The notion that we all operate in an empathy field was raised by BilB on another thread in a political context. Ootz subsequently raised Daniel Goleman’s ground-breaking work on ’emotional intelligence’.
Richard Davidson, whose book with science writer Sharon Begley The Emotional Life of Your Brain: how to change the way you think, feel and live I outlined in the post Emotional style: the concept did his doctorate at Harvard when Goleman was there, they mixed in the same set and taught classes together.
Davidson went on to lead his own research team at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is good mates with the Dalai Lama and his work on monks who engage in compassion meditation turns out to be counter-intuitive and, I think, important. Continue reading Compassion, empathy, feelings, emotion→
A bit further down I’m going to look at what Tristan Edis has to say about electricity pricing, but first what the whole affair is doing to Turnbull.
Mark Di Stefano at Buzzfeed has a detailed account of Turnbull’s year in 2016: The Year That Broke Malcolm Turnbull, and the pictures follow the story. Turnbull starts out as a confident leader, full of hope and bright ideas, and ends as just another politician that people don’t like very much. And there is rising anger about him within the conservatives of his own party.
We had 39,000 lightning strikes in one storm the other day. Apparently more than a million in the first six days of summer if you count cloud-to-cloud strikes.
On Monday this week energy and climate minister Josh Frydenberg suggested that an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity industry to help manage the transition to lower-emissions energy sources might be considered in the context of the Coalition’s reconsideration of climate change policy. A mere 33 hours later Turnbull killed off the option. It looked too much like a carbon tax, and the extreme right of the coalition gave it the thumbs down.
And so Turnbull is left looking like a coward. Frydenberg floated looking at something – not actually doing it, just considering it. The right said no thank you. Turnbull ruled it out. We’ve seen this show so many times now.
Back in November 2010 I did a post on Climate change and the Murray Darling Basin at a time when a plan for the Basin was proposed, but not yet settled. The post still gets a steady trickle of visitors.
The Murray Darling Basin Plan was passed into law in November 2012, when Julia Gillard was prime minister, and Tony Burke the minister responsible. There has been a recent kerfuffle, when Barnaby Joyce said an extra 450 GL of water probably would not be forthcoming. The reaction from SA premier Jay Weatherall and his ministers, and Senator Nick Xenophon seemed to imply the South Australia would be left high and dry. Turns out that’s not really the case. Continue reading Murray Darling Basin perspective→
Recently someone on the radio described politics in Western democracies as typically becoming banal popularity contests and sloganeering exercises. The last days of parliament for the Turnbull government were not edifying. If Turnbull had not succeeded in passing his ABCC legislation, the reason for his double-dissolution election, his leadership would have been in ruins. The legislation passed, but we have an ABCC in name only, effectively a rebranding of the current regulator, the Fair Work Building and Construction.
Stephen Hawkins thinks we will probably go extinct on this planet if we don’t find a new one within 1000 years. Science writer extraordinaire Julian Cribb wonders whether we will make it past 2100.
