Something I really should have noted in last week’s post is that the Australian Electoral Commission has now published two-candidate preferred preference flow data from the election, showing how minor party and independent preferences flowed between Labor and the Coalition. The table below shows how Labor’s share increased for the four biggest minor parties and independents collectively (and also its fraction decrease for “others”) from the last election to this and, in the final column, how much difference each made to Labor’s total share of two-party preferred, which was 52.13%.
Note that the third column compares how many preference Labor received with how many they would have if preference flows had been last time, which is not the same thing as how many preferences they received. Labor in fact got nearly 2% more two-party vote share in the form of Greens preferences at this election because the Greens primary vote was nearly 2% higher this time.
State and territory by-election:
• Six candidates for the August 20 by-election in the Northern Territory seat of Fannie Bay, in ballot paper order: Brent Potter, described in a report as a “government adviser, army veteran and father of four”, for Labor; independent George Mamouzellos; independent Raj Samson Rajwin, who was a Senate candidate for the United Australia Party; Jonathan Parry of the Greens; independent Leah Potter; and Ben Hosking, “small business owner and former police officer”, for the Country Liberals.
• Following the resignation of Labor member Jo Siejka, a by-election will be held for the Tasmanian Legislative Council seat of Pembroke on September 10. Siejka defeated a Liberal candidate by 8.65% to win the eastern Hobart seat at the periodic election in 2019. There will also be a recount of 2021 election ballots in Franklin to determine which of the three unelected Liberals will replace Jacquie Petrusma following her resignation announcement a fortnight ago. As Kevin Bonham explains, the order of probability runs Bec Enders, Dean Young and James Walker.
• Still no sign of a date for Western Australia’s North West Central by-election.
“M87* is 1000 more massive than Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
Sgr A* is around 4 million solar masses, so M87* is around 4 billion solar masses.”
Wow, the journalist was wildly off, but it still has a size of zero, and my comment re gravity still stands.
Murray Watt impressive so far in his address to a packed NPC.
“For black holes, matter doesn’t size”
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/greatmomentsinscience/black-holes-have-no-size/12669962
Credits:
Karl Kruszelnicki, Presenter
Bernie Hobbs, Producer
Late Riser @ #1400 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 12:07 pm
Depends on your definition. They use the ‘event horizon’ as the diameter when talking about size. My memory is pretty rough too – so here goes, if the ‘singularity’ idea of a black hole is true, then it is infinitely small. Kinda hard to see into the inside of the event horizon – so it is fair enough to use the event horizon as a sizing guide.
Bullies have two weaknesses: the fear of losing and the fear of appearing weak. Trump lost in 2020, and today he was shown as impotent. Having said that, today also puts him back in the spotlight and thereby feeds his narcissism, his strength. Ultimately though it won’t be enough for him to recover.
Precisely because it has taken 2 1/2 years (from January 6, 2020) for his home to be raided, his supporters aren’t as numerous or nearly organised as they were. The slow going (not weak) DOJ has the momentum now.
I am no physicist, but if the universe is expanding, how can it be consumed by a black hole? The only way that could happen would be for a black hole to expand at a greater rate.
To borrow a phrase, please explain.
Much discussion around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine concerns Russia’s fears about an expanding NATO, which would include Ukraine, right on its doorstep, and supposed promises made by the United States in the 1990s, that this would never happen.
NATO has only expanded because many former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet republics have opted to join it. Washington did not direct them to do so.
Why did this happen? Because these countries have fresh memories of Russian occupation and fear this could be repeated. It’s why Ukraine also wanted to join NATO.
The current situation in Ukraine is not likely to persuade them they made the wrong decision. In any case, isn’t it Ukraine’s right to apply for NATO membership, if that’s what it decides to do?
Apologists say this was a provocation to Russia. That is ridiculous. NATO was not and is not planning to invade Russia. It never could, as all member states would never agree to it and public opinion in democratic NATO countries would be overwhelmingly opposed to an unnecessary war.
Perhaps Russia should have been reassuring its former subject nations, instead of threatening them and railing against America and NATO.
The best black hole was found by these guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg
A legal barrier has been broken:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v4z_LAYyLI&ab_channel=GlennKirschner
davo @ #1406 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 12:44 pm
Sorry, that link doesn’t work for me. I get a white canvas with a few words repeating what you posted, “matter doesn’t size”, which is cute but not helpful. So for now I’ll stick with the “event horizon” definition of size and accept that we don’t actually know what lies within. Perhaps a growing event horizon could eventually swallow up most things.
Late Riser
I suspect a personality such as Trump’s has difficulty with rejection and losing an election is rejection on a national scale and beyond Trump’s coping mechanisms. Thus the delusion/lie of the election being stolen.
I imagine the secretive DOJ timing was prudent in preventing either Trump or his supporters from obstructing the search but the very concept that the government is continuing to investigate Trump is really playing with his mind that believes he is above justice.
These guys IMO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsp3_a-PMTw
Granny Anny @ #1407 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 12:53 pm
Gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light. If the expansion rate of the universe is less than that it can be gradually overtaken by the influence of a black hole.
Jan 6 at 12.23 pm
Not even Putin is deluded enough to think the US would switch to support him because they are afraid of a new Russian revolution. Lavrov would correct him if he happened to think wistfully about that.
The US has not been on the pulse about previous revolutions. They missed the big one in Iran in 1979. People in Iran were telling studious visitors the Shah would fall (e.g. see A. Saikal, The Rise and Fall of the Shah, 1980). The US did not even support the break-up of the USSR. They just watched it happen.
And the biggest change was the end of the Cold War. Were US officials prepared to think about it? No.
As Michael Cox has written, “The idea that one day [the Cold War] might no longer be there was
virtually inconceivable—as one academic discovered when he asked a group of leading American officials in 1985 whether or not we should be ‘looking ahead to the possibility that the Cold War might someday end’. According to the academic in question, John L. Gaddis, the ‘embarrassed silence [that] ensued’ was finally broken by a highly respected senior diplomat: ‘Oh, it hadn’t occurred to any of us that it ever would end’ (quoted in Gaddis 1992, vi).” [Gaddis, US & the end of the Cold War]
See: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1111/j.1467-856x.2008.00358.x (p 164 end of second para)
Sir Henry Parkes at 12:55 pm
Apologists like George Keenan ?
Granny Anny @ #1409 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 12:53 pm
I don’t know either, but I think it might depend on whether you view the universe as an enclosed volume or the matter that it encloses. And matter is energy. And gravity warps space, and time. So I expect it gets complicated and a little caught up in how you define things.
Granny Anny @ #1406 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 12:53 pm
There is a theory that our universe is already inside a black hole 🙂
Spot on
—–
You know how much evidence it takes to sign off on a no-knock raid at the home of a former President?
Website’s transcript:
Dr Karl:
G’day, Dr Karl here.
You’ve been hearing about them for a few decades, even though we’ve never got near one.
In fact, the closest one is about 1,000 light years away.
Even so, we are very confident that Black Holes exist.
But there’s one thing that’s said about Black Holes really kind-of-annoys me — their size. You’ll read or hear in the media that a particular Black Hole might be small, or medium, or large.
Nope.
Every Black Hole has exactly the same size. It’s zero.
It doesn’t matter how massive it is, it still has no size.
A Black Hole is just a point in space where a lot of matter is all gathered up into one location. Now a point does not have any width or depth, and no height. So the size of that location is not small, or tiny, or really really microscopic.
It’s zero. Zip. Zilch.
That’s right. Our current theories tell us that Black Holes have only three properties — mass, charge, and angular momentum (or spin).
But “size” is not a property of a Black Hole, in the same way that being the World Champion Heavyweight Mixed Martial Arts Cage Fighter is not one of my properties.
What Black Holes definitely have is mass. We measure this mass in Solar Masses. A Solar Mass is the mass of our Sun — which is about 2 billion billion billion tonnes, or about 333,000 times the mass of the Earth.
But mass is totally irrelevant to size.
It doesn’t matter if the black hole is just three Solar Masses (which is about as low in mass as back holes can be).
It also doesn’t matter if it’s 4.3 million Solar Masses (like the one in the centre of our galaxy).
Or even if the Black Hole is 6.5 billion times heavier than the Sun (like the supermassive Black Hole we’ve discovered 53 million light years away).
Regardless of their mass, all Black Holes have the same size — which is zero! Every Black Hole is just a point in space. No width, no depth, no height.
So no size.
But while Black Holes do not have a size, the invisible boundary surrounding them definitely does. It’s called the Event Horizon, and it’s the point of no return surrounding every Black Hole.
If you’re near a Black Hole, but outside the Event Horizon, you might be able to escape the strong gravitational pull of the Black Hole. This depends on things like your flight path and how powerful your rocket engines are.
But once inside the Event Horizon, nothing (whether it’s matter or radiation) can ever escape the Black Hole. Why? Because the escape velocity inside the Event Horizon is greater than the speed of light.
And as Einstein told us, nothing can travel faster than light.
Escape velocity is the velocity an object needs to overcome the gravitational of the planet or star it’s trying to get away from.
And the Event Horizon is the distance from the Black Hole where the escape velocity from the Black Hole is equal to the speed of light.
So while every black hole is a point with zero size, they each have an event horizon surrounding them. And the size of the event horizon depends on one thing only — the the mass of the black hole.
Our Sun is too small to ever become a Black Hole, but if it got squashed down to zero size, the distance to its event horizon would be about 3 km. If the Earth was to get squashed down to zero size — its event horizon would be a tiny 8.7 mm from Black Hole Earth!
At the other end of the scale, the Event Horizon surrounding the 4.3 million Solar Mass Black Hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy would be about 12.7 million kilometres from the Black Hole! That’s an enormous sphere of eternal no return!
It’s a straight linear relationship — double the mass of the Black Hole, and you double the distance to the event horizon.
So event horizons come in a huge range of sizes. But the black holes at their centre? They’re strictly one size fits all. And that size is zero.
Jaeger at 1:06 pm
They too shall be on ‘The List’ of excellent Black Holes 🙂
Sir Henry Parkes says:
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 12:31 pm
Cronus says:
Monday, August 8, 2022 at 7:45 pm
I would add Robert Fisk to the grouping of Chomsky and Pilger. There is a real tendency for these people to go somewhat feral and off the plantation. At the risk of name dropping, I had a very interesting (unscheduled) meeting with Fisk in Lebanon in the 1990s wherein he attempted to coerce me into giving him privileged military information on an individual. This person was an informant who was also a key leader in the attacks on the Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps in the 1982.
Fisk desperately wanted to know his location and attempted to morally blackmail me by telling me I was hiding a war criminal. His thirst for a story outweighed (in his mind) my informant’s value to the UN mission in attempting to prevent attacks at that time. It was one of those morally challenging dilemmas in warfare when one must weigh up the greater and lesser evils and make a decision. Much to his disgust and anger, I chose not to provide him with the information he sought.
__________________________________________________________
“I too have had mixed feelings about Robert Fisk. He wrote excellent histories of the Palestine-Israel conflict and of Lebanon. But I thought his opposition to the US-led intervention to remove Iraqi troops from Kuwait was misplaced. The reluctance of many on the left in those days to endorse any action led by the Americans, somewhat mirrors the moral confusion some are exhibiting today over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Fisk’s ex-wife, Lara Marlowe, said he once told her that war was so terrible there was never any justification for waging it, even when fighting Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. Marlowe said she then asked him what should have happened where Hitler was concerned. “Saddam Hussein is not Hitler,” was all he then said.”
Agreed, I thought his histories were extremely useful but the longer he was in Lebanon/ Israel the more ‘obsessive’ he seemed to become and the less objective. The concept that a war of defence is without justification is very difficult to defend. I suspect he became a victim of his very extended journalistic experience in a neighbourhood almost permanently at war and although we all agree that war is truly terrible, sometimes it is necessary.
War is only necessary when someone else starts one.
frednk @ #1412 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 12:58 pm
A calm examination of the events at Mar A Lago and a bit of pleading to the DOJ to wrap it up. Thanks for posting.
Saw this on twitter. I had thought the same thing.
Lol!
—-
Have they exhumed Ivana’s grave yet? What’s buried there? Her ashes? Perhaps some documents? Would you put it past him? https://t.co/O2338xYTyQ
Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski – Attorney, Fmr Fed Prosecutor
Sandy Hook families’ lawyer confirms that a naked photo of Alex Jones’s wife was on his phone, but adds that Alex sent that naked photo of his wife to Roger Stone.
phoenixREDsays:
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 1:22 pm
It’s just a job application.
Sir Henry Parkes at 12.55 pm
One problem with your view as expressed is that you accuse analysts of being apologists for Putin, which is inaccurate and does not facilitate dialogue.
