20 Sanderling, Barnageeragh Cove, Skerries, Co Dublin

An online search shows move-in ready three-bed homes at this price point are few and far between in Co Dublin. This three-bed duplex in Skerries, however, offers just that with an A energy rating and sea views to boot, which may make the compromise of living above an apartment worth it for some prospective buyers.

The 121sq m (1,302sq ft) property consists of a bright livingroom, a kitchen-diner and a guest loo on the first-floor level, and three bedrooms on the second floor the main is en suite and a bathroom. The interior is neutral with white walls throughout and light-grey floors in the livingroom and bedrooms.

The seaside village is home to shops, pubs and restaurants as well as schools and sport clubs, including rugby, GAA, sailing and golf. Skerries train station is a six-minute cycle from the property, with services bringing you into the city centre in 40 minutes. Number 20 Sanderling is now on the market through Flynn and Associates, seeking 400,000.

This Carlow home is close to the towns amenities

A four-bedroom detached house in the Bourlum Wood estate off the Green Road in Carlow town has a contemporary, move-in ready interior and is close to the towns amenities. Carlow is home to South East Technological University, the Delta Sensory Gardens, the Visual Centre for Contemporary Art and the George Bernard Shaw Theatre. For hybrid workers commuting a few days a week to Dublin, this home is about an hours drive from the Luas Red Cow park-and-ride facility on the Naas Road and seven minutes from Carlow train station.

The spacious property, measuring 150sq m (1,615sq ft), has a big livingroom to the right off the entrance hall and a smaller room to the left, which would make a great home office or could be used as a fifth bedroom or a bonus living space. A kitchen-diner towards the rear of the ground floor, with blue units, a black-and-white tile splashback and new wood-effect linoleum floors, opens on to the big back garden which has low-maintenance loose stone underfoot bordered by shrubs. There is also a utility room and a guest loo downstairs.

There are two double and two single bedrooms upstairs, the main is en suite, as well as the family bathroom. With a C2 Ber, 32 Bourlum Wood is on the market through Remax Property Experts Carlow, seeking 375,000.

This Dungarvan house has been upgraded and well looked after by its owners.

This bright and modern detached three-bedroom home in the vibrant coastal town of Dungarvan comes to the market in pristine condition. In the Spring Meadows development, a short walk from the towns bars and restaurants and the Waterford greenway walking path, it has been well looked after and upgraded by its owners. The home, which has a C1 Ber, extends to 167sq m (1,798sq ft) over two floors.

The front livingroom leads on to a bright open-plan kitchen and living space. The kitchen has contemporary white units with blue cabinets under the island/breakfast bar with white marble-effect countertops. Wood-effect floors continue into the living and dining space which is bathed in light by a roof light and glass doors that lead out to the back garden. The garden has low-maintenance paving and a wooden climbing frame.

There is also a second livingroom on the ground floor, currently used as a playroom, and a guest loo and a utility room. There are three double bedrooms upstairs, the main is en suite, and a small box room which is currently a home office and has potential to be used as a nursery or dressingroom. Number 79 Spring Meadows is on the market through Brian Gleeson Property, seeking 395,000.

This thatched cottage is set on about 0.94 acres with mature woodland and is 2km from Sneem village

If you really want to get away from it all and live surrounded by gorgeous landscape, this turnkey two-bed cottage close to Sneem could be just the ticket. It would be perfect for remote workers as the village has a digital hub to work from with high-speed broadband.

The cottage is charming from the outside, with its thatched roof, and the interior is also lovely with exposed stone walls. Extending to 177sq ft (1,900sq ft), the ground floor consists of an open-plan kitchen-living area on the ground floor with two en suite double bedrooms upstairs; one of the bedrooms has a balcony from where you can enjoy the stunning views.

The property, which has an impressive B3 Ber, is set on about 0.94 acres with mature woodland and is 2km from Sneem village. This traditional cottage is now on the market through Sherry FitzGerald Daly, seeking 315,000.

The rest is here:
Four homes for 400,000 and under The Irish Times - The Irish Times

When President Joe Biden decided to honour us by visiting Ireland, I feared the cynics would have a field day

Theres a lack of respect for anyone trying to uphold ordinary principles of decency and compassion.

Ive worked in Northern Ireland for so many years that Im disillusioned by what passes for values in the rest of Ireland. I dont understand how so many people dumped so many social virtues so instantly.

For example, I am often disappointed to hear concerned citizens imply that we should keep those Nasty Northerners up there. Theyre all the same. They cant be trusted.

Thats a direct quote from a letter to me and an attitude that often comes across loud and clear.

I hardly ever look at the Late, Late Show now. I get angry that, since I live north of the border, I cannot even enter the weekly competition.

When they have a competition on the Sunday Game in between the scripted analysis I cant enter that competition either. So much for the we are all in this together lie.

Irish golfer Padraig Harrington gives Ryan Tubridy a gift of golf clubs on RT's Late Late show

Of course, these are small things but indicative of a divided country. RTE used to cater for the whole country. Not so now.

Who could forget the sniggering of a former member of Dail Eireann who went on television to proclaim that anyone who lives near the border is a bandit and a thief who should not be trusted?

This sad out-of-touch former TD smugly dished out his weird judgements as if he were an expert. How could anyone north of Baldoyle trust him to deal fairly with them?

There were no real objections to his calculated insults from that chapel of commentators who are normally just waiting to be indignant presumably because he said what they were thinking.

Theres not much hope for decency from people of that ilk.

It seems to me that Ireland today has an identity problem.

The past has become an embarrassment; there is no wish to be associated with the values and customs of the past.

Lets be modern, they say, and leave religion, morality, decency, integrity, and good neighbourliness behind us. There is only one commandment grab what you can while the goings good because nothing else matters.

God is a fairy tale; religion is kids stuff; we should make our own rules as we go along; thats what mature people do - I read and hear those opinions on a daily basis.

Is it any wonder so many people dont feel at home in Ireland today?

When President Joe Biden decided to honour us by visiting Ireland, I feared the cynics would have a field day; I suspected they would high-jack the event objecting to what they would label as the worst of Irish Americanism.

At one point I hoped he would not put himself through such a painful ordeal. The Ireland he imagined is long gone and has been replaced by this mythical Modern Irish Nation that has outgrown what Ireland once was.

I have to admit though I was wrong!

As I watched his parting speech on the steps of Saint Muredachs Cathedral in Ballina, I knew I got it wrong. President Biden gave a heartfelt talk which was received gratefully not only by those who were there but by those at home and abroad as well.

The President spoke with sincerity about the value of family; he told us in his humble way of the practical faith he received from his ancestors; he filled us with hope and optimism. If people come together and work together, we can change our society now, and in the future, he preached convincingly. There is hope after all.

More than anything, hope is what beats in the hearts of our people, he told us.

His remarks were genuinely inclusive; he didnt just address the Irish/American people nor did he glorify the past with rose-tinted glasses. He praised Americans, Ulster Scots, and the Irish; he emphasised his British connections too.

It was a faultless performance from the octogenarian President. His enthusiasm was infectious.

As I watched I thought that no politician or no Bishop has shown the courage and the humility to speak so encouragingly and so sincerely about his beliefs and his respect for the goodness of humanity.

President Biden deserves great praise for the time he gave us and the hope he brought. Honest Joe went a long way to restoring my faith in leadership and in my country.

Lets not waste his wisdom.

These insults are from an era when the English language did not depend on 4-letter words for impact!

1. "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; Bring a friend, if you have one."

George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill.

"Cannot possibly attend the first night, I will attend the second...If there is one."

- Winston Churchill, in response.

2. "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

3. "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."

- Clarence Darrow

4."Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."

- Moses Hadas

5. "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."

- Oscar Wilde

6. "He is a self-made man and worships his creator."

- John Bright

7. "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."

- Irvin S. Cobb

8. "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."

- Paul Keating

9. "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"

- Mark Twain

10. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."

- Groucho Marx.

11 "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

- Winston Churchill

A NEW SERENITY PRAYER!

