1. How to die?
“If we remove faith from the equation, voluntary euthanasia presents a difficulty for the conservative dislike of change. In the broad sweep of Western history it is new, or at least newly popular, which means a conservative should regard it with suspicion. And yet often it follows on another new action that conservatives are happy to embrace – the extension of life through medicine, to the point where it becomes agonising. Why should one change be accepted and not the other?”
Read more here from Michael Duffy at Quadrant Online: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2011/02/simple-death
And look out for Michael’s new book ‘The Simple Death’.
2. Facebook
I’ve just been joined to a new Facebook group: Murray Darling Basin People Who Live in the Basin. The group has been started by Peter Oataway a frustrated resident of the township of Hay on the Murrumbidgee River. Are there other Facebook groups with an Australian rural focus? If you know of one please provide the link as a comment.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_188277774537703&id=188483771183770
3. Blowering Dam Still Spilling
Peter Oataway would like the Water Act changed so due consideration is given to rural communities in the Murray Darling Basin. As Max Talbot wrote last week in The Land newspaper, the Act should also be changed to ensure the integration of Snowy Scheme water storages. At the moment Snowy Hydro is still releasing from Lake Eucumbene and Blowering Dam is still spilling and as the hydrologists say: “a full dam doesn’t hold any water”. More on this later in the week.
4. Wind farming
I haven’t read: Why Wind Won’t Work?. It’s a submission from the Carbon Sense Coalition to the Australian Senate Enquiry into Wind Farms.
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/why-wind-wont-work.pdf and http://www.carbon-sense.com/
But I’m passing along the link on request from Viv Forbes.
5. Consider this an open thread
Let other readers of this blog know what you are listening to, and reading, this week by way of a comment.
And consider donating to the continued operation of this blog. There is an orange button at the top right hand corner of this page. It’s about community, and access to information that is not politically correct or even fashionable.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.