Listen to the first talk, by Professor Graeme Gill, which goes (after intro) for 19 mins at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNL89TWaOOA
If you don’t like what he says, that’s your choice. But, for the victims of Putin’s war, the issue of Ukrainian neutrality is no armchair matter. It was on the agenda of the limited negotiations in late March that occurred in Istanbul. Given the situation on the battlefield, where Russia has advanced since March and expectations of a Ukrainian counter-attack in the south have yet to be realised, if people exclude discussion of Ukrainian neutrality they must accept a longer and hence bloodier war.
Would Zelenskiy, with the benefit of hindsight, have accepted Ukrainian neutrality in January? The answer is obviously yes. The problem is that Zelenskiy was excluded from the pre-war negotiations. The US refused to countenance Ukrainian neutrality, but they were not prepared for Putin’s war. How long were Putin’s troops hanging around beside the border? Months. What weapons did the US send to Ukraine before Putin invaded. Not much, relative to what was obviously needed. So Putin’s war has been a fiasco for Putin, but not only for him. It’s a US fiasco as well, and a fiasco for the EU too. Apart from the military-industrial complex in the West, only one actor has benefited so far. That is Turkey.
Granny Anny @ #1406 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 12:23 pm
Try this one, if the universe is 15 billion years old, how come it is 90 billion light years wide?
There is a video of this somewhere…….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIJTwYOZrGU
Thanks for the transcript davo.
It strikes me that the definition is a bit pedantic, since what I would consider important is the size of the event horizon, within which you are caught. And where does all the matter go that is caught? Does it accrete around the centre, since by definition nothing can enter a zero size “hole”, or does it simply vanish from the known universe? And that can’t be true, since the gravity is still there. (Also ignoring Hawking’s explanations that black holes evaporate.)
Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom
The Republican Party has abandoned the rule of law. Just listen to them tonight. They’re at war with the rule of law.
The rhetoric coming from Trump, his media cheerleaders, and Republican elected officials right now is irresponsible & dangerous. They learned nothing from January 6th. They don’t care. They’re inflaming millions. There will be violence.
I am a little busy so probably not putting in the time I should on well worded posts – or anything but skimming others.
I was suggesting that Putin feels that a long war in Ukraine favours him. That he can keep the dogs at bay domestically while the US may lose interest – especially if a Trumpist wins POTUS in 2024. A Trump controlled US will not necessarily back Russia, but they may stop funding Ukraine and even, to some extent, NATO.
This is not without risk for Putin as that gives Europe time to sort itself out. By 2024, maybe Ukraine doesnt need US support. And it is hard to see the midterms rapidly changing US policy on Ukraine (you wouldnt put it past the GOP but McConnell seems well entrenched in supporting Ukraine).
Lol!
Rick Wilson
It was really kind of Ron DeSantis to offer so much support for the FBI raid on Mar A Lago.
Clearly had to know about it and stayed silent for the good of America.
Dr Doolittle says:
…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNL89TWaOOA
To put it polity, what a bunch of screwed up, washed up cold war warriors, too used to proclaiming USA bad. Total disconnection from reality is my impression ( my impression has no value).
How about you listen to the series by ex. Finland pm who was at the table when trying to bring Putin’s Georgia effort to bed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlB-pRqdyBg&ab_channel=STGTV
Victoriasays: Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 1:42 pm
Lol!
Rick Wilson
It was really kind of Ron DeSantis to offer so much support for the FBI raid on Mar A Lago.
Clearly had to know about it and stayed silent for the good of America.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
Also :
Asha Rangappa @AshaRangappa – Fmr FBI Special Agent, lawyer, Legal and national security analyst.
There is no way the FBI was going to randomly wander around Mar-a-Lago, looking for docs. They knew where they were, and had reasonable certainty they would be there when they got there. Someone who spends a lot of time around Trump (recently) gave them info
Dr Doolittle
“As Michael Cox has written, “The idea that one day [the Cold War] might no longer be there was virtually inconceivable—as one academic discovered when he asked a group of leading American officials in 1985 whether or not we should be ‘looking ahead to the possibility that the Cold War might someday end’. According to the academic in question, John L. Gaddis, the ‘embarrassed silence [that] ensued’ was finally broken by a highly respected senior diplomat: ‘Oh, it hadn’t occurred to any of us that it ever would end’ (quoted in Gaddis 1992, vi).” [Gaddis, US & the end of the Cold War]”
I had a friend (young US Army officer/analyst at the time) working in the Pentagon when the Berlin wall came down. He was working on the Russian desk (as so many were) and said that within a very short space of time, their work became redundant and they were almost all sitting at empty desks and subsequently reassigned. He said it was extraordinarily disheartening not having an unambiguous superpower enemy to plan for and assess daily. This changed on 9/11 when he spent three hours crawling out of the Pentagon, a new enemy had emerged.
