An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.
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The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.
Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.
The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:
The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.
Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.
1. Distracted by tennis
The second week of the Australian Open tennis is always interesting. Unfortunately watching it is incompatible with blogging.
Tonight Novak Djokovic prevailed 7-6 (7-1), 3-6, 6-4, 4-6, 6-0 over defending champion Stan Wawrinka and will now meet Andy Murray who beat the Czech Tomas Berdych in four sets on Thursday night.
Although Wawrinka’s game fell apart in the final set, prior to that he showed that he had the game to mix it with the top players. Berdych, ranked at seven in the world, still looks on the fringe. The old guard looks like running the show for a while longer. By the way Wawrinka and Berdych are both aged 29.
I’m tipping Murray for the final. Wawrinka broke Djokovic’s serve five times in all and I suspect he isn’t in prime physical condition. He looked vulnerable. Only a fool would write him off, however.
The women have been playing during the day in the quarters and semis, so I haven’t been able to follow them. Earlier I did see something of the young American Madison Keys, who looks one for the future.
The coroner was told that gunman Man Haron Monis executed Lindt Cafe manager Tori Johnson after making him kneel on the floor. The killing was witnessed by a police marksman who called the control centre. The police immediately stormed the cafe. Six fragments of a police bullet or bullets, which ricocheted from hard surfaces, hit Katrina Dawson, causing her death.
A former member of the Australian military’s elite domestic counter-terrorism unit has publicly suggested that police used the wrong rifles during the siege, with heavy bullets posing a high ricochet risk in the enclosed space.
Mitchell McAlister, writing in the American online journal SOFREP, a magazine presenting news and analysis from former special forces operatives, said he believed the choice of the M4A1 carbine may have contributed to the death of Ms Dawson.
3. Morgan poll
ALP support rose to 56.5% (up 2%) on Australia Day weekend, well ahead of the L-NP 43.5% (down 2%) on a two-party preferred basis. If a Federal Election were held now the ALP would win easily according to this week’s Morgan Poll on voting intention conducted with an Australia-wide cross-section of 2,057 Australian electors aged 18+.
Primary support for the ALP rose to 39.5% (up 1%) now ahead of the L-NP 37.5% (down 1%). Support for the other parties shows The Greens at 12% (up 2.5%), Palmer United Party (PUP) 3% (up 1%) while Independents/ Others were down 3.5% to 8%.
Support for PUP is highest in Clive Palmer’s home State of Queensland (7%) – which faces a State Election this weekend and Western Australia (4%) with negligible support for PUP in other States.
Some pundits are suggesting the Abbott has six months to turn things around. That makes the 2015 budget rather crucial.
The only demographic preferring the LNP is now the 65+ group.
(Reuters) – Greek leftist leader Alexis Tsipras promised on Sunday that five years of austerity, “humiliation and suffering” imposed by international creditors were over after his Syriza party swept to victory in a snap election on Sunday.
With about 60 percent of votes counted, Syriza was set to win 149 seats in the 300 seat parliament, with 36.1 percent of the vote, around eight points ahead of the conservative New Democracy party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.
Paul Mason has the background in The Guardian: ‘Hope begins today’: the inside story of Syriza’s rise to power. He says:
Syriza’s victory has electrified the left in Europe – even moderate social democrats who have floundered in search of ideas and inspiration since the 2008 crisis. Now there is talk everywhere of “doing a Syriza” – and in Spain, where the leftist party Podemos is scoring 25% in the polls, more than talk.
I heard Tsipras say he wants discussion about Greece’s debts, not negotiations. The market’s have not taken fright, so I guess the sky won’t fall in. It is said that David Cameron’s hopes of achieving a “full-on” re-writing of the EU’s governing treaties have suffered a severe blow.
5. Birdman
On Australia Day we went to see the film Birdman, which I am informed was one of the better films of 2014.
Here’s a reviewer that liked it. The plot is unprepossessing – a washed up actor is directing and starring in a play, which in preview looks like one disaster after another.
It’s rivetting, funny and serious, with layers of meaning, beautifully acted and shot. Given the violence from time to time, it can’t end altogether well, but to tell would be a spoiler. Highly recommended.
Queensland IQ test day.
Damn BilB, spot on!
Just on that siege:
I am very annoyed the DC news media is already playing a blame-game; it looks as though the experience of armed conflict amongst most news staff comes from Hollywood or from ultra-violent screen-games – and if any ever studied physics at school, those lessons were wasted.
