Corporate Crimes and Secrets lie behind the media announcement that Shell was to be the biggest investor in battery power in Australia
“Despite internal awareness, the company systematically downplayed the problem to the public, instead promoting more and more fossil fuel use despite the dangers,” said one expert. “Now, five decades later, Shell continues to dawdle and delay.”
Source: ‘Incredibly Disturbing’ Docs Reveal Oil Giant Shell Knew About Climate Impacts Even Earlier
The male version of Sarah Palin has arrived (ODT)
John Bolton’s absurd, self-aggrandizing new book reveals a shocking secret: Donald Trump knows next to nothing about Africa. The continent is better off without his ignorant meddling.
Australian lack of education is making us less imaginative (ODT)
With Europe into its so-called Dark Ages, the Islamic world was entering its Golden Age.
The House of Wisdom, between the 8th and 13th centuries, attracted Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars from throughout the known world to study and translate the tracts that had underpinned modern thought to that time into Arabic.
Every important and available book and paper known to exist was collected for translation from Greek, Latin, Persian, Indian and even Chinese sources.
By the 9th century, the House of Wisdom contained the world’s largest library, and up to 500 scholars worked feverishly on their own discoveries.
The idea that the Earth was round, its circumference measurable, was no stranger here. Physicians investigated the causes of infection. The number zero, invented as a useful concept in India, reached Baghdad somewhere around AD 770 and became a crucial element in mathematics. Without zero there would never have been a computer, let alone Google.
The pleasure of harnessing knowledge spread rapidly across Arab North Africa, through refined cities like Fez, and beyond.
via Lesson from an ancient town: Dark ages pass, but knowledge is forever
One of my colleagues in the Crawford School at ANU has a sign on his door: Keep Calm – and An Economist has The Answer.
Source: We need economics more than ever to understand the world
Politicians don’t normally have a handle on the latest science at the best of times, whether they are on the left or the right of the spectrum. However, it
Source: Science Knowledge Has Almost No Effect On Republican Beliefs, According To Survey | IFLScience
With all the bad mouthing of vaccines, milk and sunscreen, science must be feeling pretty dejected.
Source: Science Is Being Bullied. It’s Time We Stuck Up For It
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