Barney in Cherating says:
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 1:16 pm
“War is only necessary when someone else starts one.”
And history shows there’s always someone willing to start one and for a whole host of reasons.
“ Holdenhillbilly @ #1355 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 11:03 am
theunaustralian.net @TheUnOz
·
2m
BREAKING: To Celebrate The FBI Raid On Mar-A-Lago Donald Trump Has Released A Limited Edition Gun To Collect Yours Simply Storm On Down To Florida.
It’s already started happening. Trump goons in Pick Up Trucks headed there as soon as they found out about the raid.”
_____
Will Gotterdamarang happen in Palm Beach or the Strait of Taiwan first?
PhoenixRed
Precisely. Trump has been a clear and present danger and i daresay that he was under observation for quite some time.
Perrottet has ordered an investigation into whether Ayers breached the Ministerial Code of Conduct.
Thorpe and Bandt being completely reasonable.
Labor would be UNreasonable if they resisted.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/greens-lidia-thorpe-lays-out-list-of-demands-for-voice-support-20220808-p5b84x.html
There is a certain symmetry between one of the dominant lines of attack on Clinton: the security status of emails, and the Trump’s treatment of classified documents.
It is a bit like nailing Capone for cheating on tax.
Mavis @ Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 11:09 am
And do you take your own medicine? 😉
Labor repeatedly committed to implementing the Statement from the Heart during the election campaign.
It was the first committment re-iterated by Albanese publicly once he became Prime Minister.
The Greens for the past couple of years have been telling anyone who wanted to listen that they did not support the Statement from the Heart because it had the wrong prioritisation. To confuse matters the Greens simultaneously claimed that THEY were the ones who were supporting the Statement from the Heart.
Since the election the Greens, led by Bandt and Thorpe, have (a) stated that they would not stand in the way of genuine reform, (b) repeated their opposition to the Statement of the Heart’s ordering of Voice, Makarrata and Treaty, (c) refused to openly and without reservation support the referendum on the Voice and (d) stood in the way of genuine reform by going out of their way to insult various large segments of the Australian population – segments which are needed if the Voice is to get up.
It is NOW reported that the Greens are negotiating with Labor to try and force Labor to implement the Statement from the Heart.
The Greens are disgusting.
At the moment we have two high profile right-wing types who are self proclaimed “victims”.
1. John Barilaro
2. Jacinta Price, currently the darling of Murdoch’s print media and Sky after dark.
Rex Douglas
So instead of getting the voice in place and finding out what the first settlers want, the minister is supposed to assume Adam Bandt and Senate deputy leader Lidia Thorpe have all the answers .
Talk about a couple of self entitled wackos.
There is another symmetry in action.
There have been numerous critics of the freedom of navigation exercises carried out by various western countries, including Australia.
China’s live firing exercises have forced international maritime traffic out of certain areas of international waters, de facto breaking international law of the sea with respect to freedom of navigation.
NSW MP John Sidoti has been suspended from parliament after he was found to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-09/john-sidoti-suspended-nsw-parliament-icac-corruption/101314624
I have faith that Albanese and Burney will reach out to Bandt and Thorpe and a unified position will be reached.
This of course will NOT please partisan Labor barrackers who only now scoring political points for their team.
It appears that the warrant to search Trump’s Florida property was based on an impounding order, similar to an Aton Pillar style order, applicable in Britain, Oz & other common law countries. The threshold for such orders are:
[‘There must be an extremely strong prima facie case against a Respondent;
the potential or actual damage must be very serious; and there must be clear evidence that the Respondent has incriminating evidence in their possession, and there is a real possibility they may destroy this material if they were to become aware of the Applicant’s application.’]
In short, the DOJ must have satisfied these criteria in order to obtain a warrant against a former president. And the fact the FBI served it after knowing Trump was in NYC may’ve avoided a potential showdown between law enforcement and his secret service detail – and indeed, Trump himself.
covid hospitalizations: 7.3%.