The risk of ricochet when operating firearms in any urban environment – with lots of flat hard surfaces – is ALWAYS so very high as to be unavoidable.
The risk of ricochets harming bystanders is only slightly lower if, say, solid lead .45″ ACP pistol and sub machine gun rounds are used rather than metal jacketed 5.56mm or 7.62mm assault rifle and light machine gun rounds, both types of rounds impart more than enough kinetic energy to the bullets so as to stop whatever is in their path and if the bullet does ricochet off a smooth hard surface, sufficient kinetic energy remains to inflict a fatal wound. Even a little .22″ bullet can ricochet and kill a bystander – so too can pellets from a shotgun, quarrels from a crossbow and arrows from a longbow.
So please, no more cheap and silly sensationalism from the entertainment industry, pretending to give us “news(??)”, over what is already a very sad happening.
Well, 9 coverage on the election is jovial.
7 CanDo haters v JPL
It seems Queenslanders have a very, very high IQ, even above the national average.
Don’t know about the rest of you but as a Queensland voter, I’m schadenfreuding away to my heart’s content. 🙂
Wonder when decree nisi will be declared in the LNP divorce case?
BilB
What, coz no greens elected ?
You may have a point there.
I’m seeing that ALP Greens coalition working very well, Jumpy.
For instance that Jeff Seeney directive to remove Climate Change sea level considerations from coastal development planning can now be ignored, torn up, and officially ridiculed, and future planning considerations can be based on projected future climate data rather than historical data.
By contrast the LNP LNP coalition is doing at all well.
I came across this list of Campbell Newman’s lesser known achievements
http://auspol.wikia.com/wiki/How_evil_is_Campbell_Newman%3F
……not doing at all well
After all of the negativity on Newman’s performance as Premier, and looking at his Wiki CV, it is a shame to be losing his civil engineering skills from government. The power of singular focus is a huge enabler in engineering and business. It almost certainly is what drove Newman’s advancement in the army to the rank of captain. But the role of Premier is one that requires a broader skill set, very particularly people skills with a huge measure of empathy for the needs and performance of others.
I am hoping that Newman finds a role which uses his energies to achieve something nationally significant and great. Perhaps making a canal to provide Lake Eyre with a permanent water source, or something. There are many great things that Can Do Could Do if only he Would Do. We’ll just have to wait to see what he does next.
BilB @ 10: What worries me is that this loser’s non-performance might reflect on any engineers. ones instead with social skills, moral strength and political aptitude as well, who may seek to run for public office here or in other states.
One of my problems with Newman is that he saw brute force civil engineering projects as the solution to far too many problems.
For example, with transport, there are numerous low cost, smart things that could be used to reduce both congestion and emissions. The sort of things that control engineers, process engineers, etc. can see.
In the tennis Andy Murray suffered a mental meltdown towards the end of the third set, shouting and ranting while he sat in the chair during the break. I think he has some stupid notion that if you let your anger out you clear your mind and play better tennis.
About 30 years ago when I attended yoga classes for a while, they said, “Contemplate failure with equanimity!” The idea was that you saved your emotional energy for what you could do to fix the situation. I’ve found it valuable advice.
We were backing Murray. My wife said, “Djokovic deserves to win if Murray carries on like that.” It’s not a matter of manners, it’s a matter of focussing on playing tennis.
Anyway I went to bed and Murray didn’t win another game.
John D @11: Yes but Construction has joined Health and Defence Procurement as playgrounds for serious rorters and plundering shonks. Why the blue blazes would they want any low-cost innovative systems to replace their horribly expensive gravy-train?
GOOD NEWS
ABC carried a report that Peter Greste has been freed from Egypt and flew to Larnaca in Cyprus with his brother, 🙂
Noticed the IPA was on ABC TV this morning giving Federal Liberal Party their running instructions not to dump Abbott. Even more frightening this jumped up RWDB was some bigwig in the Young Libs. (I’m going apeshit about this on Twitter – Yes, I succumbed finally and have a twitter account I use and consult daily – and going togo apeshit about it when I get on Facebook this morning.)
Paul Burns: The Young Libs have a lot I to answer for to the Australian public.
GB @14: You are right, the money is in major projects rather than smart, low cost ways of doing things. To make matters worse, everyone understands bridges but it can be harder to explain some subtle, smart way of improving things.