Posts on sundry matters of life the universe and everything: Culture, Environment, Life, Politics & Government, Science, Social Science and Society, Technology etc.
While we wait for politics to crank up other matters are more interesting.
On politics, Essential Report has the LNP lead narrowing to 51-49, while Roy Morgan also has a narrowing but by 1.5 points to 56-44. They can’t both be right, but they can certainly both be wrong! Continue reading Poll stuff
A Deutsche Welle report I heard on NewsRadio began along these lines:
An extensive investigation by Der Spiegel tells us that groups of men humiliated, sexually assaulted and robbed women around the main railway station in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. What happened was not new and was not limited to Cologne. What was different was the scale, the presumed predominance of men from North Africa amongst the perpetrators, and the timing in relation to the dilemmas faced by the influx of refugees from Syria. Continue reading Cologne: what happened and where to from here?
The key thing in the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) system is that the individual athlete is finally responsible for what goes into his or her body. That runs counter to the ethos of how teams operate. Continue reading Saturday salon 16/1: late edition
Richard Di Natale has broken with The Greens’ policy on genetically modified crops, saying that he does not believe genetically modified crops pose a significant risk to human health. He says there is no concrete evidence on potential health harms to people. Continue reading Di Natale breaks with Greens’ policy on genetically modified crops
Yes, according to Fairfax, with the story reprinted in The Guardian, and then picked up by other media outlets. For the record, the ABC also got it wrong by saying it was all people over 60. It was all people over 65.
But the article was misleading in other ways as well. Continue reading One-third of Australian pensioners live in poverty?
It hasn’t happened yet, not officially. The final decision rests with an august scientific body called the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which has a 36-person Working Group on the Anthropocene. Now 24 scientists, including some from the Working Group, have produced a paper advocating for the Anthropocene to be recognised as having begun in the mid-20th century. Continue reading Goodbye Holocene, hello Anthropocene?
Actually, that doesn’t quite do justice to what has been going on in a series of incidents over the last little while.
Gabrielle Jackson did a piece for The Guardian Enough platitudes and excuses: here is the truth about this week of sexism. Amazingly, on the weekend before she wrote the article she herself was groped by a complete stranger sitting at the next table in a Sydney restaurant. Continue reading Men behaving badly
About 1.5 to 2.1 percent of the DNA of anyone outside Africa is Neanderthal in origin. But the DNA is not evenly spread. Your Neanderthal DNA may be different from mine. Scientists have found at least 20% of the Neanderthal DNA in humans. That’s what they’ve found, the toatal may be twice as much. Continue reading Saturday salon 9/1
Households can now think about harnessing wind power as well as solar:
Terry Sweetman in the Courier Mail has raised a real question about the objectivity of Commissioner Dyson Heydon’s report on trade unions.
Sweetman says the misconduct identified by Heydon stems from just six of the 132 unions in Australia (Heydon’s figures). Continue reading The tip of an iceberg, or a broadbrush smear?
At first I thought it was a joke, but apparently it really happened! Lynton Crosby was knighted for services to the realm!
As far as anyone can see he was knighted for doing a party political job for which he had already been paid handsomely – £500,000 ($A1,015,500). Continue reading Saturday salon 2/1
Ian MaAuley hopes “we will make progress to becoming a real “developed” country, and not just a third world country temporarily enjoying a first world living standard.”
Well, we’ve run out of luck, and make that third rate people. Continue reading The year that was – 2015
