"natural theology > notes > 2016

vol VII: Notes

2016

Notes

Sunday 1 May 2016 - Saturday 7 May 2016

[Notebook: DB 80: Cosmic plumbing]

[page 69]

Sunday 1 May 2016

The core ideas of this book are symmetry and justice.

Justice = communication = cooling = entropy increase.

[page 70]

swap chaps 3 & 4.

Blurb: The biggest breakthrough in theology since God was invented.

Slowly discerning a book in the mist.

Monday 2 May 2016

As a matter of ethics I have to convince myself of the value of my hypothesis before I start asking people to support developing and testing it. We have to have a refutable hypothesis, ie one that makes predictions that can be tested against observation.

Quantum mechanical observables are divine revelation. Mathematically, quantum mechanics bridges the divide between geometry, continuous mathematics, and arithmetic, discrete mathematics, computable mathematics [discrete is equivalent to computable?]

This is the role of a PhD thesis, to open up a new area of study which will provide a lifetime of employment, It has taken the best part of a lifetime to begin drafting this document (after many false starts) but (as ever) I now think I am onto something.

At its core, the computation is surprisingly simple, we have not and and and nand and ordered lists stored in memory and manipulated by using ordered lists of these three functions.

[page 71]

Prophet - bad news
Evangelist - good news

Maybe trying to make the transformation from jack-of-all-trades, near enough is good enough, to an artist, embodying ideas in attractive ways ('attention getting').

Violence is a consequence of a lack of noetic space in the combatants. [?]

We say that the beauty and consistency of the observable world is a consequence of the logical connection of all the observable events on the mind of God [they are fixed points in the dynamics, and we must interpolate if we are to guess what goes on between the points].

Timing [geometric phase] is everything, space being coupled to time by the velocity of light (at the fundamental level) and at all sorts of velocities at more complex levels.

Daniel-Rops page 104: '. . . the Roman administration . . . was addicted to bureaucracy and piled up masses of documents.' Written on what? Daniel-Rops: Jesus in His Time

page 104: 'When the child Jesus was eight days old he was duly circumcised according to the custom, which ever since Abraham, the Jews had preserved as a sign of their pact with God.' Gen 17:10.

Sinai Covenant: Exodus 19 Numbers 10.

Tuesday 3 May 2016

An interesting story, with links to the more technical stuff where necessary. So write in the popular language [the vernacular] with humour rather

[page 72]

than weight, butterfly wings rather than magisterium.

Our epistemological principle, based on the mathematical theory of communication, is that we can only communicate digitally, not continuously, but the transfinite numbers show us that we can make very complex structures out of discrete objects by ordering them, as I am an ordered set of atoms.

Daniel-Rops page 126: '[The Romans] sought to give the Jews the impression that in all these matters nearest to the hearts and particularly in the domain of faith they remained absolutely free. But this did not prevent the Romans from deposing High Priests which were intractable. Eight were so dealt with between the years 6 and 41.'

Wednesday 4 May 2016

If I am divine it is legitimate to adore myself. Miley Cyrus

What theology and religion have to teach us is how to distinguish the party which is leading us to hell from the party which is leading us to heaven. This is often a very difficult decision because policies that start out looking good might have bad effects, and vice versa.

History shows that in many communities society is stratified

[page 73]

into two distinct layers, those free to do what they want ('the ruling class') and those who get told what to do in one way or another, ranging from overt violence so subtle propaganda such as we are wont to hear from political parties.

However, the network model, given its successful fit to all of history, may be able to tell us something about the future. It is banal enough to apply to everything. This is opposite to God itself, which is so magnificent that it controls everything. There is no difference between these two positions which is why we can treat God as a every day reality without in any way degrading from its majesty, in fact supporting, since the divine network explains everything that can be explained and defines the limits of explanation, that is the limits to knowledge. To say the world is divine is to say that a countable computer network is the sum of all knowability, the rest is uncertain due to the finite available resolution / time defined by the conservation of action and energy.

Most combat sports forbid direct attacks on the genitals and sometimes require protection but almost all favour attacks on the mind and brain, ranging om deceit and confusion to unconsciousness or even death.

Saecular religion.

[page 75]

Thursday 5 May 2016

[physical layer of the] Internet of the Roman Empire was the road system. Daniel-Rops page 138.

