It is easy to believe Americans are mad, well at least many of them, but occasionally there is evidence that rationality rules on some issues.

Okay not so much outside the east and west coasts when it comes to knowledge of the world or any sense of what works better in other countries than it does in the US. Discussing health care, for instance, is fraught and the horror which was evoked by everyone outside Brooklyn when Bernie Sanders advocated a health care system similar to the Australian, UK, German and other countries’ systems . History is also a bit of a knowledge exception as shown by the fact that you would never know from US commentary that the Bern’s idea is not new – it was first advocated by President Eisenhower who couldn’t understand why the US population as a whole couldn’t have a system like the military’s. read more

There is something about April which inspires poets around the world – Chaucer, Browning, Emerson and Eliot and others all had something to say about it.

Chaucer and Browning focussed on the natural changes which came with the Northern hemisphere Spring while Emerson and Eliot (“the shot around the world” and “the cruellest month”) gave more sombre or politically uplifting messages. The blog has to confess it had forgotten about Emerson and April but came across it serendipitously while checking a line from another poet online so threw it in because it leads on to that defeat heard around the world – well at least in Australia and Turkey. read more

It’s not often that you get the chance to see the results of experiments with an international dimension in which specific legal or social factors could possibly determine attitudes on given subjects.

In this case we have the benefit of a George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication study, with others, of US attitudes to fracking which can be compared with attitudes to fracking in Australia – and which provoke some thoughts on windmills. read more

Wittgenstein, among his various comments about why other philosophers and humans didn’t come up to scratch, said “a picture held us captive”.

Now it should be said that Ludwig meant the comment in the context of his belief that most of us are locked into looking at things in a particular way. Yet, to distort him, for communicators the problem is that most of them are locked into communication methods which don’t emphasise the visual. read more

One of the most depressing things about modern politics – especially in the US but also in Australia – is that to hear one assertion from a politician allows you to predict their views on just about every other issue you can think of.

Well that’s not strictly true of Donald Trump, of course, nor the odd Government type such as Warren Entsch or John Williams. However, in the latter cases their variation from the official line – unlike Trump – tends to be along the rational, progressive lines that Malcolm Turnbull once espoused. read more

There is always something remarkable about US politics – if remarkable is a sufficiently appropriate word. But according to some recent research Bernie Sanders could become President.

Now the blog knows that is remarkably unlikely and the odds on Trump winning the Republican nomination are lengthening. But the blog’s friend John Dyett (readers should visit his Facebook page which, along with that of Race Mathews, is one of the most consistently informative Facebook pages around in Australia) has recently sent it a link to the New York Times which outlines the numbers which make it possible. read more

Among post-modernists, PR people and business academics there have been some decades of reputation debate about whether perception is reality or not.

An amusing example of how it can be, even if only briefly, occurred recently when the Cameron Government put a tax on sugar. UK share market traders immediately pushed the price of Tate and Lyell shares down. Yet Tate and Lyell had sold its sugar business in 2010 and was no longer one of the world’s major sugar operations. Now share market traders are probably not much of an example – we know that irrationality is an important characteristic of many markets – but briefly until a few people realised what was real and what was perceived we did see a clear case of perception (however ignorant) shaping reality. read more

The problem with most government communication is that, however skilled the public service communicator, the politicians and their minders constantly get in the way.

Ministers tend to think the answer is advertising, paid for by the taxpayer, despite the overwhelming evidence that government advertising is regarded by the public extremely cynically. Needless to say the ad agencies and research companies involved in these campaigns are reluctant to share that reality with their clients. read more

There is much debate (possibly also in Adelaide) about the wisdom of making the Adelaide Festival and the Writers’ Week annual rather than biennial. The blog tends to think that for the former it was a mistake and for the latter a bit of a problem, given the retreat of publishers from the grand days of the Week, but a problem which is surmountable simply because from time to time during any Writers’ Week you learn about a new writer or some new idea. read more

The blog hasn’t read Nicki Savva’s book and probably won’t – but it’s difficult to avoid the media stories and commentaries about it.

Well before the blog’s rare hard copy of The Age landed in the front garden a couple of people had sent it the link to an article in the paper on the book by Louise Adler. Within a few hours later the blog had also been sent by various people details of a Tweet link (don’t worry the blog has not sunk to Twitter) from the Saturday Paper’s Martin McKenzie-Murray to a speech Peta Credlin made to a an MLC Foundation event www.mlc.vic.edu.au/files/dmfile/Peta Credlin MLC Foundation  in which Ms Credlin had said some things about Ms Adler as Ms Adler had some things to say about Ms Credlin in The Age. No doubt the Saturday Paper on 12 March will have more to say about it. read more