God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, which is pretty much everyone, since Im clearly not you, God. At least not the last time I checked.

And while youre at it, God, please give me the courage to change what I need to change about myself, which is frankly a lot, since, once again, Im not you, which means Im not perfect.

Its better for me to focus on changing myself than to worry about changing other people, who, as youll no doubt remember me saying, I cant change anyway.

Finally, give me the wisdom to just shut up whenever I think that Im clearly smarter than everyone else in the room, that no one knows what theyre talking about except me, or that I alone have all the answers.

Basically, God, Grant me the wisdom to remember that Im not you. Amen.

(BY FR JAMES MARTIN SJ.)

See the original post here:
Fr Brian D'Arcy: 'President Joe Biden beat the cynics with heartfelt ... - Sunday World

The British economist Philip H. Wicksteed began his most important work, The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910), with a motto taken from the famous German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832): We all live it, but few of us know what we are living.

Contrary to the classical economists, who had argued that the market value of things was ultimately based on the objective quantity of human labor that had gone into their manufacture, Wicksteed argued that the value of things begins in the human mind, and from there brings about the prices of things bought and sold in the marketplace. At the same time, Wicksteed went on to explain in his Common Sense that the logic by which we value things is not something that needs to be learned and consciously adopted but rather is the way our own minds just work in a world in which scarcity exists. That is, a world in which the means that we discover and decide might be useful to apply in attempting to attain our desired ends are insufficient to achieve all the purposes we may have in mind. Hence, we all do it, but most of us are not consciously aware of what we are doing.

Philip Henry Wicksteed was born in October 1844 and died on March 18, 1927, at the age of 82. He followed in his fathers footsteps and became a Unitarian minister and served in that capacity for over 20 years. But his other interests, and his somewhat unorthodox theological views, led him to resign his position in 1897. This enabled him to more fully devote his time to Medieval scholarship, especially the writings of Dante, about whom he was considered an expert, as well as to writing and lecturing on economics.

The inspiration and greatest influence on Wicksteeds own thinking on the fundamentals of economics was William Stanley Jevons, who (separately, though almost simultaneously, with the appearance of Carl Mengers Grundstze der Volkswirtschaftslehre) formulated his theory of the concept of marginal utility in Theory of Political Economy (1871). Based on that theory, one of Wicksteeds earliest writings on economics, in 1884, was a critique of Karl Marxs labor theory of value, which led to an exchange with George Bernard Shaw, who attempted to defend the Marxian approach.

While often considered a Jevonian, Wicksteeds subjectivist approach to the logic of economics, its universal applicability, and his theory of the market process have come to be identified more with the Austrian School, especially as developed in the twentieth century by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek. Also, while not a strict economic liberal, the implications of his analysis of market processes usually led him to free-market conclusions on a good number of economic policy issues.

Wicksteeds first books were The Alphabet of Economic Science (1888) and The Coordination of the Laws of Distribution (1894). They were meant to articulate and clarify the principles of marginal utility and decision-making and to demonstrate that in a competitive free market, the market value of what is received for a product is distributed as income shares to the factors of production in a manner proportional to their respective marginal contributions.

But it is in The Common Sense of Political Economy that Wicksteeds most developed ideas on economics and the market economy are to be found. He wished to explain the common sense logic underlying all that men do in making evaluations, selections, and choices. An essential part of this was an analysis of the dynamic process of market coordination on the basis of individual subjective valuations under conditions of imperfect and limited knowledge.

In Wicksteeds view, the existence and necessity of human choice was seen in everything that was done by the individual. The housewife buying the weekly food on the market and her allocation of the supply among her family members were activities all cut from the same fabric:

Her doings in the marketplace and her doings at home are parts of one continuous process of administration of resources, guided by the same fundamental principle, whether she is spending money, helping the potatoes, pouring out the cream, or exercising a more general vigilance over the bread and milk. She is trying to make everything go as far as it will, or, in other words, serve the most important purpose that it can. She will consider that she has been successful if, in the end, no want which she has left unsatisfied appears, in her deliberate judgment, to have really been more important than some other want to which she attended in place of it.

The same applies to the man shivering in bed deciding whether to get up and secure another blanket that would relieve the cold, when the trade-off is a few moments of greater discomfort from the cold when he is out of bed getting the extra blanket versus the greater warmth for the rest of the night when he is trying to sleep. Or even a man faced with the trade-off of honor or disgrace, depending upon whether he decides to talk under torture.

What is critical in all of these circumstances was not the motive behind any decision but the economic relation, as Wicksteed called it, that required a decision be made. All of them, he said, involved the necessity of making a selection and choosing between alternatives. Therefore, he saw economics as a study of the principle of administration of resources and selection between alternatives conceived without any formal or convention limitation.

Flowing from this view of choice was the concept of the margin.

The principle of marginal adjustment runs through all the administration of our resources. Terms at which alternatives are offered and declining marginal significance as supply increases are the universal regulators of all our choices between alternatives. . from first to last the laws of economics are the laws of life, and consequently if a law declares itself to be paramount on the economic field, it proclaims itself by implication as a general law of life and conduct.

Thus, all of human life is comprised of comparisons and trade-offs between marginal benefits and marginal costs:

An ardent lover may decline a business interview in order to keep an appointment with his lady-love, but there will be a point at which its estimated bearing upon his prospects of an early settlement will make him break his appointment with the lady in favor of the business interview. A man of leisure with a taste for literature and a taste for gardening will have to apportion time, money, and attention between them, and consciously or unconsciously will balance against each other the differential significances involved. All these, therefore, are making selections and choosing between alternatives on precisely the same principle and under precisely the same law as those which dominate the transactions of the housewife in the market, or the management of a great factory or ironworks, or the business of a bill-broker.

Unlike a variety of the more mathematically focused economists, in Wicksteeds analysis of the on-going, ever-present choice process, there were no assumptions of any rigid quantitative precision, or exact and perfect marginal comparisons, or the absence of error or miscalculation. On the contrary, the lack of such perfections was part of the real world in which actual choices are made.

A persons scale of preferences (his ranking of desired ends) would take form and shape only within the actual process of choosing among possible alternatives at various relevant margins of choice. Even as these selections and choices are made, said Wicksteed, the individual does not generally realize exactly what the consequences of buying [an item] will be, but has a vague sense of future inconvenience, privation, and possible regrets.

What beclouded the margin and created its rough and imprecise form was the pervasive uncertainty under which decisions are always made. The expected value of various choices never seemed far from Wicksteeds thoughts. Action will always be determined by anticipated results, he said.

The purchase and allocation of services to serve human ends, therefore, were always guided by their anticipated importance and value to the consumer. Yet, potential for error abounded. Unexpected requirements could materialize, actual uses for goods could turn out to be smaller than planned, or the usefulness of a commodity might be found to be different from what was originally hoped for.

If within the individual mind revisions and reevaluations were constantly occurring, then even more so was this true and necessary in what Wicksteed called the economic nexus of interpersonal exchange and trade. Here, too, as circumstances changed, demand for commodities would rise or fall, and supplies would have to be revalued and reallocated among different uses.

The Austrian economist Eugen von Bhm-Bawerk, in his exposition of the market process of price formation, had suggested a dynamic analysis of buyer decision-making in which buyers formed expectations concerning the anticipated importance of goods to themselves and the minimum prices at which sellers might be willing to relinquish their supplies for sale. Based on these subjective estimates of their own wants and the market conditions under which sellers might sell, the buyers would initially offer and then modify, if necessary, their pricing bids to would-be sellers. But in almost all modern market settings, buyers find prices already set by sellers; they respond in the face of these given prices by deciding the relative quantities of purchasable goods they will buy.

Wicksteeds particular contribution to an understanding of the market-pricing process was an analysis of the factors on the sellers side of the market and role of cost as a foregone alternative in the choices we make. Markets are the arena in which potential gains from trade can be consummated by transactors. But, Wicksteed emphasized, this process will always and necessarily occupy time. The persons potentially constituting the market will not all be present at the same time. As a result, total market demands for alternative goods were a matter of estimate and conjecture at any moment in time. In Wicksteeds eyes, it falls upon the shoulders of the entrepreneurs and sellers to form such estimates and conjectures.

