Archive for October, 2006
Uncovered meat on the barbie
In spite of their name, Australia’s ruling “Liberal Party” is conservative. Since winning the 2001 election by manipulating public fears about asylum seekers and security concerns after 9/11, they have not hesitated to play the race card. John Howard is too clever to do this overtly, however. Instead he engages in what has been called [...]
Censorship in Australia
Freedom of speech in Australia is in far worse shape than generally understood. Frank Moorhouse, researching his essay, “The writer in a time of terror” came across first one and then a large number of extremely frightening examples of Orwellian censorship and government interference. The following article is based on an interview Moorhouse did with [...]
When good memes go bad
Complex systems can have emergent properties. In other words the interactions between the constituent elements of the system can give rise to events, patterns, and behaviours which are not easy to predict by examination of the individual elements in isolation. In fact I would say two other things about this: To predict the future state [...]
The dirty little secret of fundamentalism
Fundamentalism, whether Christian, Islamic, or even Hindu, has several driving energies. It seems as much a cultural and political phenomenon as it is religious; as much a reaction to liberal values and consumer culture as it is to secularism. But I believe it’s driven both in the West and the East, primarily by sexism and [...]
Portrait of an angel
TheBoy and I went down after lunch to get a coffee. Actually not coffee but fruit cups, with the temperature in the 30s [90F] and the smell of bushfires just starting to be blown away by a gusty sea breeze. We saw Angel there. She looked pretty rough, the poor thing, and she looked as [...]
A brief history of nuclear North Korea
In 1993 North Korea had one functioning nuclear reactor, and was in the process of building other much larger facilities. They were based on the Magnox design, and were well suited to the production of weapons grade plutonium as a by-product. In fact the Magnox station “Calder Hall” had been used for decades for just [...]
The best lack all conviction
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some [...]
In: observations, world
Oil water and permanence
Australia is facing terrible water shortages on a continuing basis, due to climate change. We’re running out of fossil fuel, so we probably won’t be able to continue to make fertilisers in the same way, or to make heavy use of transport and refrigeration to ship food around the country out of season. This is [...]
In: environment, science
