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Compared to Bill Shorten, Tony Abbott is much more likely to be considered out of touch with ordinary people (+28), arrogant (+27), narrow minded (+26), intolerant (+26) and aggressive (+20).Labor should be taking some encouragement.
Bill Shorten is regarded by more respondents to be intelligent (-14) and a capable leader (-10).
Immigration officials faced a grilling at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday night about unconfirmed reports an asylum seeker boat was intercepted off Christmas Island in mid-May and its passengers are in custody on the Customs Ocean Protector ship.
Customs chief executive Michael Pezzullo maintained that only an illegal foreign fishing boat had been intercepted near Christmas Island recently.
Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young referred to reports Christmas Islanders saw clothing packs being taken out to the Ocean Protector.
But Mr Pezzullo refused to comment on logistics, operational matters or any legal advice about holding people in custody.
He rejected Labor senator Kim Carr's description that asylum seekers were being detained on a ''prison ship''.
''People are being held in secure circumstances and subject to operational orders,'' he said, adding they were appropriately cared for with adequate food and water.
Senator Carr asked how many people were in custody on the Ocean Protector and other vessels.
''I'm not going to discuss that,'' Mr Pezzullo said.The Greens are not realistic in how they would respond to the problem - yet they are still on the money when it comes to the appalling secrecy that the government is putting over this; and it is something of a scandal that there isn't a public scandal about it.
On Monday, Senator Hanson-Young told Fairfax Media that the Abbott government's '' obsession with secrecy means that we are hearing eye-witness reports of refugee boats from Christmas Island locals, while Customs and Immigration officials remain tight-lipped''.
''The government is refusing to answer even the most basic questions about the health and safety of people who may be locked up inside a customs vessel right now,'' Senator Hanson-Young said.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/border-protection-deny-running-prison-ship-for-asylum-seekers-20140527-38zpy.html#ixzz32s2AgYC1
The divorce rate is still high in the U.S. at 53%. But Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, and Hungary are worse off with divorce rates higher than 60%.
Australia fares a little better but had a rate of 43% in 2010.
Belgium has the highest rate of divorce in this data set at a staggering 70%.
The lowest official rate is in Chile with 3%.
There are usually two or three accomplices who carry out this scam
in three parts: first, someone who claims to have magical powers touches
a victim and persuades him that they’ve stolen his genitals. Then,
another accomplice approaches the victim and drives home the point by
saying that if the victim doesn’t buy a specific product, he’ll lose his
ability to reproduce. Finally, the victim pays a hefty sum [Editor’s
note: around 30,000 CFA Francs, or 45 euros] for a Viagra-like medicine
that is supposed to make his genitals work again.
It had been several years since I had heard of any such cases in
Koudougou. There were a few isolated cases in nearby areas about 10
years ago, but they quickly stopped. This time, though, the first cases
in the beginning of May were handled very badly: local authorities
didn’t intervene immediately to calm the crowds, and a lot of people
were caught up in the hysteria. I don’t think the lynching of this man
has calmed tensions.
And general practitioners are cheap compared to other forms of medicine. They account for just 6 per cent of health spending. They act as gatekeepers, directing Australians to hospitals and more expensive specialists only when needed. They are not where the costs are rising. They are among the last places costs should be cut back.Ergas makes one valid point - that countries with what we consider "socialised" medicine do sometimes impose a co-payment and do not consider it ideologically wrong.
The great chameleons of politics are populists. But the magicalAnd I think this is why he will not be regarded as a good Prime Minister.
transformations of Tony Abbott are more driven by tactics than passion:
by the need, at any particular moment, to secure advantage.
That long-simmering is key. “All the components must harmonize,” Mr. Malé said. “Nothing is more catastrophic than a cassoulet made at the last minute.” Indeed, the best versions are cooked and cooled — preferably overnight — at least three times, a slow process that yields beans redolent with the deep flavors of the confit and pork sausage, topped by a thin layer of the dish’s natural juice and starches sealed in the oven. (Though cassoulet recipes often call for a topping of breadcrumbs, they are “never found on the authentic version,” Mr. Malé said.)I have only been to France once - about a three or four day side trip to Paris from England in the 1980's. It remains the most beautiful city I have been to, and while at that age I was not overly concerned about food (and remember no real memorable meals there) I have always wanted to return, and to travel through the countryside.
