Journalism and other writing
AS a species verges on extinction, conservationist take note of the estimated number of breeding pairs, for without them the species is doomed.
Well very few breeding pairs can be seen around the mainstream Christian churches these days. The adherents to these faiths are dying out. Continue reading “Religion slowly dying out”
NOW we are nearly all safely home after the holidays, it is a good time to look at what might be done to make next holidays safer.
I wrote “nearly all” because 2000 people did not get back home safely – they were seriously injured in traffic crashes, or did not arrive home at all. Continue reading “A new attitude to speeding needed”
DID you notice the autocue? Well, never mind you were not supposed to. The autocues at Barack Obama’s inauguration were the two A3 size smoked-glass panels to his front left and right at 45 degrees to the horizontal.
The words of Obama’s flawlessly delivered speech rolled on each smoked panel reflected to the only the speaker’s eyes. It was smoke and mirrors. The two million members of the crowd and vast television audience were oblivious. Continue reading “Obama right on autocue”
ON Tuesday Barack Obama will take over the White House in similar (if somewhat worse) conditions as the previous time a Democrat took over the White House after a long time of Republican rule.
Sure, then the war in Iraq had been only partially botched and the economy, national debt and the Budget were in poor condition rather than desperate. And terrorism and the weakness of public infrastructure exposed by Hurricane Katrina were less manifest. Nonetheless the similarities are there. The Middle East seemed as intractable then as now. Continue reading “Obama’s big test is health”
THE prophetical US political scientist Samuel Huntington died just before yet another flare-up of violence in the Middle East.
Huntington was a proponent of a theory of the clash of civilisations well before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon by Islamic extremists on 11 September 2001. The event certainly made his theory more popular. In the week or so since his death, quite a few commentators have pointed to the Gaza violence as another example of the accuracy of this part of his theory. Some of the other parts have been given less notice, but more of them anon. Continue reading “Economics not culture main cause of conflict”
The Association of Air Conditioner Contractors of America has got in early with a special plea to the Obama transition team.
They argue that replacing inefficient air-conditioners and heaters would help the environment. To that end, they argue, the tax write-offs on new air-conditioners should be cut from 39 years to 10.
It was a typical industry-group plea for special treatment at taxpayers’ expense that lobbyists pitch to government behind closed doors. So how did I find out about it? Continue reading “Obama’s government in the sunshine”
I was encouraged when Telstra was apparently knocked out of the bidding for the broadband network.
It happened in a week when Telstra drove me to break a journalistic rule of mine: never use your position of (very modest) power and influence to achieve some personal agenda. Continue reading “Telstra’s infuriating lack of response”
The reaper is only grim for some.
In 1348 the Black Death hit England and grimly reaped 70 per cent of the population, which fell from seven million to two million by 1400.
Wages, which had halved in the century to 1348, then quadrupled in the next 100 years. After that they fell away as population increased and did not rise again till the grim reaping Black Death revisited in 1660. Continue reading “Dispelling some myths about Australia’s population”
There is a sleeping vicious circle in the question of whether a charter of rights should be entrenched in the Constitution or merely legislated.
This week the Federal Government set in train a national consultation as to whether Australia should have a human-rights charter. It was marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Australia has a big conundrum on whether rights should be in the Constitution or be merely legislative, as in Victoria, the ACT, Canada and Britain. Continue reading “Snag in legislating human rights”
The ACT’s population is growing faster than that of NSW, according to ABS figures released this week. It is an illustration of the principle that the conditions for any future population changes are by and large already set and there is not a great deal that anyone can do to alter them.
The best policy-makers can do is prepare for them.
Some of the changes in the long term are quite dramatic, especially when you look at the world picture. And that will have a large effect on Australia. Continue reading “Population can fall as fast as rise”