Expecting a constant flow of potential customers throughout the day, the sellers have a reserve price, not on their own account but in anticipation of the wants of others. Anticipating the demand for this good by future buyers who will enter his market later in the trading day, the seller prices the good so that the quantity at his disposal will tend to balance the entire stream of buyers over the entire selling period. The seller, therefore, is acting as the reader of the public mind, anticipator of future wants, or the speculator as to the wants of the portion of the public not present in person.

As the owner of the existing supply of a good, the seller forms expectations for the product by potential consumers who might enter the market at a later time. What the purchaser meets in the market, as Wicksteed expressed it, is but a reflection of her own mind and that of her compeers thrown back from the mind of the seller. It is the collective mind of all the purchasers, then, as estimated by the sellers, that determines the prices set by the latter that any one or group of buyers find when they enter the market. Thus, a primary function of the sellers is to represent the whole body of consumers in his dealings with each individual consumer.

Potential for error abounds here as well. Each day, the sellers form a general estimate, based partly on actual inspection of the market, partly on a variety of sources of information and grounds of conjecture which they commanded before entering the market. But all the resulting prices remain speculative. When the buyers actually begin appearing in the market over the trading period, reality will confront anticipation. Traders who err on the downside and price their product too low in relation to the stream of buyers will see their stock too rapidly diminishing, while those who price their product too high would see sluggish demand relative to their available supply. Each seller will rectify his mistake by raising or lowering his price, respectively, with total demand tending toward a balance with the available stock.

An additional dynamic ingredient in Wicksteeds analysis was its full appreciation that error, itself, disrupts and modifies the equilibrium target toward which the economic system is gravitating. Any actual transactions made in consequence of a mistake in estimating the equilibrium price at any given moment will theoretically alter the equilibrium price itself, Wicksteed said, by altering peoples preferences and their endowments at each step of the economic sequence of trades. In other words, market outcomes are path dependent, that is, the patterns of actual trades and the related buyer and seller reevaluations along the way influence the hypothetical longer-run end-state toward which the market is moving at any moment in time.

But the stocks of goods available at the retail stage need to be replenished. What applies to the given quantities on hand that their value reflects the existing entrepreneurial expectations of the importance of the consumer ends they can serve equally applies to the means of production. No raw materials, no machine, no specialized talent, nor natural or artificial combination of things has any value, Wicksteed said, except the derived value which it draws from its anticipated contribution to the ultimate service that shall be placed on the scale, tried, compared and appraised before the empirical throne of Human Demand.

What Wicksteed was saying is that as retail entrepreneurs discover errors they have made concerning the anticipated demand for their respect wares, they will reappraise the relative quantities of the goods they wish to restock on their shelves and the prices at which they might sell in the next trading period. This modifies their demands for these goods at the wholesale level, with the wholesalers adjusting the amounts of the goods they will want from their suppliers in the next rounds of business and the prices they are willing to offer to those suppliers in later stages of production. This, in turn, brings about changes in the demand for the various factors of production, including labor, at each of the production stages, all the way back to the raw materials stage and at the retail level, where the final goods will be sold.

In the process, the relative price and wage structures interconnecting all markets will adjust to the never-ending changing conditions of ultimate and final demand for and supply of those goods consumers want. But these constant adaptations in prices, wages, resource use, and allocations in the interrelated web of multitudes of markets is what ensures that the market system as a whole is always tending to move in the direction of overall coordination, even though the hypothetical end-states at which markets would be in balance (general equilibrium) are, themselves, constantly moving targets.

In this ongoing process, Wicksteed was also interested in clarifying what is the meaning of costs within the market process. Cost is the next best alternative that might have been pursued and attained with some of the scarce means that were used for a different purpose by the chooser, who ranked it of greater value or importance. The cost of any of our choices is the pull of an alternative demand that might have been satisfied if the means had been used to do something differently.

In a presidential address that Wicksteed delivered before the British Association in 1913 on The Scope and Method of Political Economy, he boldly and baldly declared that the supply curve that is drawn on the blackboard and juxtaposed to a demand curve, does not exist There is no such thing. The supply curve is, in fact, the demand curve(s) of whatever alternative would have to be sacrificed to meet some other particular demand. A demand curve is downward sloping to the right, because as additional units of any good are acquired by someone, the marginal utility or benefit of each one is less than the preceding ones acquired.

Likewise, a supply curve slopes upward to the right, because as more scarce means are shifted to increase the quantity of the first good, there are fewer resources remaining to continue to meet the demands of other goods, so as their quantities decrease, the marginal utility of each additional unit that has to be foregone is greater than the preceding ones no longer available. Thus, a supply curve is merely the demand curves of other goods diminishing in supply to satisfy a greater demand for something else.

Ultimately, therefore, both demand and supply are reflections of the subjective marginal valuations of market actors concerning the marginal utility or benefits from having more or less of one desired good compared to some other. For Wicksteed, this reinforced the insight that from beginning to end, it is the subjective (marginal) valuations of all those participating in the market that determine the prices and the costs of everything in that economic nexus.

In Wicksteeds view, the market constitutes that vast and intricate economic nexus in which individuals participate in an increasingly complex and interdependent system of division of labor. Any person living in such a system is able to benefit from everything that others can do that he may not be able to do or which they can do better and less expensively than if he attempted to satisfy his wants through his own limited abilities. To the extent others devise ways to innovatively produce more or better or less expensive goods that he desires to acquire from them in trade, the greater the opportunity for improvements in his own life and circumstances. This represents the general betterment that all may receive from a system of specialization and exchange.

However, Wicksteed also highlighted how this system of interdependent specialization creates the conditions for some to turn to political means to benefit themselves at the expense of others. While we are the consumers of many goods, the better and less expensive provision of which we all gain from, we are also individually the producer of one or at most a small number of things. Unless we are successful in producing and selling what others want, we cannot earn the revenues we need and desire to reenter the market as a consumer with income to spend. Thus, our role as a producer of a particular good tends to be of more importance to us than our role as consumer of many other goods.

Thus, any decrease in the demand for our particular product or service, or anything competitively done by others that increases the supply of it and lowers its price is frequently dreaded and opposed by the individuals negatively affected in this way. Explained Wicksteed:

If the thing I supply becomes relatively more abundant, and ministers to a relatively less urgent need, my command of what I want declines just because your command of what I give increases. Hence the paradoxical situation that the advance in wellbeing, which we all desire and are pursuing becomes an object of dread to each one of us in that particular department in which it is our business to promote it.

Where there is an open competitive market, this desire for scarcity may remain a pious (or impious) wish, to which those who entertain it can give little or no effect. But when we turn from the individualism of the open competitive market to the deliberate and concerted action of organized trades, or legislative assemblies, or to the general atmosphere of social ideals and aspirations by which they are supported or prompted, we see at once how fatally perverse this whole way of looking at things must be.

The perpetual danger, Wicksteed warned, is that any time economic progress brings about new, better, more, and less expensive goods from which many in society gain diffused benefits over time, there are likely to be some established producers and suppliers who will experience concentrated reduced market shares, lower revenues, and even losses due to the supply-wide successes of their innovative and successful market rivals.

The temptation will be for those negatively affected in this way to turn to political means through government to restrict markets, hamper their competitors, and artificially keep prices higher than they otherwise would be at the expense of consumers and those enterprisers who are prevented or hampered in their ability to better supply and serve the consuming public. It becomes a constant battle, Wicksteed emphasized, to oppose such special-interest politicking if the innovations and discoveries from which we all gain in the longer run are not to be hindered by politics at the expense of market freedom and rising standards of living.

