Posts tagged as:

Politics

Steve’s Diabolical Challenge

Like Senator Steve Fielding, I am a lapsed engineer. Like Steve, I have attempted to understand the science of climate change. Unlike Steve, I eventually understood that the task is beyond ordinary mortals. In fact it is even beyond the intellect of a single engineer. I realised that we should be leaving it to the [...]

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Do we Expect too Much of our Politicians?

Like my father, I like to converse with the television. Every time a politician talks out at me from the box, I can’t resist the urge to talk back. If I were to read a headline like the one on this post, I would probably head straight for the comments box and launch into a tirade against the average parliamentary representative. As a rule, politicians are self-absorbed, narcissistic egomaniacs … or is there another side to this story?

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Obama’s Cairo Speech Dissected: The Power of Language

So Barack Obama has made another inspirational speech. This is hardly remarkable: we’ve known for some time that Obama makes George W. look like a performing seal, and an inarticulate one at that. Yet even in this context Obama’s speech in Cairo was remarkable. In less than 6000 words he was able to strip bare [...]

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The Hidden Truths of Climate Change and Globalization

At the risk of getting political, a comment on the two major debates currently dominating Australian politics: climate change and industrial relations. What’s fascinating about these debates is the consistent avoidance of the simple truths at their centre – particularly given that we all know politicians are only to happy to over-simplify complex situations when [...]

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