Ted Kennedy’s funeral is over. My only comment

Chappaquiddick

New Space art site

The International Space Art Network is a new Ning group which should be on interest to all our readers. There’s some truly awesome stuff there so check it out!

Exo planet 27 by Szőke László

John Howard rejects an Australian Bill of Rights

The other night John Howard attacked proposals for an Australian bill of rights correctly seeing it as an elitist attempt to weaken democracy:

The adoption of a charter or bill of rights would represent the final triumph of elitism in Australian politics: the notion that typical citizens, elected by ordinary Australians, cannot be trusted to resolve great issues of public policy, and that the really important decisions should be taken out of their hands and given to judges who, after all, have a superior capacity to determine these matters.

The three great guarantees of Australian democracy are a robust parliamentary system, an independent and incorruptible judiciary and a free and sceptical press.

Our parliamentary system has many flaws but ultimately it sets the tone of national debate and ought to be the ultimate decision maker. It is the identifiable and collective representation of public opinion.

I do miss our former Prime Minister.

Evolution – What about GOD?

Of all species, we alone attempt to explain who we are and how we came to be. This final show explores the struggle between science and religion. Through the personal stories of students and teachers, it offers the view that they are compatible.

Today join us on Discovery Enterprise as we continue our year long celebration of the life and work of Charles Darwin and explore the conflict between Science and Faith with the last installment of the landmark PBS television series “Evolution” – What about God?

Pole dancing on the train

Nothing like this ever happens on my train:

A STRIP club isn’t the only place in town you can see a pole dance – amazed passengers on an L train in New York watched in awe as a naked young woman competed with straphangers for space on a pole.

The performance by actress Jocelyn Saldana, 19, lasted just 30 seconds, and some of the passengers probably thought they were hallucinating or dreaming.

Most were blasé, however one woman started screaming and an elderly man next to her got the shakes.

That free show in mid-June – as well as similar ones from Times Square to Chinatown – were the creation of photographer Zach Hyman, 22, whose portraits are never under-exposed.

The photographer and his volunteer models don’t spend much time on location.

The model quickly disrobes and Hyman gives himself only 30 seconds to fire off 10 shots with his Hasselblad 500 film camera.

Begging for a living

It says something about our society when a man can make $50,000 a year from begging. Does the Australian Tax Office know about this?

THE hours are long and the work monotonous, but begging pays well for at least one of Sydney’s homeless men who earns up to $50,000 a year from good samaritans.

Ken Johnson, 52, makes his living on busy George and Market St, outside the Myer store in Sydney’s CBD, where he sits for up to 16 hours daily, seven days a week.

On a good day, he said, he takes in $400 from generous passers-by.

NOAH

People have been designing arcologies for decades. They can make good science fiction, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Oath of Fealty is well worth reading, but no one has ever managed to build one. The latest proposal is for New Orleans. The NOAH project would house 40,000 people in one giant building providing schools, commercial areas, hospitals and even casino.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Libertarians and the Liberals

Tim Andrews wants to know if libertarians should join the Liberal Party. Various people including Danny Hayes, have commented. My response is below.

Yes.
If you want to have a direct effect on Australian politics you need to join a political party. A minor party like the LDP is a waste of time, they have been unable to elect a single person to any level of government. That leaves the two major mainstream parties. If like Mr Humphreys, you believe the Labor party is your best bet then go ahead, join them. You can try arguing the benefits of the free market with the comrades.

I as a conservative libertarian ( if there’s such a thing as an Australian Reaganite, then I’m one) prefer the Liberal Party. Thats the party that supported the free market policies of Hawke/Keating and when in government privatized Telstra and the CES, freed up labor markets, turned a budgetary deficit into a surplus and was able to deliver tax cut after tax cut. That the party while accused of being socially conservative didn’t try to impose internet censorship, instead gave people a sensible choice.

Its a mainstream party that has to appeal to the broad electorate. So requires policies and leaders that have that appeal. However it is the party of enterprise and the individual , but its commitment to those principles are only as strong as the commitment of its members. We can certainly use more classical liberals so “should libertarians join the Liberal Party? -” Yes Please.

Government & Opposition agree to shaft us

Well, the ETS may have hit a hurdle but we are getting a RET – Renewable Energy Target. The result will be higher electricity costs:

The RET will work by forcing electricity companies to buy a certain portion of electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal.

Households and businesses will pay for it through higher power prices.

The Coalition has secured more exemptions for industry from the cost of the RET in the deal struck today.

That means households will pay a greater share.

Paul Kelly got stuck into the nonsense this morning:

HURRAH, the Rudd government and Turnbull opposition have agreed to pass the Renewable Energy Target, an initiative unjustified in economic terms that makes emission reduction costs three times more expensive than the price of permits under cap and trade and resurrects government planning that Australia spent half a century trying to escape.

This is an initiative driven totally by politics. In a new world of climate change tokenism it means Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull are heroes. Government support to create new renewable industries otherwise untenable has become the test of being “serious” about climate change.

Now there is a type of renewable energy that’s cheap, reliable and can be produced in sizable quantity, hydro-electricity. There’s opportunity for hydro power in Tasmania but that Labor and the Greens closed off that option years ago. And there’s that other emission free renewable (well recyclable anyway) energy source Green and Labor don’t like.

Small and Simple Souls

I just love this video: