It’s been pilloried in song by Paul Kelly as a stuffy and boring place where nothing interesting ever happens, but if someone made a film about the past five months of politics in the City of Churches it would probably attract an MA rating.

Economically and culturally South Australia is humming along. Just 10 years ago, in the backdraft of the $3.15 billion collapse of the State Bank on Labor’s watch, it was an economic basketcase which young people were queuing to leave.

Last Thursday, on the day I started this piece by sitting down with Premier Mike Rann, the national employment figures confirmed that SA has yet again registered the lowest jobless rate in the land.

I don’t know what my nine-year-old daughter wants to be when she grows up. She’s a sensitive, quiet kid who seems to spend a large portion of her time in a dreamland of her own creation. She’s not an academic terrier in the Hermione Granger mould like I was. She isn’t the bookworm I hoped she’d be, and a recent tussle with the seven times tables almost caused me to drop the supportive parent ball altogether.

So what will all this that mean for her in the current My Schoo , NAPLAN  Australian Curriculum?

Being a child of Australian education circa 2010 I worry that she might never get the chance to discover her passion or talents if they lie beyond the scope of traditional education.

For those of us that like drastic solutions and saltational mutations, one way to fix the perpetual crises (existential, and otherwise) that colleges and universities seem to find themselves in would be this: get out the axe. Axe the business school, axe all the engineering programs, axe the professional programs, axe even (hard as it is to say) the fine arts programs. So no more accounting majors and no more civil engineering majors, no more masters of public health, and no more dance majors, or creative writing majors, or bassoonists, either. Read more »

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Two year old Cohen Stone, from Perth, has achieved international fame the easy way, by crawling inside a lolly machine.

His mother took the photo. She claimed he was upset. Note the little thief is so upset he's trying to pacify himself with lollies. The family walked away with an apology and a $50 voucher. Read more »

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It appeared, wraith-like, on the Monaro highway as we drove home. A beat up old white sedan - a commodore I think.

It's front passenger flicked ash from a lit cig onto the darkened highway. Its bumper was held onto the car by packing tape - artfully arrayed around the back and sides.

And the words Dubbo Spec were stuck on the rear windscreen ... in Chiller font.

Yes, Chiller font. The font developed for serial killers.

That's a fucked up car.

From MSNBC: Read more »

Books with a heavy philosophical component don’t usually sell well, and publishers tend to avoid them for that reason, but when they do, they can sell very well indeed, and it can be very difficult to explain why. Over at Catallaxy, Sinclair has a thoughtful piece on Ayn Rand, whose books sell by the pallet load, despite being complex, stuffed with ideas and — in the case of Atlas Shrugged — badly written (or at least very badly edited): Read more »

C. M. Naim in Outlook India:

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Back in 2007 a paper, Amazon Forests Green-Up During 2005 Drought, was published in Science:

Coupled climate-carbon cycle models suggest that Amazon forests are vulnerable to both long- and short-term droughts, but satellite observations showed a large-scale photosynthetic green-up in intact evergreen forests of the Amazon in response to a short, intense drought in 2005. These findings suggest that Amazon forests, although threatened by human-caused deforestation and fire and possibly by more severe long-term droughts, may be more resilient to climate changes than ecosystem models assume.

This finding that the Amazon was more resilient than previously thought was reported in the London Times and the New York Times. Read more »

Climate change isn’t really my issue, but this pathetically petty post by our friend Andrew Bolt just struck me as so absurd I couldn’t let it pass without comment. A conservative climate-skeptic who regularly contributes to Quadrant attends a Tim Flannery lecture and relates his unsurprisingly negative impressions. Andrew’s emphasis? The part he chooses to quote first? The skeptic’s objective opinion that “Flannery flops“:

Firstly, without being rude or discourteous, Professor Tim’s lecture would have to have been the worst presented, most head-bangingly-boring and uninformative address that this writer can remember.

Shock news: critical review received by ideological opponent! Hold the presses.

In tomorrow’s edition of the Andrew Bolt blog: the startling revelation that a conservative blogger thinks Kevin Rudd is “a dud”! Read more »

New Zealand : It's There For The Taking

We cannot wait for New Zealand to become a threat to Australia's national security. They vigorously deny pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but information leaked to The Orstrahyun, by various defence industry lobbyists who are worried that a winding down of the War On Terror will result in a reduction in profitable war industry contracts, say that while New Zealand currently does not have nuclear weapons and is not actively trying to pursue a nuclear weapons program, the intent to do so at some future point in time is a possibility, and the dream of New Zealand becoming a dominant nuclear power in the Pacific is more than likely being discussed, if not in an official capacity, then at least between a few people at a pub on a Friday night.

Enough is enough. Read more »

I have a piece on Ayn Rand in the new IPA Review. I’m reproducing it below with links.

Ayn Rand remains a best-selling author. Nearly thirty years after her death, and over fifty years since publication, her books remain as popular as ever. Just last year The Economist proposed an Atlas Shrugged Index; the sales of her magnum opus tracking events that herald big government. To be sure her two best known books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are eerily prescient; her villains especially describe the threats to our freedoms. Her descriptions of second-handers, moochers and looters relate to people and institutions that are readily recognisable. Read more »

Justin George argues that Australia's involvement in the war in Afghanistan is compromising rather than enhancing its national security...  Similar questions face other countries.

by Justin George

With the release of the Australian government's Counter-Terrorism White Paper and its admission that Australia is at risk of 'homegrown' terrorism, the logic behind Australia's involvement in Afghanistan has been severely weakened. Read more »

The Rudd government continues the Howard government’s policy of making it ever more difficult for university students without rich parents to afford tertiary education:

It costs an estimated $20,000 to live away from home in first year, and government support is now uncertain.

The federal government wants to make it harder for students to qualify for the independent youth allowance, and is instead planning to offer poorer and regional students new scholarships worth up to $4000.

However, legislation for student support funding has stalled in the Senate, leaving students like Mr Sandiford with a gaping hole in their budgets. Read more »

Heart Full Of Hate

Miranda Devine, yesterday :

"....the internet has made it possible for people to express that hate before their better instincts kick in, before the instant rush of blood to the head dissipates and is forgotten. Their primal viciousness is captured and congealed in digital form."

It sure is. Miranda Devine, February 12, 2009 :

If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.

Miranda Devine, December 2006 : Read more »

African-Americans comprise 13% of a United States population of more than 308 million people. Dr Cornel West, we are told, is the first of that population category to obtain a Ph.D from Princeton University.

That might be interesting, saying what it does about the United States and the University, but the adoption of the perspective of all human beings, not least poor and working people is more interesitng. It is rare to hear social class used as a category to describe the social and political world of lived experience in the United States. Naturally, the interview with Dr West takes place on Al Jareeza:
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Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!