Insubstantial political opinion pieces

One of the strangest aspects of news publications is the ongoing publication of opinion pieces, such as the recent piece by Peter Hartcher (Babushka politics tough to crack) in the Sydney Morning Herald giving predictions as to which major party will win the upcoming federal election and why.

The outstanding feature of these opinion pieces, apart from their overriding reliance on the author’s gut feel, is that they contain little substantial analysis. Maybe they are published to get reactions from readers.

Learning about everything

I heard Clive James on 702 ABC radio this morning – I love listening to him and watching his docos where he visits different areas, discussing the history of the area and think he’s great. Would love to do that kind of work – writing, speaking etc. Any proposals will be interestedly considered! Please put them in comments below.

While I’ve specialised in a number of areas, what I actually do is learn about everything. I love reading about all kinds of different topics – some of my friends joke that “I am, therefore I read” and that I absord the newspapers. It’s true enough - but it’s more than that – there are the online news and current affairs sources, along with websites devoted to presenting encyclopaedic volumes of information. It’s all open to (critical) absorption!

Path Integral Methods and their Application to Finance and the Black-Scholes World – Sydney Financial Maths Workshop

Tonight I went to a very interesting Sydney Financial Maths Workshop:

Path Integral Methods and their Application to Finance and the Black-Scholes World

Dr Debashis Gangopadhyay (Reader, Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata, India)

Medically supervised injecting room to stay open

Some good news: the medically supervised injecting room in Kings Cross is going to stay open (see here for the SMH report and here for the very similar Daily Terror’s report). The NSW govt must have resisted the “compelling” arguments of Piers Akerman.

Terence Tao – the cosmic distance ladder

Terence Tao has put up a nice post about calculating astronomical distances – the cosmic distance ladder. Download his presentation and enjoy.