Posts on sundry matters of life the universe and everything: Culture, Environment, Life, Politics & Government, Science, Social Science and Society, Technology etc.
Stephen Hawkins thinks we will probably go extinct on this planet if we don’t find a new one within 1000 years. Science writer extraordinaire Julian Cribb wonders whether we will make it past 2100.
His book Surviving the 21st Century: Humanity’s Ten Great Challenges and How We Can Overcome Them poses the ten existential challenges facing Homo sapiens, and answers each one. It is a book of solutions, severally and collectively. Continue reading Can we survive the 21st century?
Alan Fels said it, so it must be so:
“There is enough evidence to say that it is systemic,” Mr Fels said.
“Significant numbers are really exploited.”
In the seventh annual Global Wealth Report from Swiss bank Credit Suisse, the “lucky country” posted an average wealth of $US375,600 ($508,900) for every Australian, second only to banking hotbed Switzerland, with an average net worth of $US562,000.
I don’t know about you but my impression is that the Turnbull government is a chaotic mess! Aaron Patrick at the Fin Review says this week’s Newspoll, again 53-47 TPP to Labor, makes Malcolm Turnbull look like Julia Gillard in Liberal drag. That’s five Newspolls in a row.
Sounds like 2013? It’s actually 2016. Continue reading A week to go, and what a mess!
The Senate has passed the so-called ‘registered organisations commission bill’, with only Jacqui Lambi joining the Greens and Labor to vote against it (see also Michelle Grattan). Now the game moves to proposed legislation to restore the Australian Building Construction Commission, which I’ll examine below.
Essentially the government succeeded with the registered organisations commission bill by doing deals with The Nick Xenephon Team (NXT) and Derryn Hinch on whistle-blower provisions. Hinch reckons the whistle-blower provisions are the best in the world, and the Government has agreed to extend them to the corporate and government sectors by 2018. Continue reading ABCC: a better plan for union governance?
There are a few topics I currently feel passionate about, and if I don’t do this one now it will slip off the list.
Last week Richard Fidler did a re-run of his interview with Jon Ronson on what it’s like to be publicly shamed and Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Twitter and Facebook have become places where people can be mercilessly attacked and threatened. Many lose their jobs, are afraid to go outside, and their lives forever change. Some, says Ronson, commit suicide. Continue reading Mob rule on the intertubes
I suspect that in 50 years time the best of Australian Aboriginal art will be seen as some of the most significant in the world during our time.
An exhibition of art by nine Aboriginal women, Marking the Infinite, is running at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, New Orleans. This is from the blurb: Continue reading Saturday salon 19/11
Domestically he says it doesn’t matter how much he won by or whether he won the primary vote. He won.
What is more he won the trifecta – the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court. Continue reading Wallerstein on the consequences of Trump
Ignorance, lies, insults and even ‘fake news’. The US presidential election set new lows for political theatre – it couldn’t be described as discourse. And the country could not be more divided, well, short of civil war.
“If there is a single overarching lesson in the Trump victory, perhaps it is this: Never, ever underestimate the power of hate, of direct appeals to power over the ‘other’ … especially during times of economic hardship,” said Klein, whose books include The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Continue reading Saturday salon 12/11
The American people have voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, right? Wrong.
On latest figures 59,821,874 or 47.4% of the eligible voting population voted for Trump. Hillary Clinton attracted 60,121.876 votes, or 47.7%. That’s around 300,000 more. In a democratic system where all votes have equal value, we’d be celebrating a win for Secretary Clinton. [See Update 1 below]
Wikipedia shows turnout down from 54.9% to 51.3%. So only 24.4% of the eligible voting population of 245.273 million in fact voted for Trump, or around 30% of registered voters. Continue reading Trump triumphs, but who voted for him?
Time to look seriously at what a Trump presidency would do to climate change.
They just need to keep pumping the skies full of carbon dioxide for 75 more years, slowly turning much of the planet into a wasteland.
Continue reading China to Trump: wise men don’t sneer at climate change