Police in the Simiyu region said the 40-year-old victim was murderedKind of blackly ironic that they are killed for potions for success, isn't it?
overnight earlier this month and the attackers had hacked off her left
leg, the index and middle fingers of her left hand and part of her left
thumb.
Photographs of the murder scene outside her home were too graphic to publish.
People with albinism are often subjected to violent attacks in the country, where they are known as the “zeru zeru” or ghosts.
The condition is heavily stigmatised and families who see it as a curse have known to kick relatives out of their homes.
But sufferers are also a target for traditional healers, who harvest body parts to make potions for wealth, success and even election victories.
Under the Same Sun is campaigning for better protection for people withCurrent regulation for witchdoctors? The Witchdoctor Registration Board, or something?
albinism in Africa and wants to see witch doctors banned as they claim
current regulation is not working.
The group is concerned that attacks will increase in the run-up to
elections in October, when the demand for potions made from albino body
parts is expected to increase.
AOBiome does not market its product as an alternative to conventional cleansers, but it notes that some regular users may find themselves less reliant on soaps, moisturizers and deodorants after as little as a month. Jamas, a quiet, serial entrepreneur with a doctorate in biotechnology, incorporated N. eutropha into his hygiene routine years ago; today he uses soap just twice a week. The chairman of the company’s board of directors, Jamie Heywood, lathers up once or twice a month and shampoos just three times a year. The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years. He occasionally takes a sponge bath to wash away grime but trusts his skin’s bacterial colony to do the rest. I met these men. I got close enough to shake their hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they in no way conveyed a sense of being “unclean” in either the visual or olfactory sense.Thanks, but no thanks.
Who is responsible for the debacle?
It is interesting that when The Australian Financial Review
was preparing a piece ahead of the budget on how it was put together,
people involved all described it as an Abbott budget, not a Hockey one.
There were lots of impressed references to the PM’s decisiveness in
meetings of the expenditure review committee.
This was despite the fact it was Joe Hockey who did all the footwork on the whole “age of entitlement” argument.Good to know that I can blame our not very bright PM, then.
I should also make it clear that I am appalled that the media in this country should give publicity to stories about a scholarship obtained by one of the PM’s daughters. The children of the famous can never win. Their achievements are too often belittled as if they would never get anywhere without the name and the good graces of the powerful mum or dad. I don’t know the young woman in question but I can imagine how she feels at the moment. The PM’s family should be off limits. They are not fair game.A few corrections:
The placenta, long thought to be sterile, is home to a bacterial community similar to the one found in the mouth, researchers report today. The microbes are generally non-pathogenic, but according to the authors of the study, variations in their composition could be at the root of common but poorly understood pregnancy disorders such as preterm birth, which occurs in one out of every ten pregnancies.....
The researchers also compared the placental microbiomes to those found in the vagina, gut, mouth and on the skin of non-pregnant women. They found that the placental microbiome was most similar to that of the mouth. The authors speculate that the microbes travel to the placenta from the mouth via the blood. The results reinforce data suggesting a link between periodontal disease in the mother and the risk of preterm birth, says Aagaard.
An account of how Frances Abbott came to be a student at Whitehouse, provided to New Matilda by a staff member, casts further doubt on the claims by the Prime Minister that her appointment was based entirely on merit.The ambiguity in that last sentence could do with some clarifying. If it means "this College stands to benefit heaps if Tony Abbott wins by virtue of changes to government policy" it is much more important than "this College will have a higher profile if Tony Abbott gets in and her daughter as a graduate."
The source told New Matilda that Frances Abbott was approached by Whitehouse Chairman of the Board - and friend of the Abbott family - Les Taylor, after Taylor became aware that Frances was looking to complete a degree with a competing design school.
“Les Taylor knew the Abbott family. [Frances] wanted to do something related to creativity and styling. She was going to go to one of our competitors. I think it was Billy Blue [a design school in North Sydney],” the source told NM.
