When the G20 finance ministers agreed in February to significantly raise global growth, they locked in a goal of lifting collective GDP by more than 2%. This was a cumulative goal - that is a total of…
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Something strange is happening within the world-famous pitch drop experiment with the latest drop forming much faster than the last couple of drops. There have been nine drops so far and all attention…
To explain the disaster befalling Iraq, as well as the rise of Islamic State (IS), you have to go back a century – before modern Iraq even existed. That’s not to discount the shared culpability of Iraq’s…
The West African outbreak of Ebola has claimed more than 4,800 lives and this number is sure to rise. There is understandably a lot of fear about Ebola, but how does it actually compare with other fast-spreading…
When Prime Minister Abbott went to the United States in June this year, he visited a P-Tech High school in Brooklyn. He said such schools were a “valuable education model for us to consider in Australia…
Climate change, now belatedly added to the agenda for this month’s G20 meeting in Brisbane, is a perennial topic whenever leaders gather for international summits. That’s understandable, given that countries…
While it’s tempting to dismiss conspiracy theorists as nothing more than a loopy minority, on a growing range of contemporary issues they in fact make up a loud and vocal majority. Consider the nearly…
The hollowing out of tax collected for public purposes by rich and poor nations is not confined to technology and mining companies, according to a major leak of secret tax agreements covering more than…
In a playful rhetorical flourish at the Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday, Indigenous leader Noel Pearson monumentalised Gough Whitlam’s prime ministerial legacy, Monty Python-style: What did the Romans ever…
A licence to dig is no longer enough for today’s mining and extractive companies. Stakeholder approval is progressively becoming a “must have” for mining companies around the globe — a requirement these…
As humans, we live in a colourful world, but differences in visual systems means that not all animals see the world in the same way. Unlike other aspects of an object such as size or mass, colour is not…
We’ve long known that that the gut is responsible for digesting food and expelling the waste. More recently, we realised the gut has many more important functions and acts a type of mini-brain, affecting…
University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Stephen Parker and Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan discuss the week in politics, including Russia and the G20 Leaders’ Summit, Australia and China’s impending…
Gough Whitlam was a prime minister unsuccessful in three of his five federal election campaigns, including 1975’s extremely divisive contest. Somehow, though, his death has sparked an outpouring of kind…
Beating and overriding a horse is deemed cruel under Victoria’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986. You would never guess that from a day at the races, including Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival…
Susan Sontag once wrote that the ultimate camp statement is, “It’s good because it’s awful”. But can camp go too far? To paraphrase a line from the 2001 film Ghost World, can something be so awful that…
Some 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – on November 9 1989 – Berlin is a utopia for many people. In otherwise precarious and uncertain lives, Berlin holds out the hope of pursuing creative work…
A blind woman has launched a claim of unlawful discrimination against Coles and its online website. For those of us who are totally blind and working in the disability law space this lawsuit is no surprise…
It’s unthinkable to give a placebo to someone to treat their cancer, but could we use one to treat chemotherapy’s well-known side effects? Unfortunately, we may never be able to answer this question because…
Whether creative writing can be taught is a question that has been debated on and off for decades. Are writers born, is the question, or can they be made? Neither side of the debate has offered incontrovertible…
At the Australian Institute of Architecture’s 2014 National Architecture Awards in Darwin last night, a total of 43 awards and commendations were given across 13 categories by five jurors, chosen from…
The rise in population since 1900 has been so rapid that up to 14% of all humans that have ever lived are still alive today, according to recent research. Other research shows that slowing population growth…
Banks borrow short and lend long. So if all of a bank’s depositors suddenly want their money, the bank would be unable to pay them. A bank may have made great loans but it can only unwind these loans slowly…
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The time and date of the origin of insects and their pattern of evolution and survival over millions of years is revealed in a new study, published today in Science magazine. Insect relationships have…