Category Archives: Social media

Saturday

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Madeleine snoozing on her bed of pot shards.

Climate Change

On Wednesday (6 January) I wrote, “It would be useful to now see some climate-change opinion polls for a glimpse of what a sample of Australians think about this issue”. I found a result but is it credible?

“Climate change Australia’s greatest economic risk: survey”, ABCNews, 8 December 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/08/2764753.htm

A study of 115 of the nation’s leaders in the fields of politics, business, the community sector and academia has concluded that the greatest risk to the Australian economy for the next decade is climate change. They say Australian businesses will struggle to cope with the flow-on effects of climate change including water scarcity, droughts and bushfires. The leaders were asked to consider 47 key risk areas and rate them according to how likely they are to happen and how serious that risk could be for the Australian economy. Overwhelmingly, they nominated climate change as the biggest challenge.

The Australian Davos Connection is the not-for-profit organisation behind the report, and chairman Michael Roux says the nation’s leaders are calling for action. “It was quite a surprise to me to see what a significant standout environmental-related matters were,” he said. “Climate change is a very significant factor in terms of people looking forward in terms of planning business or policy or just general concern about society going forward.

“One of the things about this report is how many of the risks are related and, of course, one of the key standouts in terms of this relationship is the requirement for innovation, new technologies, new design that needs to be applied and invested in to look for solutions to some of these problems.

“I think there is a real opportunity here for Australia and for business within the Australian context.”

Who wrote this tosh? ‘Standouts’, ‘…people looking forward in terms of planning business or policy or just general concern about society going forward…’, “…one of the key standouts in terms of this relationship is the requirement for innovation, new technologies, new design…”, and so on.

The 47 key risk areas are listed in Australia Report 2010, and the methodology set out with the warning that “…Care is … needed in interpreting the survey results which are not intended to reflect a statistically accurate estimate of the “true” risks to the Australian economy” p 21. And looking at the ‘Risk Landscape’ on p3, I can’t see that climate-change is “… a very significant factor”. What I do see is that the respondents consider extreme storm activity, droughts and heat waves, water scarcity and bushfires have greater than 20 per cent likelihood of occurring. That is not anything new. I wish our ABC would be a little more analytical when reporting these press releases.

I shall look for more random polling of what Australians think about climate change because that will shape our politicians’ behaviour rather than data analysis.

Social Media

While listening to “A Fresh New Year”, Pods and Blogs, 5 January 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/podsandblogs/ my ears tweaked at the interview with Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian, and how his casual use of Twitter caused public outrage at Trafigura’s attempt to block the publication of a parliamentary question. I mentioned this on the 17 October 2009 but never took any action. I am now following him and PodsandBlogs and will see what news arrives.

The Guardian’s article on Trafigura is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/14/trafigura-fiasco-tears-up-textbook and there are follow-up links.

Friday

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Part of the front garden looking to the street.

Notes from Xanadu

The low temperatures and mild humidity, together with the compost spread last Spring, has the entire garden erupting with green and blooms. New rainbow lorikeets are flapping about being taught to feed from the banksia and grevilleas; they were quite awkward initially but rapidly developed graceful movement. It is rewarding to see these young birds –- I think it’s a first that the parents have nested nearby.

Social Media – Is it Corrupting Our Language?

On the 31 December I commented on Facebook wondering if I need to review my conservative concerns for English. The article quoted below laments that our language is turning feral. However, having thought about how the language has continued to evolve since (I believe C800AD) , it is pointless to not embrace the changes that social media users are introducing. An evolution that we can actually watch.

Natasha Elks, “Absolutely time to unfriend a few words”, The Australian, 6 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/absolutely-time-to-unfriend-a-few-words/story-e6frg6nf-1225816388957

IF a group of grumpy grammarians had their way, you would no longer be able to “unfriend” someone on Facebook, download an “app” on your iPhone, “tweet” about mindless nonsense on Twitter or even indulge in a spot of “sexting” with your paramour.

Based on nominations from furious wordsmiths and language lovers worldwide, an American university has published its annual list of words it would like banished from the English language for “use, misuse and general uselessness”.

Micro-blogging site Twitter sparked ire from the tongue-in-cheek linguists at Michigan’s Lake Superior State University, with calls for the word tweet and all of its variations — including tweetaholic, twittersphere and twitterature — to be banned. Hipsters should also refrain from using friend and unfriend as verbs, such as “Peter was, like, totally getting on my nerves so I unfriended him on Facebook”.