From Osher Doctorow

We are at an interesting juncture in this Quantum Gravity thread,
namely in which Perception/Observation in playing the leading role in
Quantum Gravity, and there are two researchers, one in the U.K. and one
in Portugal, who are playing leading roles in Gravitational Optics with
a perspective of the whole Universe, namely Jose B. Almeida of Portugal
(U. de Minho) and Graham M. Shore of U. Wales in U.K.

Readers should look these authors up via their names on the internet,
especially on arXiv and Front for the Mathematics ArXiv. Jose B.
Almeida produces 22 papers in arXiv, although there are several
additional ones under J. B. Almeida which I think are his. Shore
produces 30 papers in arXiv.

I would like to devote this introductory part of this section 22.5 to
asking why the U.K. and Portugal should have given rise to this
remarkable research. I suspect that the U.K. is among the world's most
Individualist and Nonconformist nations,

a lthough when talking about
the USA they tend to call the USA something like "wild Individualists".
Portugal doesn't look Individualist and Nonconformist at first
glance,

and currently it seems buried under Spain's Plurality-Oriented
and Conformist tendencies, but like a number of extremely tiny nations
it seems to have made at least Nonconformity part of its nature for
much of history. The history of world exploration geographically for
purposes other than Violence literally seems to have begun in Portugal.
Portugal rebelled against Conformist Spanish bullfighting and
literally does not allow killing bulls in public arenas

(I almost typed
public coliseums which is reminiscent of Ancient Rome). Portugal far
outweights its size in Creative papers in arXiv and Front for the
Mathematics ArXiv.

Iran has been trying to get in on the "act" by following up papers of
Shore by its own papers on Gravitational Optics, and in my opinion this
is not a reflection of either Individualism or Nonconformity but rather
the Arms Race.

Osher Doctorow