For Philip Wicksteed, economics was not an analysis of a particular side of human activity but was the defining characteristic of all human activity where alternatives need to be weighed and choices made. In Wicksteeds analysis, people act and choose in a world of change, time, and uncertainty. Nowhere was this seen more than in his theory of the market process. Exchanges occur in sequential patterns through time. Expectations have to be formed on the part of entrepreneurs and sellers as to the volume and pricing of goods desired by consumers and the resources through which they may be manufactured. Errors and miscalculations can result in trades at incorrect, or false, prices. Corrections and revisions of those prices send ripples of reevaluation throughout the production process.

In open and competitive markets, these adaptions and the resulting coordination of all that people can and may be doing freely and spontaneously is both possible and superior to any attempts to directly plan or regulate the market process through government intervention.

Wicksteed wished that everyone could just take the time to reflect on how amazing the market process is in placing at everyones disposal the knowledge and abilities of multitudes of people that any one individual can and will never know, but whose market-guided cooperation makes all of our lives so much better:

It might be a valuable exercise for anyone who is earning a living to attempt to go through a few hours or even a few minutes of his daily life and consider all the exchangeable things which he requires as they pass, and the network of cooperation, extending all over the globe, by which the clothes he put on, the food he eats, the book containing the poems or expounding the science that he is studying, or the pen, ink, and paper with which he writes a letter, a poem, or an appeal, have been placed at his service, by persons for the furtherance of whose purpose in life he has not exercised any one of his faculties or powers.

Such an attempt would help us to realize the vast system of organized cooperation between persons who have no knowledge of each others existence, no concern in each others affairs, and no direct power of furthering each others purposes, by which the most ordinary processes of life are carried on. By the organization of industrial society, we can secure the cooperation of countless individuals of whom we know nothing, in directing the resources of the world toward objects in which we have no interest. And the nexus that thus unites and organizes us is the [open market] business nexus.

But for its continuing success, it is necessary to have constant vigilance against those who would want to use political means for their short-run interests at the overall longer-run benefits and betterment of everyone, Wicksteed warned. This is a task we have still not yet successfully mastered.

This article was originally published in the April 2024 edition of Future of Freedom.

Excerpt from:
Philip Wicksteed on the Common Sense of Choice and the Market ... - The Future of Freedom Foundation

Analysis: embracing the notion of Irishness became a way for theatre to continue in wartime Italy without having to worry about fascist censorship

By Antonio Bibb, University of Trento

"Did you see Mourning Becomes Electra by the English"

"Hold on, I guess you're not up to date! Didnt you check the posters? He was English until June 1940, then he became American. As of December, hes Irish!"

This fictional dialogue was reproduced in a 1942 cartoon about playwright Eugene ONeill, whose being Irish, American, or even English, seems to have been a matter of debate among Italian theatregoers in fascist Italy. But why were Italian satirical magazines concerned with the nationality of playwrights while the country was involved in a global conflict?

Scholars have pointed out that fascist censorship had generally been more interested in unorthodox ethics and potentially dangerous ideas rather than in the origin of writers. Nevertheless, as soon as Italy joined in the war in June 1940, a ban on English and French playwrights was issued, which would be extended to U.S. writers immediately after Pearl Harbour.

Censorship measures went hand in hand with other forms of nationalist propaganda and in the years coming up to the war, one of the most popular "genres" became that of presenting anti-English views expressed by the English themselves: articles, booklets, collections of essays featuring damning statements pronounced by English (or at least English-speaking) intellectuals mushroomed. Anything could be used to attack the "perfidious Albion": decontextualised excerpts forcefully extrapolated from George Bernard Shaws plays or political commentaries from Chestertons autobiography.

It is then that a theatre magazine, Il Dramma, really came into its own. Il Dramma was quite popular among amateur companies since it regularly published both contemporary and classic scripts of Italian and international dramatists. The magazine spearheaded this conflation of political propaganda and literature, even though its editor in chief, Lucio Ridenti, was not an ardent fascist.

The first issues after the declaration of war presented anti-English barbs by the usual suspects, Shaw, Lord Byron, Aldous Huxley, and published a surprising number of Irish plays, excluded from the ban because of Irelands neutrality in the war: the likes of Synge, Yeats (primarily known as a playwright in Italy), Lady Gregory, Joyce, Paul Vincent Carroll, Lennox Robinson were either translated for the first time or re-published after their first and usually not greatly successful early publication in book form. More importantly, authors such as Wilde and Dunsany were presented as Irish for the first time in Italy.

Ridenti was not alone in this, but was helped, and often encouraged, by Anton Giulio Bragaglia, a boisterous polymath who had started his career as a futurist photographer and had been one of Italys first theatre directors in the modern sense. At the time, Bragaglia was the director of the Teatro delle arti, a relatively small Roman venue (approx. 600 seats), which generally enjoyed more freedom than other theatres and as a result granted the regime a certain reputation for not crushing dissenting or unorthodox voices.

Bragaglia included Synge, O'Casey and other Irish dramatists in his programmes and often prompted Ridenti to publish more legitimate plays so that he could put them on stage. It didnt stop there. From the beginning of 1942, after the United States officially joined in the war, several American playwrights, whose works were officially banned, became Irish.

These writers (often called oriundi, Italian for foreign-born nationals) included some Irish-Americans such as Eugene ONeill, George Kelly, and Philip Barry, but also writers whose Irishness was rather more questionable, such as Allan Langdon Martin (pseudonym of the North-American Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin) and even Emily Bront, clearly on account of being born to an Irish father. In these cases too, however, the authors were presented as Irish, and some of their plays were even allegedly "translated from the Irish". Bragaglia and Ridenti resorted to every possible way of finding new plays to produce, even asking the Irish Minister to Italy, Michael MacWhite for books and help.

The reason for this was of course political, although we should not imagine that Ridenti and Bragaglia had suddenly developed an interest in Irish politics ("OCasey and the others have already bored us enough with Irish patriotism" once wrote Bragaglia): enlarging the notion of Irishness was an easy way for Il Dramma to publish them without worrying about fascist censorship.

The ruse also allowed Bragaglia to dodge payment of staging fees, as the Minister of Popular Culture, Alessandro Pavolini, had passed a law allowing such fees to be waived when enemy countries were concerned. It is even possible that the idea had originated in the Ministry itself, or that it was at least approved by Pavolini, who allegedly told Bragaglia on 20 September 1940 that Americans born to Irish parents should be considered Irish. After all, this would be consonant with fascist principles about ethnicity, as people born in South America to Italian parents (called oriundi too) were considered Italian and, among other things, could be capped for the national football team.

The subterfuge certainly raised the status of Irish drama in Italy and helped young Italian writers gain a certain familiarity with the literature of Ireland, however large and generous the extension of the notion of Irishness had become. A future protagonist of Italian literature, the then 19-year-old poet, playwright, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was so impressed by Synges work (read in Il Dramma in 1940) that he would stage it with his friends in his parents home.

A side-effect of exalting Irish culture was also to undermine Britains and U.S. cultural relevance. In this sense, Ridenti and Bragaglia were perfectly aligned with the general tendency of fascist cultural propaganda. Unsurprisingly, it was also part of Bragaglias rhetoric to present such acts as part of a cultural war, as he made clear in a letter to Ridenti: "I put on plays as acts of war authorized by the Italian State, at war with America."

Antonio Bibb is a translator and a lecturer in English and translation at the University of Trento (Italy). He is the author of Irish Literature in Italy in the Era of the World Wars (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RT

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The strange story of Irish theatre in Italy during WWII - RTE.ie

It is the place where international royals and intellectual bohemians send their children to school and was once called "Hogwarts for hippies", but it seems few people in Wales know just how special St Donats castle really is. The crumbling Grade-I listed 12th century medieval castle in the Vale of Glamorgan holds a commanding position right on the edge of the heritage coastline, yet what lies within those theatrical crenelated walls remains somewhat a mystery.

The United World College (UWC) of the Atlantic, near Llantwit Major, is not a normal boarding school - Princess Alexia of the Netherlands studies there for starters - but it's one with an ambitious aim. It's ethos is "deliberate diversity". Or in other words, people from all over the world can get along if you shove them together in a castle. With four to a dorm, it's a place full of princesses, children of millionaires, and refugees and where "lifelong friendships" are formed.