Daniel-Rops page 137: 'Octavius founded the Emprire, which was to be the field of action for the apostles.

Friday 6 May 2016

Comment to Commoneal:

The Catholic Church is supposed to be universal. Remember Acts 11. Peter told the assembly of those who had received the world of God about his dream in which the Lord tells him that the new religion must ditch the fictitious distinction in the old religion between 'clean' and 'unclean' animals, judged as foodstuffs.

This, as he explained, impies that we must give up circumcision too. A parochial practice not suited to a universal religion.

We are at a similar moment now, on a rather larger scale, and Francis is its prophet. He has seen the works of dictatorship at first hand, and has now been appointed a dictator in his own right (Canon 333). His role, like many another revolutionary, is to break the yoke of the dictatorial past and open the system to the future.

If it is to be universal, the church must be scientific, ie practically interested in the truth of the human condition.

If theology is to be scientific, then god must be observable: all our experience must be experience of god. If God is observable, then it makes sense to identify god and the universe.

If it is to survive, I think, the Church must ditch all its imperial trappings and unproven hypotheses and enter the modern era of science and democracy. It must change its attitude from parochial Catholic to universal catholic. This is the lesson of the 'Council of Jerusalem'. Robert Mickens

Submission to Eureka Street based on the above:

Where next for Francis?

A couple of years ago, while having a bit of (successful?) cancer therapy, I wrote a series of letters to Pope Francis. No reply, as expected, but they did set out my ideas for reforming the Catholic Church. Also published them as an ebook, and have sold one or two copies and given away about 20. [ Buy it here].

Now Robert Mickens writes ('Letter from Rome' published in Commonweal Magazine)

Several days ago one of the most prominent Catholic laypersons in Europe told me that a cardinal working at the Vatican recently confided that eighty-five percent of the people in the Roman Curia are opposed to the pope.

That figure was not surprising. The fact that a cardinal cited it was. The opposition is on many fronts and to different aspects of this pontificate.'

This article led me back to the role I had envisaged for a revolutionary pope. The Catholic Church is supposed to be universal. Acts 11 records an important chapter in the development of Christianity. Peter told the assembly of those who had received the word of God about his dream. In the dream he sees a herd of clean and unclean animals and hears a voice saying Arise, Peter, slay and eat. God then explained that the new religion must ditch the fictitious distinction in the old religion between 'clean' and 'unclean' animals, judged as foodstuffs. Luke: Acts 11

This, Peter explained, implies that we must give up circumcision too. A parochial practice not suited to a universal religion.

We are at a similar moment now, on a rather larger scale, and Francis is its prophet. He has seen the works of dictatorship at first hand, in Argentina. Now he has been appointed a dictator in his own right (Canon 333). His role, like many another revolutionary, is to break the yoke of the dictatorial past and open the system to the future. Code of Canon Law 333

If it is to be universal, the church must be scientific, ie practically interested in the truth of the human condition. It must become hands on, citing the ancient stories as unsupported hypotheses, not realities.

If theology is to be scientific, then god must be observable. Science has two articles of faith. First that the world is consistent, so that if we look long enough we will see a way around apparent contradictions. This has been the way of physics and many other sciences. Fortun & Bernstein: Muddling Through

The second is that the data we receive when we observe the world is true, it is a reliable representation of what is really happening. Conjectures which disagree with the data cannot be completely true. We collect data by observation, so that if theology is to be scientific, we must suppose god to be observable. Extrapolating from this we can guess that all our experience is experience of God. Popper: Conjectures and Refutations

If God is observable, then it makes sense to identify god and the universe. If it is to survive, I tried to explain, the Church must ditch all its imperial trappings and unproven hypotheses and enter the modern era of science and democracy. It must change its attitude from parochial Catholic to universal catholic. This is the lesson of the 'Council of Jerusalem'. Council of Jerusalem - Wikiedia

I hope Francis pulls it off.

Maybe scientific theology must be devoted to the scientific political ansatz of promoting a hypothesis as worthy of social expense of development and testing. The testing is only possible if the hypothesis produces an observable output. Here we are taking the grandiose [view that the transfinite network model is large enough to hold a theory of everything].

Genesis: 'And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.' Genesis 2:9

The chapter on language develops an epistemological track from naming in Genesis to the computable elements of the transfinite computer network.

What can we call natural religion? Fundaligionism?, small c catholicism, universalism.

