Links for November 2016

«This post is a condensed version of what I've sent to people who have contacted me over the years, outlining what everyone needs to learn in order to really understand physics.»
«Operation Tamarisk was a Cold War-era operation run by the military intelligence services of the U.S., U.K., and France through their military liaison missions in East Germany, that gathered discarded paper, letters, and garbage from Soviet trash bins and military maneuvers, including used toilet paper.»
«The Mortara case (Italian: caso Mortara) was an Italian cause célèbre that captured the attention of much of Europe and North America in the 1850s and 1860s. It concerned the Papal States' seizure of a six-year-old boy named Edgardo Mortara from his Jewish family in Bologna, on the basis of a former servant's testimony that she had administered an emergency baptism to the boy when he fell ill as an infant.»