“Labor is wandering around in the dark bumping into things. Albo is smart but can’t communicate. Keneally isn’t smart but she communicates her silliness very well. Has the ALP learnt anything from their unlosable election back in May?”
Not so fast, said Philip:
“I wouldn’t be so quick to dump on Albanese given this woman’s questionable connections to CCP sponsored organisations. There is no smoke without fire and she is cleverly playing the racist card to distract attention from the underlying concern as to where her true loyalties lie... Wake up Australia!”
Geoff agreed:
“I think the ALP party is very racist here and they should all hang their heads in shame. I think the Australian Chinese community should withdraw all contact with the ALP across Australia. This episode is disgraceful and good on Scott for backing this lady.”
David declared:
“They created the White Australia policy, what would one expect?”
Stephen said:
“Albo has Bolt on his side. Unusual bed buddies. Both wrong IMHO. Bolt’s over the top attack on the PM this evening demonstrates all that is wrong with Australian politics today. The constant nasty personal attacks. And no one does it better then Bolt and his fellow right winger Jones.”
Play it again, Sam, said Charles:
“Unlike Sam from the ALP, Gladys didn’t take money from the Chinese communist.”
Johnson countered:
“No, but she did facilitate big donations to the LNP from Chinese at fundraisers. You could say she bought her way in?”
Lighten up, said Laura:
“Perhaps those attacking her should remember she still has family in HK and no doubt is not calling certain things out for fear of what might happen to them. Perhaps a little compassion or thought before assuming she is disloyal.”
Full Marx from Michael:
“You know I am ultra left, in fact an unreconstructed Marxist. I just wish Penny Wong would adhere to the advice of Habermas re discourse ethics. Respect the views of others but most importantly reflect on what you are saying yourself.
“For me the moral legislator must also be the moral subject. Penny fails to understand that if her tolerant and reasoned standpoint is to mean anything, then its her behaviour that matters not the behaviour of everyone else.”
—
We may not be alone: Scientists have discovered water on a planet outside our solar system that has temperatures suitable for life more or less as we know it. The planet goes by the catchy name of k2-18b and it’s in the constellation of Leo. Michael was down to earth:
“I can’t see a living human migrating to an inhabitable planet anytime soon, if ever. Accepted laws of time and space prohibit travel at or exceeding the speed of light. We may however be able to shoot off a capsule of frozen sperm and embryos into deep space awaiting discovery. “Our species may one day be reproduced by an endeavouring alien gynaecologist somewhere over the next 100 million light years. In the meantime, building these endless telescopes seems to be money not well spent, because they haven’t really taught us anything more remarkable than the first ones did.
“Most of the distance discoveries are still heavily wrapped in scientific guess work. Having said that, with what we do know, we may be able to discover and mine exotic minerals on nearby planets one day, they don’t seem fit for much else.”
Another Michael said:
“We’d need Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon to get there”.
Hans wondered:
“Does the climate change there?”
JJ beamed:
“I believe that this report, ‘That there is water on this distant planet’ is very probably correct.
My understanding that it wasn’t until 1992 that we had concrete evidence of planets (Outside our solar system). Now 17 years later we have good evidence that a planet has water. Amazing. We used to look at minute wobbles of stars to ascertain planetary existence. Soon we will be able to see space bunnies on these chunks of stuff.”
Tony phoned home:
“Excellent opportunity to send our driverless cars, our drones, our automated telephone responders, our Centrelink computers, our public service automation .....the list is endless!”
Jenny went the full Monty:
“To quote Monty Python, “we can only hope that there’s intelligent life out there …”.
Ermie saw the big picture:
“Why can’t people simply accept that as humans we are always trying to expand our knowledge of our planet and its relationship to the universe and welcome increments to that knowledge? If it hadn’t been for the inquiring minds of the past we would still be living in squalor, believing that an imbalance of humours causes illness and the earth is flat and was made in 7 days.”
Paul preached:
“Yep, we have so much progress from those silly Christian days, so now rather than God, we believe the universe made itself from nothing for no reason … either concept requires a leap of faith, so I’m going for the one with the happy ending!”