[page 75]

Secularism tries to separate church and state. catholicism unites both, but demands that both be evidence based, not subject to the whims of either church or state.

Gravitation shows us how meaningless communication goes on in 4D space-time which is necessary for communication between any two points [without 'crossed wires'].

Marketing: 'the most radical revision of theology since God was invented'. Really it is just old time pantheism with a bit of added value via additional bells and whistles which may signal new insights.

Saturday 7 May 2016

The magic of attraction. If they like one another enough they will get together. In the simple systems of physics we can give a numerical value to the like one another enough' and use this to compute the probability of an event — statistical mechanics [in quantum mechanics 'like' is measured by 'overlap' that is on the scale between parallelism and orthogonality].

Original sin theory has enshrined the idea of punishment rather than rehabilitation as a means of dealing with criminals and heretics [criminals perform physical acts of violence where heretics may stick to the metaphysical realm].

Daniel-Rops page 140; Jerome; ' "What made the barbarians so strong was the strength of our vices." '

page 143: Roman pillage and idleness.

[page 76]

Daniel-Rops page 143: 'Jesus was to preach the vitalizing doctrine that a man could not exist for himself without existing for all' [network explains this].

page 144; slaves, one third of the Roman population.

page 146: Eastern gods infiltrating the Empire.

'Particularly in those cults which employed penitence and discipline, but also on the regular practice of the mysteries, the desire to transcend the limitations of mortality and this find peace in the all-pervading disquiet.'

'Neo-pythagorism claimed that the human soul was a fragment of the divinity, a focus concentrating the rays of universal consciousness, a microcosm mysteriously bound to the macrocosm, and which, fallen to earth at creation is perpetually drawn back to heaven as its own country.'

page 147: 'the historical fact of the Roman Empire permitted the seed sown in Palestine to take root and spread rapidly and far, but all the evidence was there to show that the seed was necessary and that in the depths of its consciousness, the toman world was waiting for it.

Not that it did them any good. The 'barbarians' won anyway.

People are always looking for loopholes (bugs) in the law, those out of tune with the spirit of the law to exploit, those in tune to fix it.

[page 77]

I am bored with this job since it now seems easy and obvious, but it is no use unless it is promoted, so the construction of scientific theology must proceed as quickly as possible so that it can add another mite to the 'Cantor liberation'.

What Cantor tells us is that we can get best value out of resources (represented by natural numbers) the more layers of functional complexity we build upon them to give the happiness equivalent to a very large cardinal. The aim is to capture creativity with a minimal political and religious overtones so that it can slip under the radar into the foundations of our society, the [abstract, theoretical] embodiment of our dreams of happiness.

Not so much knocking the RCC as an historical reality, building upon it by keeping the good bits and fitting them into the universal narrative. We see this happening in exponentially expanding industrial applications of quantum mechanics, particularly in communication.

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Daniel-Rops, Henri, and R W Millar (translator), Jesus in His Time, Eyre & Spottiswoode 1955 Jacket: 'It has all the vivid but well-founded imagination of a great novel. It is garnished with an intimate knowledge of the sacred sites. . . .. An extraordinarily rich portrait of Jesus, which sets Him against the background of His own time and place and makes Him a living personality . . . '
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Dauben, Joseph Warren, Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite, Princeton University Press 1990 Jacket: 'One of the greatest revolutions in mathematics occurred when Georg Cantor (1843-1918) promulgated his theory of transfinite sets. . . . Set theory has been widely adopted in mathematics and philosophy, but the controversy surrounding it at the turn of the century remains of great interest. Cantor's own faith in his theory was partly theological. His religious beliefs led him to expect paradox in any concept of the infinite, and he always retained his belief in the utter veracity of transfinite set theory. Later in his life, he was troubled by attacks of severe depression. Dauben shows that these played an integral part in his understanding and defense of set theory.'
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Fortun, Mike, and Herbert J Bernstein, Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the Twenty-First Century, Counterpoint 1998 Amazon editorial review: 'Does science discover truths or create them? Does dioxin cause cancer or not? Is corporate-sponsored research valid or not? Although these questions reflect the way we're used to thinking, maybe they're not the best way to approach science and its place in our culture. Physicist Herbert J. Bernstein and science historian Mike Fortun, both of the Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies (ISIS), suggest a third way of seeing, beyond taking one side or another, in Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the 21st Century. While they deal with weighty issues and encourage us to completely rethink our beliefs about science and truth, they do so with such grace and humor that we follow with ease discussions of toxic-waste disposal, the Human Genome Project, and retooling our language to better fit the way science is actually done.'
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Mehra, Jagdish, The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Oxford University Press 1994 Amazon Customer Review: By David Keirsey 'There are two type of reviews of this book. Those who were interested in the man from a personal, non science perspective and those who know science, are interested and can read and understand Feynman's scientific work. Those who interested in the more entertaining books on Feynman, e.g., Gleick, and some of Feynman's own books should tread on this book lightly for it includes mathematical and scientific analysis you cannot get from the other books. On the other hand, Jagdish Medra does an excellent job in reciting some of the personal stuff between him and his father, which were crucial in forming both Feynman's personal and scientific personality. This is the only book you will get that. Mehra did not include some of the more interesting andecotes that are in Feynman's books, so it is not a complete biography despite its length and breath. If you are interested in some of Feynman's reasons for his ideas and the context of those ideas, then you must read this book. If you are not interested, for example, in Maupertuis, Lagrange, Hamilton ideas on minimum action -- you might have to skip large parts of the book because Mehra recounts Feynman's ideas in detail (including all his equations). . . . '
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Popper, Karl Raimund, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972 Preface: 'The way in which knowledge progresses, and expecially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests.' [p viii]
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Links

Amy Maguire, High Court asked to declare Manus detention illegan as 859 detainees seek their day in court , 'The detainees request relief via the ancient writ of habeas corpus. They want to be brought before the High Court so its judges can determine whether their detention is legal. The detainees hope the court will then issue a writ of mandamus. This would order the government to bring them to Australia to process their refugee claims. Finally, the detainees seek a writ of prohibition, to prevent their transfer to any other place until the case has been decided and their claims assessed.' back

Benny Gilay, Finding a dignified resolution for West Papua, 'Ever since West Papua was transferred into the hands of Indonesia in the early 1960s from being a remote outpost of the Dutch, it has become the land of “mourning and grief”. Gross human rights violations have been taking place in West Papua since Indonesia, backed by the United Nations, annexed the western half of the island of New Guinea in 1963. In 1969, Indonesia gained complete rule of West Papua via a sham referendum.' back

Bryce Kelly, River on fire: even if its not coal seam gas we should still be concerned, 'Astonishing footage of a river in Queensland on fire has once again stoked the coal seam gas (CSG) debate. The video shows NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham setting fire to methane seeping from the Condamine River. CSIRO researchers, who have been researching the Condamine since 2012, have stated that the gas seep is unlikely to be due to CSG production.' back

Code of Canon Law 333, The Roman Pontiff, 'Can. 333 §1. By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only possesses power over the universal Church but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power over all particular churches and groups of them. Moreover, this primacy strengthens and protects the proper, ordinary, and immediate power which bishops possess in the particular churches entrusted to their care. §2. In fulfilling the office of supreme pastor of the Church, the Roman Pontiff is always joined in communion with the other bishops and with the universal Church. He nevertheless has the right, according to the needs of the Church, to determine the manner, whether personal or collegial, of exercising this office. §3. No appeal or recourse is permitted against a sentence or decree of the Roman Pontiff.' back

Council of Jerusalem - Wikiedia, Council of Jerusalem - Wikiedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Council of Jerusalem was held in Jerusalem around 50 AD. It is unique among the ancient pre-ecumenical councils in that it is considered by Catholics and Orthodox to be a prototype and forerunner of the later ecumenical councils and a key part of Christian ethics. The council decided that Gentile converts to Christianity were not obligated to keep most of the Law of Moses, including the rules concerning circumcision of males. . . . ' back

Dalai Lama, Paul Ekman, Atlas of emotions, 'This atlas was inspired by a series of conversations between the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman about the science of emotions. With the help of Stamen Design and Paul’s daughter, Dr. Eve Ekman, this tool was created to be a visual journey through the world of emotions.' back

Daniel Lewis and Christopher Mele, Daniel J. Berrigan, Defiant Priest Wo Preached Pacifism, Dies at 94, 'The Rev. Daniel J. Berrigan, a Jesuit priest and poet whose defiant protests helped shape the tactics of opposition to the Vietnam War and landed him in prison, died on Saturday in New York City. He was 94. . . . The United States was tearing itself apart over civil rights and the war in Southeast Asia when Father Berrigan emerged in the 1960s as an intellectual star of the Roman Catholic “new left,” articulating a view that racism and poverty, militarism and capitalist greed were interconnected pieces of the same big problem: an unjust society.' back

Daniel-Rops - Wikipedia, Daniel-Rops - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, back

David Hamer, Priest convicted of sexually abusing children, now for questions about the cover-up, 'Former priest John Farrell was sentenced on Monday to a minimum of 18 years’ jail for dozens of sexual offences committed against 12 children, many of them altar boys, in the 1970s and 1980s. Police may now shift their focus to whether senior clergymen can be prosecuted for an alleged cover-up that may have delayed the investigation and prosecution of Farrell by 20 years or more.' back

Emma Partridge, Ex-Catholic priest John Joseph Farrell jailed for 29 years for child sex assaults, 'Victims stood and clapped as one of the most notorious paedophile priests in NSW was sentenced to 29 years' jail after committing 62 acts of child sex abuse in regional NSW. Former Catholic priest John Joseph Farrell, 62, sexually abused nine young altar boys and three girls between 1979 and 1988 in Moree, Armidale and Tamworth.' back

Genesis 17:10-14, This is my covenant with you . . . , 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. 13 Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. 14 Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” back

Genesis 2:9, Trees of life and knowledge, 'And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.' back

John Gehring, Two Steps Back: The USCCB & the Outster of an Editor, 'Tony Spence, editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service (CNS) for more than a decade, abruptly resigned last month at the request of an official at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The reason? Spence had posted tweets about legislation to protect religious liberty passed in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Tennessee, which would deny legal protections to LGBT people. “Stupid evidently contagious,” Spence wrote in one tweet that linked to a Reuters article about a Tennessee law allowing mental health counselors to refuse treatment to patients on religious grounds.' back

Jonah Bromwich, We Know You Hate 'Moist'. What Other Words Repel You, 'Certain everyday words drive some people crazy, a phenomenon experts call “word aversion.” But one word appears to rise above all others: “moist.” For that reason, a recent paper in the journal PLOS One used the word as a stand-in to explore why people find some terms repellent. “It doesn’t really fit into a lot of existing categories for how people think about the psychology of language,” the study’s author, Paul Thibodeau, a professor of psychology at Oberlin College, said of moist. “It’s not a taboo word, it’s not profanity, but it elicits this very visceral disgust reaction.” ' back

Kamel Daoud, Black in Algeria: You'd Better Be Muslim, 'Many black migrants, including those who are not Muslim, are deploying symbols of Islam to appeal to Algerians’ sense of charity. Why? Because poverty helps decode culture better than reflection does, and migrants, lacking shelter and food, are quick to realize that in Algeria there often is no empathy between human beings, only empathy between people of the same religion.' back

Kevin Randall, Inner Peace? The Dalai Lama Made a Website for That, 'ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Dalai Lama, who tirelessly preaches inner peace while chiding people for their selfish, materialistic ways, has commissioned scientists for a lofty mission: to help turn secular audiences into more self-aware, compassionate humans. That is, of course, no easy task. So the Dalai Lama ordered up something with a grand name to go with his grand ambitions: a comprehensive Atlas of Emotions to help the more than seven billion people on the planet navigate the morass of their feelings in order to attain peace and happiness.' back

Lenore Taylor, Bill Shorten memoir sets out Labout leader's manifesto in book similar to Battlelines, 'Published Monday as an ebook and next week as a paperback, For The Common Good: Reflections on Australia’s Future, is similar in intent to Tony Abbott’s Battlelines, combining childhood memories and personal reflections with a broad brush description of Shorten’s positioning across the policy spectrum and views about the task of leadership itself.' back

Luke: Acts 11, The Acts of the Apostles 11, '11 And the apostles and brethren that were in Judaea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. 2 And when Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision contended with him, 3 Saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them. back

Maria L La Ganga and Dan Hernandez, 'You're a sinner': how a Mormon university shames rape victims, ' “If I hadn’t reported my rape,” she said, “none of this would be happening to me. The very thing I was supposed to do, the right thing, led me to getting kicked out of school. The way that BYU has treated me has been so callous that it’s been almost as bad as the rape itself.” ' back