International boundaries fall by the wayside as the teens pursue the International Baccalaureate (IB). Incidentally, it is was a lecture visit by Dr Kurt Hahn, a key figure in the development of experiential education, which inspired the creation of the IB. The castle was donated to the founding committee of the Atlantic College in 1960 and helped create the IB.

We're shown around by Keri Norris, who has worked at the college for 20 years, on a grey and blustery day in Wales and yet the castle looks no less impressive because of it. It's earliest still surviving parts were built in the 12th century by the de Hawey family and the castle has been lived in ever since - making it the longest continually inhabited castle in Wales.

By the late 1200s, the castle was owned by the distinguished Stradling family and it became more of a country house inside a heavily fortified castle. They lived there for some 440 years and the arms of the Stradling family still greet visitors over the outer arch. Sir Edward Stradling III married the king's great-granddaughter in 1423, thus cementing the family's powerful position in Wales.

Until the 16th century, access to the castle was by a drawbridge across a moat, Keri explained. These days, on a normal college day, students would be coming and going through the arch, but it's project week and they're all off working.

A large proportion of the colleges students are on a full scholarship, funded by benefactors from around the world, whereas others are simply enormously privileged. Queen Letizia and King Felipe of Spains eldest daughter, Princess Leonor; and King Willem-Alexander and Queen Mxima of The Netherlands middle daughter, Princess Alexia, were by no means the first royals to attend the school as a boarder when they began the 2021 academic year. Princess Elisabeth of Belgium is a graduate and alumni include Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Crown Princess Raiyah of Jordan.

The place certainly has an air of Harry Potter about it while the antique ceilings, fireplaces, old moat and battlements hint at the 800 years of rich history contained in the castle walls. There are stories of Celtic kings defying the Romans, ghosts wailing on stormy nights, executed pirates, and even a witch called Mally-y-Nos. In 1449, Henry Stradling, along with his wife and child "while sailing from his house in Somersetshire to his house in Wales" were captured by the notorious Breton pirate, Colyn Dolphin, who plundered the Welsh coast from Lundy Island. The pirate demanded a large ransom which was met by the Stradlings after they sold off two of their manors (Tregwilym in Wales and one in Oxfordshire) and a large quantity of wool.

In the Great Hall - which has no internet signal - June Dickens, who worked at the college for 39 years, is mopping the floor.

Rows of long tables are placed beneath chandeliers and there's the familiar smell of school canteen. It's the dining hall for the students, explained 72-year-old June. She said: "You meet different students from all walks of life, they are all really lovely. It's the atmosphere and all the stories attached to it, I absolutely adore it. In my time I remember doing a dinner for Lord Mountbatten, the late Queen came a few times and the King and Princess Di too."

The line of Stradlings at St Donat's died out in 1738, when the last male heir, Sir Thomas Stradling, was killed in a duel. But not before the influential family were the first to bring leaf tea to Wales and the first to grow tomatoes in Wales too, said Keri.

The castle was bought by Morgan Stuart Williams in 1901 and after his death in 1909 it went to his son Godfrey. But Godfrey was so disturbed by some eerie goings-on that he put the place up for sale. Godfrey had seen a ghostly panther prowling the castle corridors at night and reported seeing a single giant glowing eye appearing nightly in one of the bedrooms.

Its said that Godfrey brought an exorcist to the castle and after the usual rituals a great gust of wind swept down the staircase and out went the panther and the glaring eye.

In 1925, the castle was snapped up by William Randolph Hearst, the American newspaper tycoon. Hed seen a picture of St Donats in Country Life and Hearst had never forgotten his first visit to Wales in 1922. He told his London agent, Miss Alice Heard: "Buy St Donats Castle.." The purchase - for 45,000 - provoked a Telegraph article entitled Hollywoods hunger for turrets. At the time, Hearst said: "When I saw some of your great castles such as Caernarfon and Conwy. I decided to acquire something on the same lines only smaller, more domestic."

Hearst set about making his own changes to the castle and he spent another 300,000 on improvements including a water main laid on from Bridgend as he increased the number of bathrooms from three to 35. He ordered the west range stripped bare and refurbished with furnishings from several other historic buildings, notably from Bradenstoke Priory in Somerset. Among the oddities of this Hearst's work at St Donat's is the medieval Tithe Barn, from 1300s, brought intact from Bradenstoke and reassembled at the castle.

Among the furnishings is a 15th century screen from a church in Devon, and a hooded fireplace which probably came from France, Keri pointed out. The castle became a spot fit for Hearst and his mistresss European vacations with a run of illustrious guests that spanned Winston Churchill to a young John F Kennedy and an elderly George Bernard Shaw, who allegedly said that St Donats is "what God would have built if he had the money". It's said they all scratched their names in the walls of the pub in Llantwit Major but the owner had since painted over them, Keri said somewhat incredulously.

But financial difficulties in 1937 led to spending being halted and work on the castle was abandoned. It was put up for sale in 1938 but before it could be sold, war broke out and in 1940 the British Government requisitioned the castle as an officers' training centre. In 1960 it was eventually bought by Antonin Besse II, who gifted it to Atlantic College.

The college opened in 1962 and the idea to turn it into a college drawn from a wide range of nationalities was the plan of Kurt Hahn (who founded Gordonstoun, Prince Charless alma mater). It is the original of 17 United World Colleges around the globe aimed at fostering peace and international understanding among its mixed intake of nationalities, in addition to offering educational qualifications.

Atlantic College says its mission is "to bring together young people from around the world to help create an atmosphere for peaceful coexistence between cultures and nations". It is perhaps fitting how St Donat's has come full circle, from a military stronghold to a centre for international understanding and peaceful cooperation.

"The students want to go out and change the world, they want to make a difference," said Gemma Lyon, communications and engagement officer at UWC Atlantic. The ethos is student led: "If you want to go do something, go do it," Gemma added. It's that approach which led to the invention of the rigid inflatable boat (RIB).

The RIB as we know it was conceived by students at Atlantic College who, under the watchful eye of their principal Sir Desmond Hoare, developed them into highly capable seagoing rescue craft in 1969. They eventually caught the eye of the RNLI and the college sold the idea to them for just 1. If they'd patented it, it would be worth some 50m each year, Keri said.

The RNLI named their first RIBs after the college and the Atlantics have been the mainstay of the RNLI inshore rescue fleet ever since. And today's students continue that vein of innovation. A group of refugee students have developed a language app for refugees and asylum seekers and gained a global award in the process, Gemma explained.

It's easy to see how the historical surroundings could inspire students to tap onto their innovation and creativity. It's all around: the basement below the Lady Anne tower is now the girls toilets and the students have free rein of the estate., albeit with curfews. They are free to explore the terraced Tudor gardens deemed "the finest in Wales" and which include a vine, dating from 1500s, still growing there today. It is undoubtedly a special environment

The college principal is Naheed Bardai, a Canadian national who has spent time teaching in Kenya where he met his wife, Edwina Lunani. They have two children together - Raiman, 6, and Nabih, 4 - and the family moved to Wales for the "dream job". Naheed said: "Wales is beautiful and it's such a progressive forward-thinking country. It's the place to be."

He is sat languidly in a chair in his office which notably has no desk, but does have an arcade football table slap bang in the middle. On the wall is a huge poster of the Peters World Map, which shows countries in the correct in size in relation to each other. It's a map that's widely used as an icon of the modern concept of world equality and it's fitting given the emphasis on equality at the college.

"I'm not a desk person I would much rather have a football table," Naheed said with a smile. "I love this office. I love this place. It's magnificent, there's something special about hearing the waves in the background."

He's not wrong - from his window you can just make out the Devon coastline beyond the sea. "We know the place where students are educated makes a difference," he continued. "It's the most-lived in castle in Wales. They are not only impacted by the history of the place but they are also part of that history. The young people who all call this castle home go and shape the world."

