Bob's blog - the realm of threalm

. The Liberal Party of Australia is currently undergoing a purge. It is quite spectacular. A technicolour yawn of conflicting principles, ideology and power lust is being spewed out across the pages of the press , on the current affairs programmes and in the 'sphere . Just over a year ago the Party Room removed Brendan Nelson from the leadership in favour of Malcolm Turnbull, ostensibly because Brendan was more circumspect than Malcolm about the pace at which or whether Australia should introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme. Brendan wanted to wait until after Australia had seen what the other nations of the world, mainly the big emitters like China, India and the US, were prepared to commit to before Australia made its commitment. Malcolm wanted to push ahead with an ETS before Copenhagen in the belief that this position would neutralise the electorate characterising the Party as unconcerned about Climate Change. Mal won. Brendan has now been given a gig as ambassador to NATO in fa...

. Seemingly un-remarked on so far, is an admission in the recent new publication from Albert Gore Junior. The Guardian says of his new book: "... Those conversations led Gore to politically inconvenient conclusions in this new book. In his conversations with Schmidt and other colleagues at the beginning of the year, Gore explored new studies - published only last week - that show methane and black carbon or soot had a far greater impact on global warming than previously thought. Carbon dioxide - while the focus of the politics of climate change - produces around 40% of the actual warming . Gore acknowledged to Newsweek that the findings could complicate efforts to build a political consensus around the need to limit carbon emissions. "Over the years I have been among those who focused most of all on CO2, and I think that's still justified," he told the magazine. " [ Bolding added] The consequences of this admission by Al Gore are not insignificant, especially...

. It's Melbourne Cup day in Australia: a day full of strained horse racing metaphors, lots of forced jollity, and much illusion about chance; hence the superficial inspiration for my segue to: The interesting, refreshing and credible view now developing that "horse race" style politics is currently (if temporarily) on the outer in the big democratic conversation in the US. The argument runs along these lines: The triumph for grass roots democracy seen in the presidential election of Obama last year, cuts both ways: to big central planning idealists like Obama, but also to small government idealists like Ron Paul. This means that the previously dominant gamers and tacticians in politics (Karl Rove, Josh Lyman, Bill Clinton), who downplay substance and the ideas of candidates and who look primarily to the sport of political contests (the horse race metaphor), are now less important than they have been for ages. Triangulating, seeking the middle ground between poles, whic...

. Below is my review of Les Murray's novel in verse, Fredy Neptune . I finally finished it last night and have been captured by its spell of poetic mastery. I reckon its a candidate for "the" Australian novel. There might be some resistance to that because it is not written in prose. But who said a novel could not be a poem? . “ Fredy Neptune: A novel in verse ” By Les Murray. This novel was first released in 1999. It is arguably a candidate for “the” Australian novel. It is in verse. That is, it is written in eight line stanzas with a semi-rigorous metrical beat. Do not be daunted. You quickly forget that you are reading verse, and it is more than worth any little initial effort. The compression and lyricism that the poetic form allows, provides a loadstone in which Murray lavishly embeds polished gemstones of insight and he creates a word music that mere prose would labour too hard to emulate. It makes for a spectacularly rich and multi-faceted yarn, filled with action...

. I was going to post on the delightful news, via Garth Godsman , after a lengthy and curious embargo by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, that another dead specimen of the "extinct" Australian N ight Parrot, has been found in Queensland . This is great news for ornithologists and Monty Python fans. It is also a refreshing change to have some developing news from the natural history world that is not yet another tale of environmental woe or human devastation (excepting that this night parrot was found decapitated by fencing wire). There's been another piece of apparently good news that recently almost broke. It seems that based on satellite data this summer's Antarctic summer ice melt was at an all time recorded low. Presumably this means that waterfront property will continue to hold its value and Governments will now not have to spend taxpayer funds on the engineering works necessary to hold back the tides. This good news for mankind seems further enhanced ...

. Amidst the current surge of disasters in our region with tsunami in Samoa , quakes in Sumatra and floods in the Philippines , which provide more incontrovertible signs of the impending and inevitable Anthropogenic Continental Drift catastrophe, there is some good news for the Federal Labor Government. This disaster deluge has provided the cover necessary to release the long awaited results of the NT Police investigation into the deaths of five asylum seekers in April 2009. You remember this don't you? The media was playing out its carefully crafted narrative that these desperate boat people were all tragic victims of turmoil in far away places who required our sympathy and support not hostility and rejection. The increase in their numbers arriving here was not due to a perceived softening in the Government's stance, but to heightened troubles in the world. And then there was an explosion on a Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel. It burnt to the waterline killing five refugees and ...

. Mary Travers has died. Peter, Paul and Mary's songs were the songs of my childhood. It is melodies from pre-adolescence that live deepest in your heart; not the songs others would define you by from confused adolescence, yearning for cool. These songs transcend such callow transience. Here she is singing " 5oo Miles " and " If I had a Hammer ". A voice of beauty about justice and freedom. .