“Leanne got the Chairman of the Board [Taylor] to tell [Frances] she had the offer of a scholarship.”
A few years later, in the run-up to the 2013 federal election, Ms Whitehouse became increasingly excited at the prospect of a Liberal win, the staffer said.
“She said to me something like, ‘Do you know what this could mean to Whitehouse if [Abbott] gets in?’
“The scholarship that Frances received was a direct scholarship from the founder and owner Leanne Whitehouse. As a private company, Leanne has from time to time awarded it,” Mr Tudor said.The optics of this is so bad. The "best" that Abbott can hope from this is (assuming that Frances was competing with no one to get her scholarship) is if he can claim that he didn't know she was getting such favoured treatment. Because if he did - it is obvious that it would look like political favour being sought, and he should have declared it.
“Originally it was called the MD’s scholarship and subsequently the chairs scholarship. It is a discretionary award made and funded by Leanne Whitehouse.”
Tone’s hypocrisy and cynical opportunism does, however, explain the particularly virulent strain of schadenfreude at play. Only this morning, Tone told Karl Stefanovic that “families should be kept out of the front line. That’s the way I’ve always tried to run my political operation – that we play hard but fair. Families should be [left] out of it.”
Given this principled stance, it’s weird how Abbott’s ‘not bad-looking daughters’ keep bobbing at politically expedient moments and for photo-ops. It seems inevitable that this habit would bite him on the arse at some point, and it looks like that point has arrived.
When investigating theories at the tiniest conceivable scales in nature, "quantum logic" is taking over from "classical logic" in the minds of almost all researchers today. Dissatisfied, the author investigated how one can look at things differently. This report is an overview of older material, but also contains many new observations and calculations. Quantum mechanics is looked upon as a tool, not as a theory. Examples are displayed of models that are classical in essence, but can be analysed by the use of quantum techniques, and we argue that even the Standard Model, together with gravitational interactions, may be viewed as a quantum mechanical approach to analyse a system that could be classical at its core. We then explain how these apparently heretic thoughts can be reconciled with Bell's theorem and the usual objections voiced against the notion of 'super determinism'. Our proposal would eradicate the collapse problem and the measurement problem.
That worries people like Marc Lipsitch and Alison P. Galvani, two epidemiologists who write in a PLoS Medicine editorial today that creating these types of new infectious agents puts human life at risk. They estimate that if 10 American laboratories ran these types of experiments for a decade, there would be a 20 percent chance that a lab worker would become infected with one of these new super-flus and potentially pass it on to others.I can't say that it sounds like a good idea to me. Scientists don't always show a big enough interest in considering the worst case scenarios of their work, as I used to argue about the safety assessments done for large particle colliders.
“The concern is that you're making something that doesn't exist in nature and combines high virulence for people with the ability to transmit efficiently,” Lipsitch told me.
In the federal budget, the government announced that from 2016 itIf the delivery of a $3000 bottle of wine to a new Premier is a matter which should have been disclosed on a public register, then a direct $60,000 benefit received by a major politician's daughter should also have been disclosed unless it was clearly made on a competitive basis from a reasonable field of applicants (including some without obvious political connections.)
would for the first time extend direct government funding to private
colleges.
The changes, which also extend support for TAFEs, and diploma
and associate degree courses, will cost $820 million over three years.
They follow a recommendation from a review of university funding by
David Kemp, who was education minister in the Howard government, and Dr
Kemp’s former advisor Andrew Norton.
Researchers led by Thomas Talhelm of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, found that people from rice-growing regions think in more interdependent and holistic ways than do those from wheat-growing areas.
Talhelm thinks these differences arose because it takes much more cooperation and overall effort to grow rice than wheat. To successfully plant and harvest rice, farmers must work together to build complex irrigation systems and set up labor exchanges. Over time, this need for teamwork fosters an interdependent and collectivist psychology. Wheat, however, can be grown independently, so wheat farmers become more individualistic.Talhelm found that even people from adjacent counties on either side of the Yangtze River think differently if they grow different crops. "I don't see any other theory that explains why you find these differences between people in neighboring counties," he says....