It seems odd that the college is far more well known globally than in Wales and the UK. Naheed agreed: "In the international landscape of education, this school is unlike any other," he said. "A castle like this usually symbolises hierarchy and societal stratification. But now it's actually an education space which is flattening that hierarchy by all coming together in one space.

"We look after children from the UK to princesses to working class young people to kids of billionaires to students with war torn backgrounds. We're changing the hierarchy and inequality in modern day society."

St Donat's really is a very special castle by the sea.

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The medieval Welsh castle where princes and princesses now go to school - Wales Online

The following students were named to the third quarter honor roll at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill:

Highest honors: Jacob Allen, Leigh Carter, Phoebe Carter, Amelia Cowart, Violette Hermans, Klaus Jacobsen, Lucas Ladd, Annika Marshall, Elizabeth McGaha, Oliver Peasley, Cadence Pert, Jack Schanker, Jazzlynn Smith, Bailey Townsend, Hannah Was. Honors: Jenna Ambrose, Cormac Bernard, Emma Bishop, Milo Blake, Zoie Brown, Judson Butler, Tristan Ciomei, Georgia Clews, Halle Clifford, Edmund Crownover, Shealeen Emerton, Romeo Grindle, Skye Johnson, Lillian Landrum, Andrew Matson, Donavon McMullen, Kenzee Taylor, Logan Townsend.

Highest honors: Marena Birdsall, Madison Brackett, Kade Chatto, Lucinda Clews, Frederick Coit, Erik Davis, Natalie Esposito, Liberty Farmer, Ella Hutchins, Amelia Jackson, Jake Lepper, Olivia Macomber, Patrick McLaughlin, Adam Metcalf, Lilley Morse, Molly Pile, Ruby Prime-Spivak, Dylan Richardson, Sayla Russell-Blake, Mya Schildroth, Isabella Silva, Maya Skene, Eve Skoletsky, Matilda Sorich, Imogen Steed, Sorrel Steele, Corina Walden, Elizabeth Ward, Caden Wehrwein, Lory Yang.

Honors: Guthrie Bannon, Caiden Chattin, Maddison Damon, Rowan Gagne, Katherine Gott, Liam Henry, Caden Hewes, Anders Jensen, Aubrey King V, Kaiya Loukes, Caden Martin, Javon McMullen, Cadence Nevells, Reed Pambianco, Riley Patten, Alexandria Perillo, Isaiah Radel, Dayton Rogers, Nelson Salman, Kyrylo Salo, Chloe Skillin, Caleb Snow, Clark Sullivan, Ansel Tenney, Jocelyn Touch, Evelyn Weed.

Highest honors: Phoebe Bebell, Oceania Black, Kate Chandler, Patrick Dagan, Jessica Dyer, Levko Fedorak, Charlotte Griffith, Adriana Hall, Benjamin Hawes,Maddox Hutchinson, Iris Kimball, Ronja Krall, Olivia Larrabee, Anna Mitchell, Evan Munroe, Noah Radel, Coby Reynolds, Hazel Sheahan, Haven Smith, Anna Snow, Julia Traub, Aiden Young.

Honors: Camryn Allen, Emmett Allen, Kennedy Austin, Eben Betts, Mattea Black, Sayer Bramblett-Williams, Morgan Clifford, Brady Hutchins, Makallie Jenkins, Lance Kennedy, Sophia Landrum, Breton Lebel, Clayson Maanum, Thea McKechnie, June Page, Brady Pert, Kaiden Shaw, Liam Stearns, Caitlin Tobey, Cameron Walden, Marley Wenal.

Highest honors: Robert Bennett, Valentine Bouquet, Ian Bowden, Jack Brooks, Anais Brosset, Danielle Callaghan, Austin Chandler, Phillip Ciampa, Thea Crowley, Dell Davis-Batt, Isla Day-Picariello, Anthony Esposito, Lily Jaffray, Alyssa Ladd, Emery Leach, Logan Leach, Regan Libby, Sol Lorio, Eleanor McMillan, Azaiah Nanson, Blake Nason, Sebastian Petrak, Layla Pickering, Ana Scheff, Nora Spratt, Olivia Strong, Hannah VanSpronsen, Hannah Webb.

Honors: Alexon Astbury, Emery Bradshaw Thomas, Hannah Bray, Ira Buchholz, Cameron Charette, Jacob Clough, Jonathan Crosby, Noel Da, Andrew Hipsky, Ali Mahdi Hussainzada, Jewel Mabry, Hailey Matson, Brockett Muir IV, Henry ONeil, Samuel Page, Piper Shepard-Florio, Oliver Tenney.

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George Stevens Academy honor roll | Education | ellsworthamerican ... - The Ellsworth American

Science and nature books

Quantum computers will transform our world, curing cancer and fixing the climate crisis, says the scientist and sci-fi fan but can they be made to work?

Sat 22 Apr 2023 04.00 EDT

Have you been feeling anxious about technology lately? If so, youre in good company. The United Nations has urged all governments to implement a set of rules designed to rein in artificial intelligence. An open letter, signed by such luminaries as Yuval Noah Harari and Elon Musk, called for research into the most advanced AI to be paused and measures taken to ensure it remains safe trustworthy, and loyal. These pangs followed the launch last year of ChatGPT, a chatbot that can write you an essay on Milton as easily as it can generate a recipe for everything you happen to have in your cupboard that evening.

But what if the computers used to develop AI were replaced by ones able to make calculations not millions, but trillions of times faster? What if tasks that might take thousands of years to perform on todays devices could be completed in a matter of seconds? Well, thats precisely the future that physicist Michio Kaku is predicting. He believes we are about to leave the digital age behind for a quantum era that will bring unimaginable scientific and societal change. Computers will no longer use transistors, but subatomic particles, to make calculations, unleashing incredible processing power. Another physicist has likened it to putting a rocket engine in your car. How are you feeling now?

Kaku seems pretty relaxed about it all some might say boosterish. He talks to me via Zoom from his apartment on Manhattans Upper West Side. Seventy-six and retired from research, he still teaches at the City University of New York where he is professor of theoretical physics and gets to do the fun stuff. A fan of Isaac Asimov, he tells me that hes currently teaching a course on the physics of science fiction. I talk about what is known and not known about time travel, space warps, the multiverse, all the things you see in Marvel Comics, I break it down. His website describes him as a futurist and populariser of science and his new book, Quantum Supremacy, sketches out all the promise of quantum computing and very little of the downside. Though he has the long white hair of the stereotypical mad scientist, it is swept back elegantly. He speaks at the pace of a practised lecturer, with the occasional outbreak of mild bemusement pitching his voice a little higher.

Kaku has a simple explanation for the doom-mongering around ChatGPT: Journalists are hyperventilating about chatbots because they see that their job is on the line. Many jobs have been on the line historically, but no one really said much about them. Now, journalists are right there in the crosshairs. This is a somewhat partial view a report by Goldman Sachs recently estimated that 300m jobs are at risk of automation as a result of AI. Kaku does admit that we might see sentient machines emerging from laboratories but reckons that could take another hundred years or so. In the meantime, he thinks theres a lot to feel good about.

The rocket engine of quantum computing will, Kaku says, completely transform research in chemistry, biology and physics, with all sorts of knock-on effects. Among other things, it will enable us to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn it into fuel, with the waste products captured and used again so-called carbon recycling. It will help us extract nitrogen from the air without the high temperatures and pressures that mean fertiliser production currently accounts for 2% of the energy used on Earth, leading to a new green revolution. It will allow us to create super-efficient batteries to help renewables go further (todays lithium-ion batteries only carry about 1% of the energy stored in gasoline). It will solve the design and engineering challenges currently stopping us from generating cheap, abundant power via nuclear fusion. And it will lead to radically effective treatments for cancer, Alzheimers and Parkinsons diseases, alongside a host of others.

