The Slightly Disgruntled Scientist

Why complaints about independent politicians holding our country to ransom make no sense whatsoever.

So the aforementioned federal election is almost upon us, and last week the Labor Party's crazy-accumulator, Mark Latham, suggested that voters should hand in a blank ballot paper.

But there are good reasons not to do this, and it basically comes down to this: your vote does more than elect the government.

With a federal election lurching drunkenly towards us, I figured it would be a nice idea to channel my usual undirected ranting into this website I seem to have. By now, most people who know me are painfully aware that I am an avid supporter of the Australian Democrats. "But," my friends might say, in their braver moments, "why the hell would you support the Democrats when the Greens are... you know... actually holding seats."

Well, you inflammatory hippie, I'm glad you asked!

There is something about this that is so very characteristically Australian. The ABC posted a story about an imminent terrorist threat in New Dehli. It starts with:

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) has issued a warning to Australians to avoid markets in New Delhi, India.

The department says it has specific and credible information an attack could be imminent.

...and yet, somehow, ends with:

The run-up to the field hockey World Cup in February and March was overshadowed by concern that some teams might pull out, with one British team source telling AFP that the team only decided to attend at the last minute.

Ultimately, the tournament went ahead with a heavy police presence and passed off without incident, ending with an Australian victory in the final.

It's nice that they managed to work that in there.

Our modern tradition of trial-by-evidence is easy to take for granted. Having only just edged out trial-by-ordeal and gladiatorial combat to take its place amongst pillars of modern civilisation, it now attracts some suspicion when someone proposes that a person be convicted based on popular opinion, and this is a point which I may come to appreciate even more in my later life.

Politicians the world over, however, can have rather a poor grasp of the relationship between evidence and democracy. If I were to dedicate my time to documenting every instance of this in Australia, my server would probably collapse under the weight of the miniature black holes thus created. But Dr Dennis Jensen, Australian Federal Member for Tangney, has managed to be a little bit more offensive than usual for his rank (while still managing to maintain the level of mediocrity unique to Australian politics).

A very succinct explanation of magnetic resonance imaging from the TV series Duckman.

I'll dispense with the ranting about the abuse of shared staff kitchens. We've all been there. But these signs, written by an entirely anonymous author who shall remain anonymous, were an amusing outcome.

The first poster

When that failed to get results...

We all have our limits. Mine was finding the dead wasp.

There's this episode of Avatar in which the main characters come across an obviously phony fortune teller, and spend most of the time trying to make the villagers realise this. Laurie thought I'd find it funny.

An Introduction to Crowd Control

The science theatre can be a dangerous place. Between the tens of millions of volts leaping out of a Tesla coil, the hand-bleaching acetone and the neurotic theatre coordinator, theatre demonstrators have more than enough to worry about before they even leave their house in the morning (except for that last part). Science is a perilous enough activity without adding the general (ie. uneducated, unwashed, untagged, etc…) public to the beaker. Compounding matters by adding an audience is just asking for trouble.