Talhelm came up with his "rice theory" after spending a few years as a teacher in China and noticing cultural differences between the north and south. "People in the north seemed more direct, while people in the south were more concerned about harmony and avoiding conflict," he says.
After seven seasons, the subtitled Chinese version of the show had achieved iconic status—all without the remotest involvement of the government’s vast media apparatus. By the time the show was banned, Chinese episodes had been watched online no fewer than 1.4 billion times. When the actors, such as Johnny Galecki, visit China, they are mobbed by fans. In Beijing, any tall, slim, dark-haired American male is likely to have been told once or twice that he looks a bit like Sheldon, the most Spock-like character on the show.The article goes on to note the following:
Young Chinese, who have grown up in an age of prosperity and stability, are typically the most passionate defenders of the Chinese political and economic way. When the government, for instance, breaks up demonstrations in the name of defending China’s stability, or blocks Web sites to protect China’s honor in the long-running divide with Japan, it is often the self-described “angry youth” who rise in defense of the flag. But in this case, the ban hit a nerve. In the city of Wuhan, in central China, student members of the Center for Protection for the Rights of Disadvantaged Citizens of Wuhan University issued the rough Chinese equivalent of a Freedom of Information Act request, demanding to know why they had been deprived of their favorite show.And it then reaches this interesting conclusion:
It is a remarkable state of affairs: at the very moment when the U.S. and Chinese governments are moving in a direction of greater conflict, the slow, steady accretion of foreign pop culture on the Chinese Web has given people on both sides of the Pacific more in common than ever before.[As an aside, I had not watched the show for a year or so, as the last time I had seen it I thought it showed signs of a sitcom in terminal decline. But I recently did watch a couple of new season episodes, after reading about its extraordinarily high ratings in the States, and I did feel it had improved.]
Let me be clear: sitcoms are not policy. The point is that the U.S. and China are in the curious position of facing a deepening rivalry at the very moment when their own citizens are sharing ever more of the same tastes, jokes, preoccupations, anxieties, and pleasures. The United States has never faced a rival whose ordinary people lead lives that have so much in common with ours in America. (The Soviets did not get Carson.)
Radio announcer Alan Jones was truly bewildered while interviewing Christopher Pyne on Wednesday, astounded that despite the education minister’s “brilliant” advocacy skills the “blockheads” running state governments could not understand that the allegation of an $80bn cut was totally wrong. In fact, Jones said, “there hasn't been a more monstrous lie perpetrated since Julia Gillard said there'd be no carbon tax”.In other "Attack!" news, Andrew Bolt (of course) is calling protesting students "totalitarians", following the Pyne line that they are out to "shut down democracy in Australia". Actually, I think they would be quite happy to see democracy re-exercised within the next 6 months.
Pyne somehow neglected to refer Jones to page 7 of the government’s glossy budget overview which clearly states that the government is changing indexation of state grants and “removing funding guarantees for public hospitals. These measures will achieve cumulative savings of over $80bn by 20024-25.”
Mr Abbott told ABC radio that only students who start studying in 2016 would face potentially higher fees when universities can charge what they like.Peta, Peta, Peta. All your effort into training him is not paying off, it seems.
"If you start next year, your conditions of study won't change," he said.
But the budget papers clearly state that anyone who enrols after May 14 will face deregulated fees in 2016.
Professor Garnaut, the architect of the Rudd and Gillard governments’ climate policies, argues that keeping carbon pricing and abandoning the $2.55 billion emissions reduction fund would reduce the budget deficit by between $12 billion and $19 billion over the next four years, depending on the European carbon price.But of course, because the Coalition fed the public the line that the Labor carbon scheme would be an economic disaster (based on the support of the handful of economists associated with the IPA, pretty much) for so long, they cannot back down on that now, despite the lack of evidence that it is actually causing any great economic mayhem.
On Tuesday night, he told an audience at the University of Melbourne that is about the same as the $12 billion to $18 billion in budgetary savings that the Greens and Labor have pledged to oppose in Parliament.
