration

While individuals sometimes do worthwhile tasks working by themselves, most of the work of modern civilization is done by people working together in groups. Groups require administration. This essay examines some aspects of the role of administration and administrators in libraries from a biblical point of view

Virtues or Values? Behind The Values Controversy

The American Library Association (ALA) has initiated a process of defining the values of libraries. This process has influenced Christian librarians. For example, the Association of Christian Librarians (ACL) invited Michael Gorman, author of Our Enduring Values, to speak at its 2000 conference

Reading, Writing and Power

This article’s goal is to discuss the relationship between reading, writing and power. (Unfortunately, space forbids more than an introduction to this topic.) We live in a postmodern society where some people doubt whether truth is knowable. I will show that the power of the written word is great enough so that receptive readers can overcome the barriers against understanding it as the author meant it, and therefore reading can teach the truth. Obviously, this statement will be qualified at a later point. While this article will center on power, it is inseparable from the other traits of literature.The biblical term “Word” often means both the written and the spoken word. Much, if not all, I say will apply to the word spoken as well as the word written. I will begin by listing a few biblical texts that show the relationship between the Word and power

Virtues or Values? Behind The Values Controversy

The American Library Association (ALA) has initiated a process of defining the values of libraries. This process has influenced Christian librarians. For example, the Association of Christian Librarians (ACL) invited Michael Gorman, author of Our Enduring Values, to speak at its 2000 conference

The Christian View Of Vocation For Librarians

Like two brothers, western civilization and Christianity grew up together. Christianity gave the civilization its virtues, its view of work, and its view of service. With the decline of Christian influence, there is an increasing separation between virtue, service and work. This has led to vocational crisis in professions which have described themselves as vocations. Nurses, doctors and teachers have noticed the problem. This paper will make some observations concerning the crisis, give historical and biblical insights into our view of vocation, discuss some errors with the viewpoints, give some proposals for improving the situation and conclude with a summary

Vegetation associated with Wollemia nobilis (Araucariaceae)

Wollemia nobilis Jones et al. (Wollemi Pine) is restricted to four sites growing in warm temperate rainforest typical of the canyons in the Blue Mountains and Wollemi National Parks. 88 vascular plant species were recorded from four sites. The tree canopy at all sites is dominated by Wollemia nobilis, Ceratopetalum apetalum, Doryphora sassafras and Acmena smithii. A large number of fern and vine species dominate the forest floor. Site 1 contains more species than the other sites, possibly due to its diversity of topographic features. Similarity analysis indicates that sites 2 and 3 are the most similar and sites 1 and 4 are least similar in floristic composition. 54% of plant species were recorded at one site only. Ceratopetalum apetalum, Blechnum cartilagineum and Wollemia nobilis were found to contribute most to the similarity between sites

Quantum Superpositions Cannot be Epistemic

Quantum superposition states are behind many of the curious phenomena exhibited by quantum systems, including Bell non-locality, quantum interference, quantum computational speed-up, and the measurement problem. At the same time, many qualitative properties of quantum superpositions can also be observed in classical probability distributions leading to a suspicion that superpositions may be explicable as probability distributions over less problematic states, that is, a suspicion that superpositions are \emph{epistemic}. Here, it is proved that, for any quantum system of dimension $d>3$, this cannot be the case for almost all superpositions. Equivalently, any underlying ontology must contain ontic superposition states. A related question concerns the more general possibility that some pairs of non-orthogonal quantum states $|\psi\rangle,|\phi\rangle$ could be ontologically indistinct (there are ontological states which fail to distinguish between these quantum states). A similar method proves that if $|\langle\phi|\psi\rangle|^{2}\in(0,\frac{1}{4})$ then $|\psi\rangle,|\phi\rangle$ must approach ontological distinctness as $d\rightarrow\infty$. The robustness of these results to small experimental error is also discussed.Comment: Updated to published version with slgihtly extended discussion and corrected mistakes. 6 + 7 pages, Quantum Studies: Mathematics and Foundations. Online First. (2015