Bob's blog - the realm of threalm

I reckon that if a bunch of well meaning central planning ideologues can choose to brand their artifical process for the global reduction of the main chemical element in all known life forms, carbon, the " Clean Development Mechanism ", without recognising the hubristic over-reach and irony of such aspiration, they deserve to have this happen to them .

There is something dangerously seductive about the idea of being able to deliberately plant an idea, cut down to its simplest form, so that it can take hold in the human psyche and self propagate like a virus. Whilst bravely putting to one side the whole of the advertising and marketing industries, I have recently been prompted to ponder the genesis and success of some quite influential ideas: There is but one God . Love thy neighbour as thyself. Christ died for our sins . From each according to his abilities , to each according to his needs; God is dead . Survival of the fittest . Anatomy is destiny . E = mc2 . Let freedom ring . Every man has his price . The answer is blowin' in the wind . You've  nothing to lose except your chains . You are only limited by your imagination. Freedom is a myth . Language determines how you think. It's time . The selfish gene . The greenhouse effect . The tipping...

I watched Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard with compere Tony Jones and a studio audience in Adelaide, on ABC1's Q&A program last night , 9 August 2010. She's certainly a clever and accomplished politician, with a plenty of negative schtick for her opponents. My abiding impression however was that it was like watching an over-confident  suburban school principal dealing with questions in assembly . No one dared challenge her on her display of well honed defensiveness about her ruthlessness, although there was the occasional cheeky little boy who tried to play it for some laughs. It was not a debate and there was little policy substance.  She returned whenever she could to her saintly parents, sacrificing themselves, emigrating from Wales and doing it tough in suburban Adelaide for the sake of the children, Julia and her sister. This stuff clearly must poll well in focus groups. And I must not be very f...

.   .. Whitlam , Fraser , Hawke ,  Keating ,  Howard , Rudd, Gillard & ... Abbott ? . ... The election news in Australia over the weekend was more than usually depressing. Yeah, I know it's just another election campaign and it is as always pitched at people who aren't interested in politics or policy: swinging voters in marginal seats. I'm not in that target audience. And I know that this is, due to the absence of any actual leadership, a Seinfeld election; about nothing, other than the identities of the leaders. And yeah, the Labor Party has recently and unexpectedly taken a potentially election losing hit in the polls, which, as usual, none of the Fairfax or ABC experts foreshadowed (now why might that be?)   But that's not why for me it's been so depressing. It's because of what we've now learnt, from people who actually knew him, about our former Prime Minister, Kevin...