I forgot to wake up for the eclipse this morning. Well it was only a tiny sliver of an eclipse in Australia. The pictures from New Zealand are superb, it rose in an already eclipsed state—how great’s that! Most of the time it was over the southern ocean below NZ and Australia. The blood moon … Read more
I have been living in retrospective nostalgia for the life n times of George Orwell this last week, when I read Homage to Catalonia, and discovered the very good BBC Arena documentary which interviews dozens of interesting and important characters from his life, who were still alive at the time (1983 but also with snippets … Read more
In around 2009 I started a twitter account to get what seemed a direct line to gossip coming out of parliament house. In those days there didn’t seem to be any trolls. But it quickly got sordid. Soon i had my first exposure to what is really a kind of psychological warfare using images and … Read more
Looking back at some of my writing this website, I am coming to realise how naive I have been about human nature. They might sound outlandish, but I really was genuinely imagining future societies with interconnected internet democracy, a secular yet spiritual foundation, and living the fusion of science and art as ‘Plosm’, as ideas … Read more
The sound track to this post is Anton’s new track “not blowing smoke up your ass” .. you should let it play in the background. Modern society is like a carefully calibrated engine. After centuries of experimentation, by the mid 20th Century most the raw forces of humanity were brought into a balance, to drive … Read more
Despite his ineffable charm, Trump has again been shown to be unpopular. What this suggests to me is that if his strategy is to remain in office past the next election, then he is not going to be able to rely on the normal democratic methods. Any second rate autocrat can tilt the balance of the … Read more
The challenge for humanity in this century is to coordinate itself into a single organism. With the internet we now have the beginning of a central nervous system and are able to be conscious of the state of ourselves as a coordinated whole. We are conscious of the challenges we face more clearly than ever, … Read more
A meritocracy is a kind of evolution, a social evolution. Like biological evolution, its business is to reward the survivors, and winnow out the weak. It is a hard game but the rules are set by Nature herself. For all its advantages over less obviously fair systems of resource allocation, like systems based on dynastic … Read more
So here we are. This morning I woke up feeling optimistic for the first time in months. So I revisited this old draft post, and decided to make it live, even though things are moving on already. I live on twitter too much these days and the rawness of events seems to get so much … Read more
Freedom is a very basic personal instinct. I think all creatures want to be free, free from fear and desire, free from hunger and pain. The protection of key personal freedoms has been central to the rise of civilisation, and this has continued in modern societies through activities like the abolition of slavery and the … Read more
Last night I saw the Right Hon Malcolm Fraser speaking at the ANU about his new book, Dangerous Allies, about the US influence in Australia. He described the current diplomatic core and bureaucracy as having been “duchessed” by the US, for want of a better word he said, but I enjoyed this turn of phrase. … Read more