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Keywords: Mathematics

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My mother the Surrealist

    • Michael Sharkey
    • 14 October 2019
    3 Comments

    The voices of two women in the train up to the highlands rise in volume and insistence ... 'Mother, they're not Germans. I said, gerberas, they're all around the farm. Just wait, you'll see them from the window of the lovely room we've set up for your stay. A field of gerberas in full bloom.' 'And are the Germans all in uniforms, then, dear?'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The misanthrope on New Year's Eve

    • Geoff Page
    • 29 January 2019
    3 Comments

    Half past ten, I'm off to bed. One more whizz around the sun. Ho hum ... What's the point? If it were the solstice, maybe. All that nonsense on TV. And fireworks, celebrating what? The triumph of chronology? This year maybe I will die ...

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  • RELIGION

    Bringing humanity back to the cult of numbers

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 March 2018
    16 Comments

    At the heart of Pythagoras' contribution was wonder at a world in which human intelligence could understand and handle such different phenomena as music, architecture and the stars through mathematics. The cult of numbers in a cruder form remains characteristic of public life today. The most revered numbers are economic.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Welcome to the Matrix of materialism

    • David James
    • 27 January 2018
    7 Comments

    A visitor from an earlier time would be stunned to see how much we understand the world using monetary measures. Finance has come to be considered the first reality, not defined by, or reflecting, reality. To see how this creates distortions, consider GDP, which is taken to be a reliable measure of national wellbeing, but in fact is anything but.

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  • ECONOMICS

    In the end, debts cannot be paid

    • David James
    • 08 November 2017
    3 Comments

    Once upon a time, usury was considered a sin and lending was subject to strict controls. Now, the world is in the grip of usury. It cannot continue. At some point it will have to be retired, or swapped to equity. A good place to start is third world debt, which is the most immoral variant.

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  • RELIGION

    The Protestant Reformation 500 years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 October 2017
    9 Comments

    The first thing to note about this 500th anniversary of the Reformation is that it is the first centenary celebration or commemoration that we have been able to share together and without rancour.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    On the side of darkness, infinity

    • N. N. Trakakis
    • 18 September 2017
    1 Comment

    We do not know what we want. And we do not want what we know. Like shadows hanging in the air, their threads of reality unravelling, absenting themselves from the world. She said time erases life. He said let's be timeless. She said it would be dark. He said he hated daylight. She said it would be lonely. He said he prostituted his mind talking to people. She said he is mad. He said may God preserve him from sanity. She said: God will. And God did.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Where is money headed?

    • David James
    • 30 July 2017
    2 Comments

    The daily fluctuations of financial markets and the fractious debates over economic policy are concealing something deeper and much more disturbing. The future of money itself is in question. A decade after world banking almost collapsed in the global financial crisis, the questions raised have not been answered.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dual citizenship should be a plus in modern Australia

    • Fatima Measham
    • 21 July 2017
    38 Comments

    There are layers of frustration around the resignation of Greens senators Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters due to dual citizenship. The immediate loss of two of Australia's better parliamentary performers - on any side of politics - is unfortunate. For no one in their orbit and nothing in the AEC nomination process to have caught something so fundamental is unsettling, but perhaps not that odd. Presumptions of Australian-ness are more or less adjudicated on a certain kind of look and surname.

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  • MEDIA

    Encryption and liberties on the 'ungovernable' internet

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 14 July 2017
    6 Comments

    Turnbull's attitude echoes the fear all autocracies have: that control is slipping away, and that citizens cannot be trusted to behave in a modern communications environment without government intrusions. Arguments are repeatedly made that such enlarged powers are never abused - a charmingly naive assumption - and that law enforcement authorities merely need the 'capacity' to have them. These can either abate, or be extended, after a review. The reality tends to be different.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Bitcoin revolution is a matter of trust

    • David James
    • 30 June 2017
    2 Comments

    One of the more interesting recent developments in finance has been the creation of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. They are being touted as a revolution in how we think and use money. Alternately, there are many who want to go in the opposite direction, back to the gold standard. Both sides have a common enemy: money whose value is determined by government dictate. Allowing governments to dictate in this way, they argue, is the core of the problem. To a significant extent, they are wrong.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Space race saga's Black history through White eyes

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 14 February 2017
    1 Comment

    There's a gag about sitting in the back of the bus, the realities of segregation dismissed with a giggle; references to university sit-ins and firebombings come via the eyes of a cartoonishly earnest character. Meanwhile the White characters are either the object of contrived sympathy, or too thinly drawn to invoke genuine menace. Accusations of 'cultural appropriation' might be uncharitable, but the short shrift given to the real, continuing hardships of Black experience raises questions about objectives and authenticity.

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