Blogotariat

There is some evidence that no comment made today is getting through. My son, who fixes these things, is doing an exam and will get to it by, perhaps, noon tomorrow. Sean, for his unforgiveable offenses against the mother tongue, …

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Abbott is about to give his budget reply speech. The word is that he is going to endorse all the Government’s budget savings. Then I expect he will use some cherry-picked numbers to show that the problem is big spending rather than a lack of revenue, then carry on about waste and mismanagement etc.

I’d really like to quote what Gillard said in Question Time today. It was a quote from Abbott in 2003 saying precisely what the leader of HM Opposition should say in his budget reply. It was quoted on RN’s PM program, so I’ll post it when the transcript is up later tonight.

News Ltd columnist and climate-change denier Andrew Bolt today posted on his blog a link to the Google Earth Engine time-lapse photographic series, which shows how the earth has changed over the past 28 years.Beneath the headline “Are the satellites lying about poor, drowning Kiribati?”, Bolt posted a link to what he called “the island” and asked his readers: what vanishing island?

Photo: news.com

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Much Ado About Nothing, Great Expectations or might it be Oliver with a Twist.

Charged with crimes that could get them two years imprisonment, three arrogant Fairfax journos and a senior Greensparty operative and state government bureaucrat didn't bother attending the Melbourne Magistrates Court for the first hearing Thursday.

Cambodia has turned to clearing its prehistoric forests for hydro-electricity dams. And China is only too eager to help.

What happened to the lively Australian university campus? The needs of the marketplace took over from the needs of the academy, writes UNSW student Sophie Duxson

With the Gonski reforms expected to be rolled out across Australia in the coming 5 years, it is handy to reflect on what actually are the basic challenges for school reform in Australia. A view of the underlying issues helps one to judge the likely outcomes of the current reforms and others one might think of.

One can see the main learning challenges in Australian schools as related to the quality of what is taught, the quality of who is teaching, and the quality of the school as a whole. Three main issues then come to mind:

FOR the past twenty years, some of the more optimistic figures in the solar industry have predicted that their technology would change the electricity game forever. They have largely been dismissed as green romantics or hopeless optimists.

It’s not Australia, although we came 10th. Finland, of course!

And, we are told, the scores of the top ten are closely clustered, so we are right up there.

The Rights of the Terminally Ill bill before NSW Parliament provides a dignified death free from pain and important legal safeguards for doctors, writes former NT Chief Minister Marshall Perron