Joe threw a curly one:
“As the Dr Werner Gitt stated: ‘There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of natural events which can cause specified information to originate by itself in matter. Therefore the origin of information must be non natural and non material. The concept of information is devastating to materialistic philosophy, always has been.”
—
Malcolm Gladwell is back with a new book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know. His hypothesis: human beings have a default tendency to believe other human beings, such as Neville Chamberlain believing Hitler wouldn’t invade Poland. Pardon, said Gordon:
“It is a complete myth that Chamberlain was hoodwinked by Hitler at Munich — papers released in 1967 — under the 30 year rule — show this.
“Chamberlain wasn’t so much hoodwinked by Hitler, but he was arrogant enough to believe that he could reach a deal with him. It should be noted that British rearmament until February 1939 was wholly defensive, building up the Navy and the RAF, Chamberlain had refused to consider expanding the offensive ability of the army as he was hopeful, until Hitler broke the Munich Agreement, that Britain could avoid any military involvement in Europe.”
Cecil said:
“Gladwell might be an intellectual to some. He knows a lot of things about a lot of things.
He is excellent at presenting findings from social science research. Almost always without reference to the original research. He was no good at philosophy?
“Yes well, with philosophy you have to think about things, question assumptions, look at things from all sorts of angles, be analytical, be empirical, and logical, and work closely with people who criticise you and disagree with you, and show you how you missed important things. That’s essential for an intellectual, a proper one.”
Jason said:
“Fascinating guy. I didn’t realise he was the one who came up with the broken window theory that led to the zero-tolerance policing that helped clean up New York.
“I have put his theory into practice in a similar way though. Around where I live there has been a tendency to litter in a particular and demonstrative way. It doesn’t matter for this account exactly how it operates but some individuals — both residents and visitors — have taken to doing a particular thing that is messy and makes the place look awful. It started fairly small but as the problem grew it seemed to accelerate and get worse faster.
“So I started cleaning it up. Every time I see an example I stop the car and fix it. People keep doing it but at a much lower rate than before and the place is back to looking nice again. It works. To use an old expression — “monkey-see-monkey-do”. If monkeys don’t see bad behaviour far fewer of them are inclined to do it.”
Martin moaned:
“I was a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I had read all of his books and liked all of them except the last one. However, when I listened to his podcast series, he referenced the fall of Julia Gillard as prime minister. His theory on how she was cut down because of the sexism of the Australian political system was pure fantasy. It was clear that it was very poorly researched and factually inaccurate. I was actually quite shocked by his lack comprehension of why she failed as prime minister.
“This caused me to look more closely at some of his theories like the 10,000 hour rule and others which I now have real doubts over.”
Last word to John:
“From an evolutionary perspective, does Mr Gladwell take into account ancient reasons why our species emerged from millions of years of survival of small bands of low-browed ancestral hominin prey species, on African savannas populated by fierce predators? It must have been a necessary behavioural adaptation for small-group survival, for plenty of trust and altruism to prevail in hunting, food-gathering and sharing activities … as well as intra-group competition for breeding and other rights. Such behaviours are still evident, in our long-evolved tendencies to trust deceivers, nowadays too readily in the very large groupings where we personally know only a tiny fraction of their members?”
—
Each Friday the cream of your views on the news rises and we honour the voices that made the debate great. To boost your chances of being featured, please be pertinent, pithy and preferably make a point. Solid arguments, original ideas, sparkling prose, rapier wit and rhetorical flourishes may count in your favour. Civility is essential. Comments may be edited for length.
Powerful display of military deterrence as UK steps up
Old alliances between nations that share bedrock values matter, which is why Britain’s sending 3000 personnel and the aircraft carrier Prince of Wales for Exercise Talisman Sabre matters.
Protect minors from bad choices
Laws and practices allowing minors to opt for radical medical gender treatment, against the wishes of parents, are irresponsible and wrong. The Greens’ lack of respect for free speech on the matter is deeply disturbing.
Welcome to the column where you provide the content. When Anthony Albanese went medieval on Liberal MP and Bolt casualty Gladys Liu, Simon Benson wrote that the whole affair could backfire horribly, lighting up WeChat with tales of racist Labor. Too true, said True Blue: