Category Archives: Personal rights

RIVER BRIDGE COULD WORSEN FLOODING

I estimate the central pier of the bridge at the Queens Wharf development to be about 20 metres wide and 60 metres long. This obstacle to flow of the Brisbane River in flood could contract the flow channel, raise backwater and damage residents’ homes. Even a few more centimetres could be devastating. In 2017 it was reported that the pier was being resized and relocated but details were not provided. 

What increase in flood height resulted in the 2022 flood. Did floating debris build up?

https://architectureau.com/articles/revised-designs-for-dramatic-queens-wharf-bridge-released/

My blog: martinknox.com

INDIVIDUALISM TODAY

Individualism began with the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. He gave the people liberty of personal rights, without religion. Expounded eloquently by Ayn Rand, it is regarded today as extreme.

It became unfashionable when the social philosophies of Rousseau, Marx and Bentham were promulgated. They invoked equality and attended to the welfare of communities. Today they underwrite communal approaches that solve climate change, prevent pandemics and supply cheap energy.

Nevertheless, most human endeavour strives to remain under individual control. Family, home, education, employment and recreation are pursued for individual interest, resisting the incursions of corporations and governments, whose intents are to exploit it, for their own benefit. 

Turkeys Not Bees traces the lives and philosophical bearings of two young people whose journey together makes a stand for their own individual interests. The fiction story is exciting, exalting individual achievement, responding positively to forced engagement with collectivism.

Available on Amazon. Reviewed at martinknox.com

MEDIA MAKE MONEY

I disagree with Puttnam’s analysis: that it does.

Freedom of speech hurts some people but we already have laws of negligence, defamation and slander.

It is not possible to regulate media with reference to ‘facts’ or ‘truth’ because we are in a post-truth age where these have disappeared. All opinions must be considered now. This is better than the narrow moralities of the past e.g. condemnation of witchcraft and homosexuality. 

Debating of binary issues is defunct because post-truth content is not binary. Debating is being replaced by politicking. The media aim is profit, within Debord’s spectacle, with a news churn having self-serving morality. Reform of the spectacle could be to reduce employee alienation, with job improvement by workers’ councils. Also by reducing consumer alienation, by limitation of product resource use, energy demand and packaging. Investment regulation could reduce media concentration and foster competition. Duty of Care censorship could consider harmful effects on minorities of advertising. The media industry can be made more responsible by cutting off the flow of money they lure. 

My novels have current issues reviewed on my blog: martinknox.com

COVID TOPICS LIST

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COVID 19 see Category Archives most recent at top

  1. Vaccination treatment alternatives
  2. Lifestyle Recovery reset after pandemic
  3. Politics not the same online
  4. Build immunity and limit transmission
  5. How much Covid risk should we cover?
  6. Covid infection not just a germ
  7. Are you stoical about restrictions?
  8. Governing pandemic by optimism
  9. Balancing pandemic control
  10. How will repaying covid-19 affect us?
  11. Who will pay the bill for Covid-19?
  12. Is infection like a crime
  13. Pandemic dynamics not understood
  14. Maturity could be reduced
  15. Opinion: Liberty could be reduced
  16. Deaths by any other name
  17. Covid 19 Deaths relative to fatalities
  18. Disease thwarted
  19. Private and public risks of Covid-19
  20. Age-restriction of interaction for well-being
  21. Immunity without vaccines, victims or vectors?
  22. Helpless patients more likely to die
  23. Germ wars: immune system strikes back
  24. Elderly suicide bombers
  25. Herd immunity at what cost?
  26. Surveyed the wrong sample.
  27. Covid-19 analogy of road deaths
  28. Three Covid-19 treatments
  29. Covid-19 affects ages differently
  30. Covid-19 by any other name
  31. Quarantine was effective in 1918
  32. Covid-19 for how long is fair?
  33. Covid-19 causing a paradigm shift online
  34. Could Covid-19 effect on age at death be small in Australia?
  35. Time to discount Covid-19
  36. Loyalty versus Covid-19
  37. Can parents teach their kids in Covid-19 lockdown?
  38. Opposing Covid-19 with obedience
  39. Get used to social isolation
  40. Will social distancing change us?
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