Mark Landler, For Hilary Clinton and John Kerry, Divergent Paths to Iran Nuclear Talks, 'WASHINGTON — Early in 2011, after a hectic visit to Yemen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in the tranquil Arab sultanate of Oman. She was there to talk to Sultan Qaboos bin Said about an idea one of his envoys first pitched to the State Department in the spring of 2009: that Oman serve as a conduit for secret nuclear talks between the United States and Iran.' back

Miley Cyrus, Adore You, 'From the album “Bangerz”.' back

Mona Eltahawy, Sex Talk for Muslim Women, My revolution has been to develop from a 29-year-old virgin to the 49-year-old woman who now declares, on any platform I get: It is I who own my body. Not the state, the mosque, the street or my family. And it is my right to have sex whenever, and with whomever, I choose.' Mona Eltahawy is the author of “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution,” and a contributing opinion writer. back

Nic Cohen, I saw the darkness of antisemitism but I never thought it would get this dark, 'The Labour party does not have a “problem with antisemitism” it can isolate and treat, like a patient asking a doctor for a course of antibiotics. The party and much of the wider liberal-left have a chronic condition.' back

Republican Party (United States) - Wikipedia, Republcan Party (United States) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP (abbreviation for Grand Old Party), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists, modernists, ex-Whigs, and ex-Free Soilers in 1854, the Republicans dominated politics nationally and in the majority of northern States for most of the period between 1860 and 1932.' back

Richard Ackland, We have an Orwellian 'shadow government' and your liberty is at risk., 'Washington insider Mike Lofgren earlier this year published a book called The Deep State - the Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. Elected governments and politicians come and go, but what persists is a “deep state”, a loose association of special interests that invariably dictate the terms of government: the security services, the military, the banks and financial institutions, the top listed corporations and, in some countries, organised crime. This “shadow government” operates without the consent of the governed. In the Australian states and territories you would have to include the police services as part of the deep state.' back

Robert Mickens, Letter from Rome: The Francis Era in Review, 'Several days ago one of the most prominent Catholic laypersons in Europe told me that a cardinal working at the Vatican recently confided that eighty-five percent of the people in the Roman Curia are opposed to the pope. That figure was not surprising. The fact that a cardinal cited it was. The opposition is on many fronts and to different aspects of this pontificate.' back

Ross Gittins, Federal Budget 2016: What not to believe on the night, 'As part of the crying poor, when state politicians hit the feds for more money, federal ministers reply that they can't help because, though the states are running surpluses, the Commonwealth is still in deficit. Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas last week unveiled a large surplus. Don't believe it. When the states say they're in surplus, they're referring to their "operating" balance, which is their revenue less their recurrent spending. When the feds say they're in deficit, they're subtracting from revenue not just their recurrent spending, but also their infrastructure spending.' back

Saul Estlake, Essay: a sober, responsible budget, but ngative gearing a blind spot, 'But the government is unnecessarily, and perhaps dangerously, blinded by its allegiances to its belief in the inherent nobility of small businesses, and to the property industry. Both have prevented it from delivering a better budget.' back

Simon Albert, Alistair Grinham, Badin Gibbes, Janvier Leon and John Church, Sealevel rise has claimed five whole islands on the Pacific: first scientific evidence, 'Recently at least five reef islands in the remote Solomon Islands have been lost completely to sea-level rise and coastal erosion, and a further six islands have been severely eroded. These islands lost to the sea range in size from one to five hectares. They supported dense tropical vegetation that was at least 300 years old. Nuatambu Island, home to 25 families, has lost more than half of its habitable area, with 11 houses washed into the sea since 2011.' back

Stephen Charles, Our detention centres are concentrtion camps and must be closed, 'Australia's policy towards asylum seekers is one of deliberate and calculated barbaric cruelty. It is clearly designed to make the situation of asylum seekers intolerable, to dehumanise them, and to force them to return to their original countries; for example, Hazaras from Afghanistan must return to a country increasingly dominated by the Taliban, which have waged genocide against them; and those who have fled Iran must return to the waiting arms of the Revolutionary Guards and Tehran's appalling Evin prison, one of the most frightful hell-holes in the world. Iran last year executed more than 1000 prisoners.' Stephen Charles, QC, is a former judge of the Court of Appeal.' back