Last week Australia’s central bank (Reserve Bank of Australia, RBA) raised interest rates. Again.

Political economists have been talking for decades about the RBA’s tendency to redistribute wealth from the bottom upwards. But now it seems most people understand that the latest interest rate rises requires ordinary people to hand over more of their cash to their bank, to get it out of circulation and bring down inflation.

Asking whether superannuation or taxes could also be used for the purpose of reducing interest rates, the ABC pointed out that interest rates were not always the way inflation was managed. They published an article asking ‘Would you rather hand over an extra $300 a month to your bank or the federal government?’ – suggesting that this might even be an option.

Rightly, the ABC points to the place of government in setting up this structure. But history shows that for all that government is nominally in charge. Well. You might have noticed that banks are fairly powerful. Government v bank doesn’t always mean the government wins…as we will see.

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That’s the actual name of the paper. Isn’t that great?

Here’s a prologue: a post I wrote a while back about the Portuguese Man-o’-War.  (It’s kind of long — I was new to CT back then, and still figuring stuff out). 

To summarize: the Portuguese Man-o’-War is a large jellyfish-type creature.  And when I say “large”, I mean they can grow as big as a large cat, with stinging tentacles dangling for many meters beneath and around them.  They’re carnivores, feeding on fish and small invertebrates.  Their stings paralyze prey, which is then drawn upward into the main body, digested, and eaten.  (In that order.)   

In the post I mention that they have a parasitic fish that afflicts them, but I don’t talk about any of their other relationships.  So now I’m going to talk about an organism that interacts with the Man-o’-War in a different way:  a predator. 

Specifically Glaucus Atlanticus, the Blue Dragon Sea Slug.


[yes, they really look like this.]

Also known as the Sea Swallow, or the Blue Angel, or… man, just look at that.  Isn’t that just ridiculously gorgeous? 

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Today’s post was prompted by two recent news items: first, by the announcement that Martin Peterson, currently professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University, will be moving to Southern Methodist University (SMU); second the report by the Harvard Crimson that “Harvard Asks Donors to Endow $10 Million Professorships for ‘Viewpoint Diversity.’” (Wasn’t that what the visiting fellows program at the Kennedy school was for?)

First, Peterson’s comments (quoted at the top of this post) resonated with me. Of course, administrators are also people with mortgages, have parents with expensive care needs, and have kids with expensive tuition. American political economy with its go-fund-mes for urgent medical care and (say) funeral costs makes individual, principled stances incredibly fraught affairs in a job-market that is clearly imploding for mid-career academics, and that most certainly leaves fewer alternative opportunities than (the usually more lucrative options) former prosecutors have. Some of the administrators at Texas A&M may well have had tenure, and they do deserve special opprobrium for their cowardice.

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I said a while back that nobody’s going to Mars any time soon. Which is true. But that doesn’t mean Mars isn’t interesting! Mars is very interesting.


So today’s paper is about Mars.  Okay, it’s about a moon of Mars. 

TLDR: one of Mars’ moons may periodically tear itself apart, turn into a system of rings around the planet, and then put itself back together.

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Back in the 1980s, I was (among other things) a writer and singer of satirical folk songs. Going to the National Folk Festival in Canberra at Easter, I caught up with old friends and was reminded that I had produced a book of my songs. Returning home, I dug out a copy, and decided to scan it. You can download the result here (big file)

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What does it mean to be an academic in different parts of the world? What comes along as the same job description – a bundle of teaching, research, and impact tasks – varies enormously from place to place. Not only the financial conditions of universities differ, but also the social standing of researchers. This is probably what one needs to expect in a world shaped by inequalities along so many lines – geopolitical power, financial resources, cultural influence, race, gender etc. But arguably, there are additional problems within academia. For example, certain academic centers, typically situated in the Global North, dominate the discourse in whole fields, and the opportunities to gain international visibility are distributed very unevenly across countries. 

Last summer, I had written on this lack of Global Science Equity. It is problematic for at least two reasons. The first is moral: some of the global inequities are so stark that they stand in blatant contrast to the meritocratic rhetoric still widely used within academia. When being situated in favorable circumstances gets framed as “talent” or “excellence,” and being from a disadvantaged country as “lacking quality,” this is an unjust distortion of the facts, which leads to misguided distributions of respect and recognition across academics worldwide.* The second is epistemic: academic research works best if diverse perspectives and approaches are taken into account, not if there are steep status hierarchies and historically grown centres of gravity that determine what research gets done and under which paradigms. 

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Do you know Baba Yetu?

Take three minutes and listen to this performance of Baba Yetu.  (Our ancient blogging platform doesn’t like embedded video, so you’ll have to click through to YouTube.  Go ahead and click, nothing bad will happen.)

Some notes:

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Before I depart this world, I would like to visit St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland, and see the Jenny Geddes memorial. 

I’m told it’s open to the public.



Why? What’s interesting about a stool?

Well, it’s probably impossible to point to a single moment, or a single object, and say “The Enlightenment began here.”.  But if you were absolutely forced to choose one moment and one object?  One pebble that started the avalanche? 

Then Jenny Geddes’ legendary stool, flying through the air on a hot summer Sunday in 1637, wouldn’t be a bad choice.

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Among other things, the unlamented former autocrat Viktor Orban was one of the leading proponents of pro-natalist policies, and more open than most about the racist underpinnings of his view. However, like others who have tried to raise birth rates, he wasn’t particularly successful. To understand why not, it’s useful to consider the question: how many babies do we want. In particular, since their choices are the relevant ones, how many babies do young women want?

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The news from Hungary’s election is so good that I need to write about it, even if not all the implications are clear yet, and even in a disorganised and way, repeating lots of what others are saying.

Although the polls predicted Orban’s defeat, nothing I read foreshadowed the scale of the victory – a two-thirds majority which will allow the reversal of all of Orban’s constitutional changes. Some credit for this must go to JD Vance. The spectacle of a US vice-president appearing in Europe to complain about foreign influence must have been too absurd for voters to accept. Putin’s unsubtle interference allowed Peter Magyar to remind Hungarians of Russia’s previous crimes against Hungary.
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