War has been declared, and those who recognise the fundamental role science plays in everyday life need to decide where they stand. Building on the budgetary and rhetorical slights of recent months, rumours…
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Here’s the problem. Going on a carbon diet is hard in the way that going on a calorie diet is not. For the most part, there is good information about the calorie content of food and I can regulate it myself…
The cartoonist Ivan Rowley is captivated by a “New TV Idol” - a radio commentator and “CRITIC”. It’s Andrew Bolt, surely, broadcasting from the “The Temple of Enlightening Discussion”? No, it’s another…
Fairfax papers reported this morning that one of the world’s biggest carbon offset firms, located in Sydney, has been “shifting paper certificates instead of saving forests”. Shift2neutral has sold carbon…
Most people are not aware of fragile X syndrome but they may well be affected by it or know someone who is. Commonly under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed the condition is often mistaken for Attention Deficit…
Julia Gillard controversially claimed in her recent Whitlam oration that “the Greens will never embrace Labor’s delight at sharing the values of everyday Australians, in our cities, suburbs, towns and…
FOOD SECURITY - Here’s how things stand. More than 500 million farmers produce crops and livestock that can feed nearly 7 billion people, and yet 1 billion still go hungry. It’s estimated that the world’s…
Innovation is not a topic that attracts much serious political debate in Australia. It improves living standards and the economy, but we’re missing out because of the government’s short-sighted approach…
With the South Australian parliament passing its latest euthanasia bill to committee stage, there is a real possibility locals will be given the right to end their life. And with an unprecedented number…
Sometimes it feels like nature is out to get us. Fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods make paranoid types think that the world is coming to an end. Rationalists blame news media for causing us to…
FOOD SECURITY - The World Bank has warned rising food prices have risen 36% in the last year, reaching dangerous levels and pushing millions into poverty. The unrest in the Middle East, Africa and Haiti…
Where are we within our galaxy? How did our galaxy form? How did it evolve over the aeons? Astronomers have been asking these questions for the past century, and have recently begun discerning the answers…
The World Health Organisation’s World Health Day is dedicated to the threat posed by the rapid emergence of drug resistant organisms. Viruses, parasites and bacteria have all developed some resistance…
Once a place is heritage listed, it’s protected, right? Wrong. Politics and a flawed statutory regime are undermining the independence of the listing system, and threatening Australia’s national treasures…
The Australia Dictionary of Biography has rightly been described as a national treasure. Established over 50 years ago, it has generated 18 volumes of over 11,500 biographies of notable and representative…
Was it a surprise that President Obama’s launch for the 2012 election was so low key? That he tweeted his intention to raise US$1billion? That he posted what the New York Times called an “understated…
Australian governments have never been so dependent on the organisational capacity of not-for-profit (NFP) enterprises to deliver their policies. Conversely, Australian NFPs have never been so dependent…
Despite savage public sector cuts, the British government has ring-fenced money for musical education. While music may not appear to have as significant a hold on the Australian cultural imagination as…
Antibiotics started out as the biggest medical breakthrough of the 20th century but overuse in humans and animals has led to resistance and reduced efficacy. We’re now at risk of reverting back to a pre-antibiotic…
While global warming deniers have been effective in their aim of sowing doubt in the public mind, the most powerful argument used over and over has been that cutting emissions will cut growth, and that…
As many Queenslanders affected by January’s floods are realising, riverine flood damage is commonly excluded from household insurance policies. And this is unlikely to change until councils - especially…
Since 1950, more than 150,000 people have died in motor vehicle crashes in Australia. The worst year was 1970, when 3,798 people lost their lives – more than 10 deaths each day. Annual deaths are now below…
There’s nothing like an unexpected result to get physicists excited. So in 2008, when some strange behaviour was detected from a rarely-produced particle known as the “top quark”, there was much interest…
In the late 1980s and early 1990s social and cultural researchers and thinkers began to articulate how changes in the organization of global capitalism were affecting cultural life. The shift toward networked…
When we read that a carbon tax will hit the average hip pocket, should we worry? Will the ETS push us all into penury? And will it make any difference to our emissions at all? Can we know the cost to households…