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Allowing that the Universe may be an easier concept to understand, it seems that God did not have a hand in the Big Bang.

The BBC reports:

In his new book, an extract of which appears in the Times, Britain’s most famous physicist sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton’s belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have sprung out of chaos.

Citing the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun, he said: “That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings.”

He adds: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” Read more »

My camera still worked then I fell over again, and this time hit my face on the ground. Dexter and Sasha were doing their job, turbo-charging up the embankment.

I screamed out but nobody took any notice of me.  So much for melodrama. I was also experiencing cramp in my legs which is my kidney problem adding to my circumstances. The real problem is that the thread on my shoes has worn away.

A few things might have happened but didn’t. I could have been wearing my glasses. And I could have brought a new camera. Therefore, I consider myself fortunate.

Here are the final photos: Read more »

Lo these many years ago when I was writing my PhD thesis, I frequently voiced a wish that someone would invent a form of sentences and paragraphs that worked not in two dimensions, but in three: that had the structure, not of a straight line, but of a mirror ball, so that the sentence, the paragraph, the thought, the Thing would be constantly turning, revealing its different facets, and whoever was reading/looking at it could see how those different facets related to each other.

Which is how grammar itself works, really, and why Yoda funny is, but that's for another post.

I wanted this three-dimensional discursive artifact to be invented in order to be able to circumvent the problem of trying to write about something that couldn't really be understood until something else -- something tangential, or something that happened later -- had been explained. God had gone some way towards solving this problem when She invented footnotes, but there was still a long way to go. Read more »

So a little bit happened this week. And not much happened as well.

This time last week we were thinking Adam Bandt would side with the ALP, and so too would Andrew Wilkie. This would get the ALP to 74 seats, and still mean the 3 independents could get Abbott over the line. We also knew the Liberal’s costings were complete tosh and that this would be revealed were the Libs to submit them to Treasury.

This all occurred, meaning that we are pretty much where we all expected to be a week ago (and even further back, really).

And yet there’s talk of Gillard having “momentum”.

Such talk is of course rather foolish given momentum implies Katter, Oakeshott and Windsor are linked to Wilkie, Bandt and the Liberal’s costings. For all the talk of the seats being like a score, in reality Gillard is as far away from being PM as she was on August 22. Being 2 seats short is no better than being 3 or 4 seats short. It’s a zero sum game this: someone will win, someone will lose (I am discounting the chance that the count will end up at 75 all – Katter, Oakeshott and Windsor would have to purposefully take that option, and I doubt they will). Read more »

From Science: Read more »

[Thanks to Daniel Rourke.]

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Peter Martin has set out the types of ‘error’ Treasury identified in the Coalition policy costings.

The Charter of Budget Honesty sets out guidelines for election costings, in order to make sure they are done on the same basis. One forbids the counting of proceeds from expected ”second-round effects” such as a saving on the dole from a job creation program. The Coalition counted such an effect because it says the National Centre for Economic Modelling told it its program would take 51,000 people off the dole.

That and a similar ‘error’ amounts to some $3.5 billion. But I’m not sure the Charter of Budget Honesty forbids second round effects. Here are the criteria.

The following are standard conventions for the preparation of fiscal costings. Read more »

A quick reflection on Day 1 of New News 2010 conference at the Melbourne Writers Festival:

There were frequent references to and much discussion about the role of the media in the recent election campaign. The mainstream media reps were mostly on the defensive blaming the political parties for the shallowness of the coverage and the poor analysis of the policies and issues. It was the bus (code for the control by party apparchicks), the debate format, the Tony Abbott’s small target strategy;
the extraordinary circumstances.

The critiques by Grog’s Gamut and other online analysts were dismissed in the main as beard-tugging. Lots of self-praise. We readers and consumers of the MSM got it wrong again. In fact the audience was also to blame as we were turned off. Strangely we avidly gobbled/googled up alternative online sources of information and debate. Read more »

In Victoria, Steve Bracks’s minority government transformed a knife-edge win into electoral longevity and parliamentary reform, write Brian Costar and David Hayward

Minority government in South Australia produced a novel solution that challenged the way the Westminster system has worked in Australia, writes Norman Abjorensen

I’m getting a little fed up with how, when a government, a politician or political party announce some policy initiative, something that may actually be worthwhile doing, the announcement seems to be inevitably reported as “outraging some powerful lobby industry” or other, and being a thing that will tip society over the teetering edge of civilisation as we know it.

Yet the abyss beckons according to Clubs Australia executive director Anthony Ball …

… said the undertaking to implement a mandatory pre-commitment system for all poker machines across Australia as well as to limit ATM cash withdrawals to just $250 a day were completely untested.

He said the measures would close rural clubs, cost jobs, inconvenience recreational gamblers and club users, and do nothing to alleviate problem gambling.

“Julia Gillard wrote to Clubs Australia and committed herself to consultation in developing gambling policy. Read more »

Here’s a fresh thread for all things worth discussing over the weekend. We’ll update with TV details as they come to hand — but for those looking to find an alternative to Insiders on Sunday morning, Radio National’s Background Briefing will be looking at the changing church-state relationship in Latin America.

Have at it.

I use Google Analytics to track the statistics around this blog. I noticed this morning that the US Federal Reserve had visited a couple of times in the last 24 hours (I am still in Hong Kong doing battle with evil speculators ;-0). Anyhow, this is the ouput of the frequency with which various organisations have visited this blog over the very recent past according to Google. Note that these are just the most frequent visitors--there are many more. Note: you will have to click on the image to see it clearly. Read more »

Stephen managed to rattle some feathers over his piece the other week that the case for the ABC may no longer exist in the Internet age. He argued (i) that the ABC, being subsidised, provides unfair competition for others; (ii) that good reporting is a public good but is now amply and independently supplied by the Internet; and (iii) that diversity is important and the ABC’s role in providing that is no longer essential. Read more »

Author: Renu Kohli

India’s labour market is in for a vigorous shake up over the next few years. The inexorable march of market forces, and their interplay with the structural and political dynamics of the country, could end up drawing many unemployed persons into the job market.

Read more »

9AM

Refreshing change. Indigenous media panel.

Speaking Up: Telling Indigenous Stories and the Opportunities of New Media

Kerry Klimm (Kinnected) with Leigh Harris (Blackvine Media Group), Kerri-Lee Harding (Yalarry Indigma Media), Bess Nungarrayi Price and Rita Cattoni (Indigenous Community Television).

Rita & Bess showing a cross selection from Indigitube of community produced video.

Rita:
Needed to get back TV access as web limited in remote Australia. Now have weekend satellite broadcasting thanks to WA govt. ICTV Alice Springs based.

Bess:
Storytelling for indigenous people: learn, listen, tell stories essential for traditional survival. Mobile phones now everywhere in communities. Enthusiastic use of new media.

Kerri-Lee: Her story - 15 years broadcast expereince.in mainstream and indig media. Family grew up on Cherbourg Mission QLD. Now freelance journalist about to work with Koori Radio. Read more »

Two pictures on page one of the Sydney Morning Herald this morning show us a lot about the way Australia is governed. Read more »