“Retention of carbon pricing would more or less precisely fill the gap from Senate rejection of some budget measures,” Professor Garnaut said.
“To put it another way, Australia can stay within the boundaries of fiscal responsibility defined by the government in this year’s budget by retaining carbon pricing, rather than the array of changes that are at risk in the Senate.”
Virak Ou, chairman of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, accused Australia of irresponsibly exporting its own problem.
“We mistreated our own people and have failed to protect the human rights of our own people … we don’t have the capacity or the will,” he said.
“There’s no reason for Australia to believe that Cambodia will protect the rights of refugees, which to me is very irresponsible of Australia.”
Cambodia’s opposition leader Sam Rainsy described the deal as a “disgrace,” saying Australian money will be diverted into the pockets of Cambodia’s corrupt leaders.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has condemned the agreement, saying Cambodia is a vulnerable nation still recovering for years of civil war and is still unable to provide for its own people.
However, the UN’s Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Flavia Pansieri said the UN would be willing to provide “support to ensure that standards are met.”
The UNHCR has only a two-person office in Phnom Penh.
Of 68 asylum seekers or refugees already living in Cambodia most are desperate to be relocated to another country, welfare groups say.
''This was supposed to distract from what they were doing in budget
week,'' a senior Labor source said. ''There was a clear political ploy
to drag this stuff out to remind people how much they disliked the last
government but people seem to have moved on. People are more interested
in what this government is doing.''
Coverage of Mr Rudd's and Mr Combet's appearances, as well as
former Labor ministers Peter Garrett and Mark Arbib, was swamped by
reaction to the first Coalition budget and its lead up.
Watchers at the inquiry, headed by Ian Hanger, QC, said itThis enquiry, together with the union royal commission giving creep Blewitt a venue to mutter about Gillard, have been examples of very nasty political fixes attempted by a petty and pretty much morally bankrupt government. (See next post.)
had unearthed no ''smoking gun'' despite speculation before the
hearings that a trail of warnings over the lethal scheme could lead
right to the top of the Rudd government.
John Howard 'took a big hit in the polls too' after first budget? Er, no Mr Abbott: The first post-budget Newspoll in 1996 showed a three percentage point increase in the Coalition's primary vote, to 50; a lift in Howard's approval rating, from 47 to 51; and an increase in his lead over Kim Beazley as preferred prime minister to a score of 53 per cent against Beazley's 24.How embarrassing for our PM.
Increased petrol taxes? And no tub-thumpers angry? Surely Alan Jones would stay strong. If Julia Gillard had hiked fuel excise, Alan Jones would instantly have recommended firing her into space, and hang the expense.Hilarious.
But on budget morning, when the Prime Minister reported for his Jonesian rub-down, he received nothing but approval for pricier fuel.
''There are legitimate reasons around the world for this,'' avowed Jones sternly. ''One is to stop the guzzling of a scarce resource.''
There are several hundred muons going through your head everyIf you want maths with that, you can have a look at this article, which works through the question of why we see so many on Earth's surface if they decay so fast. The answer is relativity:second
minute. Fortunately, their low energies (and high mass) mean they are
harmless. These muons originate from the collisions of cosmic-rays
(primarily protons spewed out by stars) with the atoms in our upper
atmosphere. After their discovery it was observed that the number of
these muons decreased as you got closer to the earth and the natural
(and correct) conclusion was that they were not stable particles like
the electron but a bit fly-by-night (and day), and they decayed to other
more familiar particles (electrons and neutrinos) in about 2 millionths
of a second. At this point it was known what the mass of the electron
was and neutrinos were assumed massless, so by looking at the trajectory
and energy of the electron from the muon decay (or measuring the time
it took for the muon to decay) it became clear the the muon was a bit of
a porker. It weighed in at about 200 times the mass of the electron.
The measurement of the flux of muons at the Earth's surface produced an early dilemma because many more are detected than would be expected, based on their short half-life of 1.56 microseconds. This is a good example of the application of relativistic time dilation to explain the increased particle range for high-speed particles.Fascinating, hey?