How? The main thing to understand is that quantum computers can make calculations much, much faster than digital ones. They do this using qubits, the quantum equivalent of bits the zeros and ones that convey information in a conventional computer. Whereas bits are stored as electrical charges in transistors etched on to silicon chips, qubits are represented by properties of particles, for example, the angular momentum of an electron. Qubits superior firepower comes about because the laws of classical physics do not apply in the strange subatomic world, allowing them to take any value between zero and one, and enabling a mysterious process called quantum entanglement, which Einstein famously called spukhafte Fernwirkung or spooky action at a distance. Kaku makes valiant efforts to explain these mechanisms in his book, but its essentially impossible for a layperson to fully grasp. As the science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder puts it in one of her wildly popular YouTube videos on the subject: When we write about quantum mechanics, were faced with the task of converting mathematical expressions into language. And regardless of which language we use, English, German, Chinese or whatever, our language didnt evolve to describe quantum behaviour.

What were left with are analogies of varying helpfulness, for example the toy trains with compasses on them and mice in mazes that Kaku invokes to explain such complex ideas as superposition and path integrals. Beyond these, there is one important takeaway: reality is quantum, and so quantum computers can simulate it in a way that digital ones struggle to. Mother Nature does not compute digitally, he tells me. Quantum computers should [be able to] unravel the secrets of life, the secrets of the universe, the secrets of matter, because the language of nature is the quantum principle. If you want to know precisely how photosynthesis works (still a mystery to modern science), or how one protein interacts with another in the human body, you will be able to use the virtual lab of a quantum computer to model it precisely. Designing medicines to interrupt biological processes gone awry, like the proliferation of cancer cells or the misfolding of proteins in Alzheimers disease, could become much easier. Kaku even reckons that the riddle of ageing will be unravelled so that we can arrest it one of the chapters in his book is called simply Immortality.

At this stage, its worth introducing an important caveat. Quantum computers are very, very hard to make. Because they rely on tiny particles that are extremely sensitive to any kind of disturbance, most can only run at temperatures close to absolute zero, where everything slows down and theres minimal environmental noise. That is, as you would expect, quite difficult to arrange. So far, the most advanced quantum computer in the world, IBMs Osprey, has 433 qubits. This might not sound like much, but as the company points out the number of classical bits that would be necessary to represent a state on the Osprey processor far exceeds the total number of atoms in the known universe. What they dont say is that it only works for about 70 to 80 millionths of a second before being overwhelmed by noise. Not only that, but the calculations it can make have very limited applications. As Kaku himself notes: A workable quantum computer that can solve real-world problems is still many years in the future. Some physicists, such as Mikhail Dyakonov at the University of Montpellier, believe the technical challenges mean the chances of a quantum computer that could compete with your laptop ever being built are pretty much zero.

Kaku brushes this off. He points to the billions of dollars being poured into quantum research the Gold Rush is on he says and the way intelligence agencies have been warning about the need to get quantum-ready. Thats hardly proof positive theyll live up to expectations it could be tulip mania rather than a gold rush. He shrugs: Lifes a gamble.

In any case, hes far from the only true believer. Corporations such as IBM, Google, Microsoft and Intel are investing heavily in the technology, as is the Chinese government, which has developed a 113 qubit computer called Jiuzhang. So, assuming for a moment quantum dreams do become a reality: is it responsible to accentuate the positive, as Kaku does? What about the possibility of these immense capabilities being used for ill?

Well, thats the universal law of technology, that [it] can be used for good or evil. When humans discovered the bow and arrow, we could use that to bring down game and feed people in our tribe. But of course, the bow and arrow can also be used against our enemies.

Advances in physics, in particular, have always raised the prospect of new and more fearsome weapons. But you cant hold back research as a result: you make the discoveries, then you deal with the consequences. Thats why we regulate nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a rather simple consequence of Einsteins E=mc2. And they have to be regulated, because the E would be enough to destroy humanity on planet Earth. At some point, were going to reach the boundaries of this technology, where it impacts negatively on society. Right now, I can see a lot of benefits.

In any case, for Kaku, knowledge is power. Its part of the reason hes moved from the lab to TV, radio and books. The whole purpose of writing books for the public is so that [they] can make educated, reasonable, wise decisions about the future of technology. Once technology becomes so complicated that the average person cannot grasp it, then theres big trouble, because then people with no moral compass will be in charge of the direction of that technology.

There are other reasons, as well. From an early age, Kaku was, unsurprisingly, a science fiction nut. But he wasnt content to simply swallow the stories, and wanted to know if they were really possible, whether the laws of physics might verify or contradict them. And in the science section, there was nothing, absolutely nothing. And I was [also] fascinated by Einsteins dream of a theory of everything, a unified field theory. Again I found nothing, not a single book, on Einsteins great dream. And I said to myself, when I grow up, and I become a theoretical physicist, I want to write papers on this subject. But I also want to write for myself as a child, going to the library and being so frustrated that there was nothing for me to read. And thats what I do.

Kakus parents were among those American citizens of Japanese descent who were interned during the second world war, despite having been born in the country. Like his father, he was raised in Palo Alto, California, the ground zero of the tech revolution. The irony isnt lost on him. I saw Silicon Valley grow from nothing. When I was a child, it was all alfalfa fields, apple orchards. I used to play in the apple orchards of what is now Apple, he chuckles. If his predictions about the quantum revolution are correct, it could soon be transformed again. Silicon Valley could become a rust belt a junkyard of chips that no one uses any more because theyre too primitive. Or, more likely, a gleaming new centre of quantum computation, as todays tech giants scramble to redeploy their immense intellectual and financial capital. Whether Kakus quantum revolution lives up to the hype remains to be seen. But if he is right and all that is digital passes into dust, were in for one hell of a ride.

Quantum Supremacy by Michio Kaku will be published by Allen Lane on 2 May. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com

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Physicist Michio Kaku: We could unravel the secrets of the universe - The Guardian

GoIs seed fund of Rs 6,000cr ($730m) for the National Quantum Mission (NQM) for 2023-24 through 2030-31 is a fillip to R&D in quantum tech, whose applications are in multiple stages of experimentation and prototypes globally. It is a quirk of quantum computing that for India to prioritise $730 million for the mission is an expensive call, yet for the field of study, a modest fund. In the elite club of six with public-funded quantum initiatives, China has allocated $15. 3 billion (2021-2025), EU $7. 2 billion and the US $1. 2 billion. China also has the largest share of patents in quantum tech.

It is a measure of the mind-bending nature of quantum that the ground-breaking research of 1970s and 1980s into the phenomenon of entanglement, the heart of quantum science, was recognised with a Physics Nobel only in 2022. The Laureates had shown that entangled particles (physically apart yet linked) can ferry information over massive distances. This has far-reaching implications for quantum communications tech (QCT), of key strategic significance to India and one of the four verticals for the missions R&D. QCT allows a country to secure its critical infrastructure with quantum cryptography to make it unhackable.

Conventional data networks are putty in the face of quantum computing if the latter is applied to organise a cyberattack.Challenges to build quantum infra are formidable. The first step is for public-funded research institutes to collaborate with startups and firms to develop the initial intermediate-sized supercomputers. At present, India only has a basic quantum computer Qsim that allows researchers to simulate quantum computation. Hardware aside, talent gap is a bottleneck. In 2021, for 290 quantum tech masters grads globally, there were 851 jobs. Barely 16% of the worlds universities offer degrees in the field. This is the ecosystem India is entering. Yet GoIs commitment to fundamental science and endeavour is a great beginning. NQM could not have come a day sooner. QED.

This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.

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Quantum Jump: GoI does well to fund R&D in computings next revolution - Times of India

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The last few years have been spectacular for International Business Machines Corp (IBM) regarding quantum computing. Not only has the tech giant done a lot of work around the revolutionary technology, but it is also considered one of the pioneers in the field of quantum computing.

Although quantum computing remains a complicated field with lots of nuance and subtlety about the significance of qubits, noise, endurance, and scalability, the pace of innovation by IBM continues to accelerate where its transitioning from scientific exploration to practical reality.

