Public Decency
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Hanged, drawn and quartered:
To be hanged, drawn and quartered became a statutory penalty for men convicted of high treason in the Kingdom of England from 1352 …
The convicted traitor was …
- hanged (almost to the point of death),
- emasculated,
- disembowelled,
- beheaded, and
- quartered (chopped into four pieces).
His remains would then often be displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge, to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors.
For reasons of PUBLIC DECENCY, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake.
(Wikipedia, 19 July 2022, emphasis added)
John Barilaro (1971) {18th Deputy Premier of NSW, 2016– 21]:
[Barilaro's] attempt at a post-political career as the New South Wales trade commissioner to the United States resulted in a political scandal … after a series of embarrassing disclosures over [his] creation of the highly paid role prior to his departure from Parliament, and the role of NSW Government ministers and public servants in the process.
That process saw the originally successful applicant fired from her public service job. …
He ultimately won the job and had his position confirmed but the scandal erupted in the middle of 2022 and he quit prior to moving to New York.
The issue was referred to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, and minister Stuart Ayres resigned from his cabinet role over the matter.
(Wikipedia, 8 August 2022)
Vitamin D:
Vitamin D3 [cholecalciferol] supplementation has been tentatively found to lead to a reduced risk of death in the elderly, but the effect has not been deemed pronounced, or certain enough, to make taking supplements recommendable. …
High blood levels appear to be associated with a lower risk of death, but it is unclear if supplementation can result in this benefit.
Both an excess and a deficiency in vitamin D appear to cause abnormal functioning and premature aging.
The relationship between serum calcifediol concentrations and all-cause mortality is "U-shaped": mortality is elevated at high and low calcifediol levels, relative to moderate levels.
(Wikipedia, 9 August 2022)
Douglas Adams (1952 – 2001):
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful [as the Babel fish] could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this:
'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.'
'But, says Man, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it?
It could not have evolved by chance.
It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic.
(The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979)
Our Brain
How to get money
The Science of Gender & Science
US Elections
Pill MIlls
By the late aughts, nearly 50,000 Americans are dying each year from opiate abuse, triple the number from just a decade earlier.
So many die, that the average American's life expectancy drops nearly a year.
How to Disagree
Independent Women
Polar Change
Factional warfare / branch stacking within the Liberal Party of Australia
Branch Stacking:
Branch stacking itself is legal under Australian law since it is an internal party matter, but some activities like providing false information to the Australian Electoral Commission, such as the numbers of members, can be prosecuted as fraud.
(Wikipedia, 7 May 2022)
After being on a strongly increasing trajectory for many years, Australian emissions have stabilised under the new [Labor] policies.
Emissions from the electricity sector fell by more than 7% over the year to June 2013. …
Current policies can meet the more and more demanding reductions that Austrlaia is likely to be called to make, at a relatively low cost and with minimal political discretion and business uncertainty.
(p 207)
The new [
Abbott] government is bound by its election commitments to … remove carbon pricing. …
[Doing this] would deepen the budgetary problems with which the government will eventually have to deal.
It would lead to larger sacrificies of productivity than would be necessary with broadly based carbon pricing.
It would lead either:
- to much higher costs later in the decade; or
- to Australia breaching its committments to the international community and damaging its own interest in the global mitagation effort.
And it would set the Australian polity on another long journey to find a way to make our contribution to combating global climate change, distracting the government and the polity from the great economic challenges facing Australia.
(p 211)
Non-Labor governments have greater longevity .
There have been five long-term (three or more terms) non-Labor governments and only one long-term Labor government.
This reflects and electoral advantage in conservatisim, in the sense of defending the status quo and resisting change.
As Machiavelli explained to the Medici princes, reform excites the passions of all who will be hurt by it, but the enthusiasm of [none of the] beneficiaries.
(
Dog Days: Australia After The Boom, 2013, p 227)
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity …
And I have felt … a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky …
(
Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798)
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
(
The Tables Turned,
Lyrical Ballads, 1798)
Aeschylus (c 525/524 – c 456/455 BCE)
[He] who learns must suffer.
And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
and in our own despite, against our will,
comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
(
Agamemnon,
Oresteia, 458 BCE)
