Financial Times on ClimateGate
This is a fantastic paragraph from the Financial Times. Democratic publics are not science faculties. Most of those who urge teaching creationism, instead of evolution, in high-school biology classes, for instance, could not explain Darwin’s theory to you. But neither could most of those who consider creationism an embarrassing superstition. When the public debates scientific questions, it is not attitudes towards science that divide them but attitudes towards authority. The stolen e-mails will not necessarily settle any scientific arguments. But they may settle some political ones.

Open Forum November 28, 2009

ALP/Greens Coalition?
Let’s assume that Rudd gets a double dissolution, the Libs are massacred (not for their climate change policies, but because they are disunited) and (this is the tricky bit) the Greens get the balance of power in the Senate. Let’s not argue how likely this is. Just accept it and contemplate the full horror. To pass any legislation, the government would need to deal with the Greens. The Greens will demand payoffs. Their policies, which go way beyond conservation issues, make them the furthest left of any party in recent history. Among other things, they want to roll industrial relations laws back to before

What double dissolution trigger?
Now I’m not a Constitutional lawyer. In fact, I’m not a lawyer at all. But the debate that seems to be raging is whether referring the CPRS legislation to a Senate Committee constitutes “failure to pass” and allows the Prime Minister to request the Governor-General to grant a double dissolution of the House of Representatives and Senate. But this seems to neglect one big issue which I would think frustrates any talk of a double dissolution. And that is whether the amendments made to the CPRS legislation mean that it is no longer in the same form as the original one rejected earlier in the year. My understanding of section 57 of the Constitution - cor

Phaethon
The events of this week were written by Ovid 2000 years ago in his account of Phaethon in his Metamorphoses.  This is a translation by A.S. Kline. The palace of the Sun towered up with raised columns, bright with glittering gold, and gleaming bronze like fire. Shining ivory crowned the roofs, and the twin doors radiated light from polished silver. The work of art was finer than the material: on the doors Mulciber had engraved the waters that surround the earth’s centre, the earthly globe, and the overarching sky. The dark blue sea contains the gods, melodious Triton, shiftingProteus, Aegaeon crush