Blogotariat

You searched "Kings." Do you mean the hockey team, basketball team, or something else?

One of Google's stated goals is to index all of the world's information, the ever-changing mass of combined knowledge and snarky commentary that lives on the Internet. Today this index is getting some context, with billions of attributes and connections linking millions of individual nouns - Things, in Google's parlance. This type of context-informed dataset is frequently known as the semantic web, but Google is avoiding that term and calling it Knowledge Graph.

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In what can be described as an “action packed” lead up to the long awaited speech to be given in parliament on Monday by embattled MP Craig Thomson, today came the confirmation of a “knockout blow”

Some of you may have read my report on the tangled web surrounding the Health Services Union HSU, Fair Work Australia, and the Coalition that was published here on Wednesday, it is fair to say more information is coming to light.

The big news is that Michael Lawler, the Vice President of Fair Work Australia, has today been distanced from these issues.

As we have seen this week from the political and public reaction to the latest scientific report from the Climate Commission, science is not always popular.

And if you’ve come to this article hoping to see yet more thrashing of experts, you might as well stop reading now. It’s human nature to question information that’s painful, but let’s not shoot the messenger.

My role on the Climate Commission has come to an end after just over a year, so it’s a good time to reflect on my experiences working in one of the most difficult and controversial areas in the current political and economic landscape.

Donna Summer died at 63, after a long battle with cancer. More than any other performer of the mid-70s through the 80s, her recordings pushed the envelope of dance music in two ways. On the one hand, she took the underground disco scene out of the clubs and onto the streets, earning some of the earliest pop hits in the genre. On the other, using her pop success as a fulcrum, she moved dance music in a variety of directions -- electronica and dance rock would have been poorer, and might not have existed at all, if it weren't for songs like "Love To Love You Baby" and "Hot Stuff." As a singer, she managed to walk the high-tension wire between sexuality and her gospel roots. And she had a powerful, gospel-infused voice that radio loved.

Just a little something else to factor in when considering what’s happening with the Euro. In Ireland they are having a referendum on whether to approve the latest version of the fiscal treaty that commits countries to the policy of fiscal austerity.

The latest opinion poll suggests there is considerable uncertainty. While there is a clear majority in favour of ratifying the treaty there is also a considerable proportion of Irish voters in the “don’t know” category.

How Government and Corporations Use the Poor as Piggy Banks

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com.

Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene. But as Business Week helpfully pointed out in 2007, the poor in aggregate provide a juicy target for anyone depraved enough to make a business of stealing from them.

From Ken Henry’s speech 2 October 2003:

The application of fiscal policy to short-term counter cyclical targets is subject to considerable recognition lags, implementation lags and transmission (or response) lags. While monetary policy is also subject to recognition lags, it involves less risk as the stance of monetary policy can be adjusted (if necessary reversed) rapidly if a misplaced judgement is made.

If the 2011-2012 Register of Disclosures by Members of the NSW Legislative Assembly, which was tabled in the chamber recently, is anything to go by then there's enough evidence to say that some of those so-called honourable persons should be sitting a NAPLAN-style test of their own to examine their capacity to perform basic literary and numeracy tasks, and thus satisfactorily perform their roles as representatives of their constituents.

Honestly, some of them are struggling to attain primary school levels of attainment.

Take a look at these examples: