Articles from THE BLOT REPORT

Decline of religion in the anglophone world

In 1966, the Australian
census indicated that only 0.8% of the population had ‘no religion’. In 1976,
it was 8.3%; in 1986, it was 12.7%1; in 1996 it was 16.6%; in 2006
it was 18.7%. In the last census in 2016, it was 30.1%, and was the largest of
any option given in the census. At that census, 52% of the population still
maintained some affiliation with Christianity, and the largest group among those
were Catholics, who formed 22.6% of the population2.

The numerous second comings

I had a religious
nutter appear on my Twitter feed and his tweet stated “Time is running out for
the world. Jesus is coming soon. Today is the day of salvation. Repent while
you have a chance”. I do not follow this person’s aphorisms, as that is the way
to madness. Someone simply forwarded this to me and others for a laugh.

Shooting the messenger

The Queensland Liberal-National
Party (LNP) had its annual convention over the last few days and one of the
motions passed urged a future LNP state government to establish a science
office, which would have the ability to ratify or reject scientific reports
handed to the government. This motion was moved by former state LNP MP for
Hinchinbrook, Andrew Cripps. In support of this, Cripps stated “We want this

Cheap storage

Probably just over a decade ago, my organisation
bought me a thumb drive, which had a capacity of 100 Megabytes (Mb). I used it
to transfer large files between work and home so I could work on them at home.
At the time, that thumb drive cost $179. That comes to about $1.79 per Mb. Now
you can buy a 64 Gigabyte (Gb) thumb drive for $20. At the rate of the original
thumb drive, 64 Gb of storage would cost about $114,000. Even more extreme is

A long way to go

The
Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Ken Wyatt delivered a speech at the National
Press Club explaining that there would be a referendum on constitutional recognition
of Indigenous Australians. He stated that this recognition would probably be a
version of the ‘voice to Parliament’ outlined in the Uluru Statement presumably
either by legislation or constitutional amendment1. The Uluru Statement

The criminal behaviour of Barnaby Joyce

I don’t tend to read
anything written by ignoramuses, except when dealing with people like
creationists and climate change deniers. I read occasional creationist drivel because
I like to use their ignorance as a springboard to explain reality to them and
to those who need to have that ignorance demonstrated (e.g. on radioisotopic
dating1,2). I only occasionally read the drivel put out by climate

These people get to vote

There are stories
coming from several sources in different parts of the nation of retirees
turning up at Centrelink offices or ringing them up to ask when they will be
getting their franking credit refunds. This is despite the fact that these
people have no shares. And yet these gullible people actually get to vote. This
clearly shows that they have no idea what a franking credit is, nor how it was

Lord Deben quote

The post Lord Deben quote appeared first on THE BLOT REPORT.

Freedom to discriminate

Section 116 of the
Australian Constitution states:

“The Commonwealth shall not make any
law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or
for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall
be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the
Commonwealth.”1

‘Violet’ quote

The post ‘Violet’ quote appeared first on THE BLOT REPORT.

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