Over the past year or so the blog the blog has been putting aside books it fully intended to review. Now the tower is threatening to topple over so – instead of proper reviews some comments and recommendations.
Catherin Nixey describes herself as journalist although she did have an Oxbridge classics education. Her first book – The Darkening Age – has some striking first paragraphs. They describe an enraged black clad horde riding across the desert towards a great city. However, enlightened you are, you almost involuntarily assume these are some Islamic mob heading off to commit an atrocity. Well, the atrocity part is right it’s just that the mob is Christian, and they are on the way to murder Hypatia the great Alexandrian scientist.read more
It is hard to know whether the bleatings of the major media outlets about losing the Meta $70 million payments under the media bargaining code are pathetic or laughable. Indeed, perhaps both.
Now whatever you think of the mainstream media in Australia, and the deleterious impact of Meta and other social media outlets on our politics and society, the reality is that the Australian media problems are much deeper than Meta publishing links to their stories and not being rewarded for it.read more
Donald Trump’s bizarre puffing and boasting about being a dictator – if only for a day (a likely story) – has prompted memories of the much-told story of Kurt Gödel’s interview for US citizenship in 1947.
Gödel, being a serious type and one of the world’s great logicians, studied up and made a detailed study of the US Constitution before he applied.read more
A recent Science paper (7/6) highlights one of the potentially disastrous risks the Dutton nuclear plan raises.
The most recent blog raised a question which media ought to ask Peter Dutton about his nuclear policy. It was “Are you aware that SMRs and proposed micro sized reactors are so inefficient that they would need HALEU (high-assay low enriched uranium) fuel to power the new stations? As this would require that, unlike traditional nuclear power stations which require only 3% to 5% enrichment, are you aware these new stations would require enrichment of 19.75% which would probably mean that a single reactor might contain enough HALUE to make a nuclear weapon?”read more
The Canberra Press Gallery is not a homogenous group although its members do seem to suffer from a fair amount of group think; preference for gotchas and speculation about what might happen next in politics; and heavy dependence on leaks and drops for copy.
One part of it – the Murdoch part – subsumes this into propaganda and sneering opinion pieces.read more
Just recently our former High Commissioner to the UK, George Brandis, pontificated in his regular Age column that Oliver Cromwell was ‘boring until he wasn’t’.
It was apropos Labour Leader and next UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. For those not aware BTW – Starmer didn’t seek a knighthood as many have done with generous donations to party funds throughout English political history right up until today– it just went with his job as DPP.read more
In the unlikely event that Peter Dutton could manage the succession of problems with nuclear power stations – persistent massive cost overruns; State legislation banning nuclear; and NIMBY backlashes -he would still have a big problem – lack of staff to run the plants.
Currently there is an international shortage of engineers and other professionals and the nuclear power industry around the world, according to the Weekend Financial Times, is desperately trying to persuade thousands of retired staff to return to work.read more
The Murdoch media is about as renowned for irony as it is for balanced political coverage.
The Australian published an article (22/4) about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign to protect the state from dangerous influences. It was an article which could be read ironically but more likely it was something The Oz approved of and probably hoped would lead to a similar policy in Australia.read more
When Robert Menzies made his Forgotten People speech on 22 May 1942 he set in train a process which, despite his many references throughout to men, resulted in the creation of a long coalition between Menzies’ Liberal Party and women.
This coalition of Liberals didn’t start to break down until the 1970s and 1980s with a Victorian Labor researcher, Angela Jurjevik, probably being among the first people to identify the trend.read more
An insider’s view of how public relations really works