IBMsroadmapis a clear, detailed plan to scale quantum processors, overcome the scaling problem, and build the hardware necessary for quantum advantage. It started in 2016 when IBMput the first quantum computer in the cloudfor anyone to experiment witha device with five qubits, each a superconducting circuit cooled to near zero.

By 2019, the company created the 27-qubit Falcon, followed by the 65-qubit Hummingbird in 2020 and the 127-qubitEaglein 2021, the first quantum processor with more than 100 qubits. IBM then upped its ante last year when it launched the Osprey quantum processor, featuring 433 qubits, themost powerful quantum processor in the world yet.

Thats not it. This year, the tech giant is set to unveil IBM Condor, the worlds first universal quantum computer with more than 1,000 qubits. Based on its roadmap, IBM will also be launching Heron, the first of a new flock of modular quantum processors that the company says may help it produce quantum computers with more than 4,000 qubits by 2025.

In between, IBMsquantum roadmapessentially consists of two additional stages the 1,121-qubit Condor and 1,386-qubit Flamingo processors in 2023 and 2024, respectively before it plans to hit the 4,000-qubit stage with its Kookaburra processor in 2025.

These processors push the limits of what can be done with single chip processors andcontrolling large systems, IBM said in itsquantum roadmap. So far, the company has generally made this roadmap work. Still, the number of qubits in a quantum computer is only one part of a vast and complex puzzle, with longer coherence times and reduced noisejust as important.

IBMs senior VP and research director Daro Gi claims the new 433 qubits Osprey processor brings the company closer to the point where a quantum computer will be usedto tackle previously unsolvable problems.

IBM has also released a beta update to Qiskit Runtime, allowing users to trade speed for reduced error count with a simple option in the API. By abstracting the complexities of these features into the software layer, it will make it easier for users to incorporate quantum computing into their workflows and speed up the development of quantum applications, the statement reads.

IBM also detailed its Quantum System Two last year basically, IBMs quantum mainframe that will be able to house multiple quantum processors and integrate them into a single system with high-speed communication links. The idea is to launch this system by the end of 2023, when it is a building block of quantum-centric supercomputing.

IBM has got big plans for quantum computing (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP)

Essentially, quantum and other advanced computing technologies will help researchers tackle historic scientific bottlenecks and potentially find new treatments for patients with severe diseases like cancer, Alzheimers, and diabetes.

Last month, IBM made another quantum computing leap when unveiled IBM Quantum System One. Installed at Cleveland Clinic in the US, it is the first quantum computer in the world to be uniquely dedicated to healthcare research to help Cleveland Clinic accelerate biomedical discoveries.

Quantum computing is a rapidly emerging technology that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanicsto solve problemsthat todays most powerful supercomputers cannot practically solve. The ability to tap into these new computational spaces could help researchers identify new medicines and treatments more quickly, IBM said in aMarch 20 statement.

By combining the power of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and other next-generation technologies with Cleveland Clinics world-renowned leadership in healthcare and life sciences, we hope to ignite anew era of accelerated discovery, Arvind Krishna, IBM Chairman and CEO, said.

In addition to quantum computing, through the Cleveland Clinic-IBM Discovery Accelerator, a variety of IBMs latest technological advancements was drawn upon, including high-performance computing via the hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence.

Researchers from both organizations are collaborating closely on a robust portfolio of projects with these advanced technologies to generate and analyze massive amounts of data to enhance research, IBM noted.

Going beyond single-chip processors is the key to solving scale for IBM. In 2023, the company plans to introduce classical parallelized quantum computing with multiple Heron processors connected by a single control system. In 2024, we will debut Crossbill, the first single processor made from multiple chips.

The same year will also unveil our Flamingo processor. This remarkable processor will incorporate quantum communication links, allowing us to demonstrate a quantum system comprising three Flamingo processors totaling 1,386 qubits, it said.

By 2025, IBM will combine multi-chip processors and quantum communication technologies to create its Kookaburra processor. This will demonstrate a quantum system of three Kookaburra processors, totaling 4,158 qubits. Thisleap forwardwill usher in a new era of scaling, providing a clear path to 100,000 qubits and beyond, it added.

Dashveenjit Kaur| @DashveenjitK

Dashveen writes for Tech Wire Asia and TechHQ, providing research-based commentary on the exciting world of technology in business. Previously, she reported on the ground of Malaysia's fast-paced political arena and stock market.

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Here's why IBM is leading in quantum computing - Tech Wire Asia

Enterprises can take advantage of D-Waves newly published optimization improvement through a hardware-sharing cloud service.

One of the challenges in quantum computing is overcoming 3D spin-glass optimization limitations, which can slow down quantum simulation meant to solve real-world optimization problems. An experimental solution is D-Waves Advantage quantum computer, running spin-glass dynamics (essentially a sequence of magnets) on 5,000 qubits.

According to a study by scientists from D-Wave and Boston University, published in the journal Nature, the team has validated that quantum annealing a mathematical process used to find low-energy states by using quantum fluctuations can improve solution quality faster than classical algorithms, at least theoretically. It may be a key step forward in showing the ways in which a quantum processor can compute coherent quantum dynamics in large-scale optimization problems.

D-Wave customers who subscribe to the Leap quantum cloud service can access the new commercial-grade, annealing-based quantum computer as of April 19.

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The main takeaway for enterprises is that spin-glass computing on a quantum annealing device may eventually be able to efficiently solve optimization problems, achieving a goal with as little energy as possible. For example, it could be a relatively efficient way to answer questions such as Should I ship this package on this truck or the next one? or the traveling salesman problem (What is the most efficient route a traveling salesperson should take to visit different cities?), as D-Wave wrote.

D-Wave is one of the only companies that offers enterprise quantum computing space with both gate and annealing programs, which now includes its 5,000 qubit, commercial-grade Advantage quantum computer. There is still some question as to how practical this technology is, but the new paper is proof that further commercial quantum computing optimization can be performed on D-Waves hardware.

SEE: Should IT teams factor quantum computing into their decisions?

Getting deeper into the physics, spin glasses are often used as test beds for paradigmatic computing, the researchers said, but using this approach in a programmable system and therefore one that can be used to do practical calculations still leads to potential problems. D-Wave has solved this on its hardware by using quantum-critical spin-glass dynamics on thousands of qubits with a superconducting quantum annealer.

The same hardware that has already provided useful experimental proving ground for quantum critical dynamics can be also employed to seek low-energy states that assist in finding solutions to optimization problems, said Wojciech Zurek, theoretical physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and leading authority on quantum theory, in D-Waves press release.

Applications that solve optimization problems like the packaging shipping question above require a minimum energy state from the quantum annealing processors they run on. Other calculations that could be used for decision-making, such as probabilistic sampling problems, need good low-energy samples in order to run.

D-Wave says spin glasses can be brought into low-energy states faster by annealing quantum fluctuations than by conventional thermal annealing.

This paper gives evidence that the quantum dynamics of a dedicated hardware platform are faster than for known classical algorithms to find the preferred, lowest energy state of a spin glass, and so promises to continue to fuel the further development of quantum annealers for dealing with practical problems, said Gabriel Aeppli, professor of physics at ETH Zrich and EPF Lausanne, and head of the Photon Science Division of the Paul Scherrer Institut.

Another problem researchers in the quantum computing world are trying to solve is qubit coherence. In a simplified sense, coherence means that a quantum state maintains certain physical qualities while in use. Research shows that coherent quantum annealing can improve solution quality faster than classical algorithms.

Hand-in-hand development of the gate and annealing programs will bring us to longer coherence times and better qubit parameters, allowing our advantage over classical optimization to grow, Andrew King, director of performance research for D-Wave, wrote in a blog post.

While the newly published research was conducted on the currently commercially available Advantage quantum computer, D-Wave is also working on its next iteration. The Advantage2 system is in the experimental prototype stage and will be D-Waves sixth-generation quantum computing hardware. D-Wave anticipates the full Advantage2 system will launch with 7,000 qubits and does not have a projected release date for the alpha version.

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Quantum computing gets hardware boost with spin glass breakthrough - TechRepublic