Posts on sundry matters of life the universe and everything: Culture, Environment, Life, Politics & Government, Science, Social Science and Society, Technology etc.
At around 11pm on 8 November Eastern Standard Time in Australia this is how the polling looked to Nate Silver:
The late trend is to Clinton. Alan Kohler said tonight if Trump wins the sharemarket will drop like a stone. If Clinton wins nothing happens – it’s already priced in. Continue reading Trump victory slipping away
Paul Waldman in The Washington Post warns Republicans are now vowing Total War. And the consequences could be immense. This warning is coming from multiple sources and has to be taken seriously.
Republicans, it seems, will deny the legitimacy of a Hillary Clinton presidency. They have actually been saying that she would have no mandate because people would only vote for her to avoid Trump. They will immediately take steps for Congress to impeach her, will not co-operate on any legislation she might propose and will refuse to endorse any appointments she might seek to make to the Supreme Court.
That is, of course, assuming that she wins. Continue reading Trumpism: bigger than Trump?
The homeless are usually given transitional housing, and then are required to get a job and get sober before they are given more permanent options. Utah has implemented a scheme first developed in New York where the homeless are given permanent housing and then offered help to transition back into mainstream society, in this case in the form of a social worker to provide assistance.
Mostly it works and is cheaper for the state, saving on things like shelters, ambulances, hospitals and jails. Continue reading Saturday salon 5/11
It was a pretty awful week last week, starting with various murders still in the courts, including the sentencing in terrible one where a man fuelled with alcohol and drugs raped and killed the young French student at Kurilpa on the southside, near the Gallery of Modern Art. There was another at Goondiwidi, where a woman was choked and strangled with her jeans.
Then we had the four deaths at Dreamworld and the bumbling by Ardent Leisure CEO Deborah Thomas and the Dreamworld management. Continue reading Life is fragile
Or is it an entirely inappropriate intervention in the political process by a public official?
At the end of the working week we were cruising to a perhaps anticlimactic finish to the presidential campaign when a letter from FBI Director James B. Comey advised Congress that the agency would once again be examining emails related to Clinton’s time as secretary of state. Continue reading FBI bombshell, or storm in a teacup?
To find the article Google Peter Hall and the above sentence.
Dr Carr-Gregg said this was the result of being extremely time poor, hesitant to set limits and boundaries for fear of being perceived as a wicked parent and in some cases just not realising their responsibilities. Continue reading Saturday salon 29/10
A shootout that leaves both damaged, Abbott perhaps more than Turnbull. That’s largely because none of the scribes and commentators have taken account fully of Peta Credlin’s account of the events (paywalled, but Google ‘Peta Credlin IT IS ironic that after a whole week talking about the Adler shotgun’).
I think most people now think that Tony Abbott was lying when he said there was no secret deal between him and David Leyonhjelm in mid-August last year to put a sunset clause on the temporary ban on importing the Adler A110 lever-action shotgun. The sunset clause was said to have been inserted in exchange for votes on migration legislation in a deal Justice Minister Michael Keenan and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. Not so, says Credlin, because the extension, with sunset clause, had been done weeks earlier, and the fact communicated in the national press. Continue reading Abbott and Turnbull in public shootout
It’s generally agreed, I think, that the moderator won the third presidential debate, with Hillary Clinton coming second.
Trump may not have lost, however, because there is talk that Trump may launch himself into the TV business, where no doubt nothing but the truth will be told.
There has been talk about it at Vanity Fair back in June. There was talk at Huffington Post a few days ago. Now it’s in The Economist. Continue reading Saturday salon 22/10
The Coalition government and the Murdoch press were already mounting a full-scale attack on renewable energy when the AEMO report on the SA blackout presented information in such a way as to cast further doubt on renewable energy. AEMO stands for Australian Energy Market Operator. That is AEMO is an operator in the game, not an independent watchdog. In fact an operator that may not itself have acted prudently.
On top of this Chris Uhlmann of the ABC has been virulently critical of the rush to renewables, using what turns out to be techno-babble to sound convincing. His views have skewed the ABC network coverage across all platforms.
So what happened? Continue reading Renewables under attack – again
Donald Trump was born in June 1946, and would have turned 17 in 1963, the year Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique was published, which I gather fired up ‘second wave feminism’ in the US.
Back in early August, James Hamblin in The Atlantic identified Donald Trump as the climax of American masculinity.
That referred to his aggressive style. Now Paul McGeough’s article ‘Formal’ vulgarian Donald Trump evokes Mad Men, Playboy and the Rat Pack looks at the origins of his attitude to women. Continue reading Trump an exemplar of American masculinity?
Three days ago Nate Silver published an analysis that broke up the polling along gender lines.
If only the men voted Trump would win 350 votes to 188. But if only women voted Clinton would win an astonishing 458 votes to 80.
That was before the second debate and the 2005 videotape had any impact. Clinton trailed Trump by 11 percentage points among men but led him by 33 points among women. Continue reading Trump isn’t teflon
Martin Parkinson, head of the PM’s department, told CEDA what we need to do to become truly innovative.
What caught my eye was what he said about Australian management in manufacturing:
