In Red Dwarf, Lister, the last human in the entire universe, teaches Kryten, the droid with a head shaped like a badly-peeled potato, to lie — as if lying was at the core of being human. 

May I convey my sincere condolences to the families of those who have been killed in Paris.

May the injured recover fully.

May peace enter the heart of everyone. 

I'd like to apologise for this crummy cartoon which is too complicated but simplistically represents how we distort the human condition with stupid religious views. 

I feel like the annoying uncle creating mayhem in a perfectly "normal" family, by telling eager junior it's okay to be a prankster. I seem to harp on about the religious hypocrisy and useless faith day in day out. It has nothing to do with any doubt in my life, nor about trying to defend my patch of lawn.

Our glorious site yourdemocracy.net.au has been a bit sick for a couple of days. It seems the gods of the internauts are possibly angry. My guess is that some doozy from the Metadata collection pressed the wrong button and mucked up. Or it could be just an accident of a provider going plonk.

An international expert on planning healthy cities has warned Sydney against following the Asian model of concentrating high rise around train stations to house a booming population.

Yesterday, 5 November 2015, Andrew Bolt told us a few fantasies but then what's new?... Without flinching, he reports on a CSIRO poll about global warming: "It's a miracle." he blurts without exclamation marks because Bolt is quite reserved in his appreciation of "facts". "most Australians are now global warming sceptics, despite years of being misled by the media." No exclamation marks here either. Humbly reserved.

Bolt continues: "a CSIRO survey of more than 5000 people has confirmed it, even though warmist reporters tried to spin it.

On Tuesday, in a press conference with Malcolm Turnbull to announce his appointment, the new chief scientist of Australia, Alan Finkel, said something very interesting.

Attorney-General George Brandis has hit out at criticism of Tony Abbott's religious beliefs, describing the "ridicule" to which the former prime minister was subjected as "bigotry at its most shameless".

The incessant sneering and ridiculing...[Tony] Abbott on account of his religious faith was bigotry at its most shameless. 

Senator Brandis, who last year defended people's "right to be bigots" amid debate over proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, has told a roundtable meeting of religious and non-religious representatives that "religious freedom is every bit as important as political freedom".

Not since 1977 – almost 40 years ago – has a governor-general performed so poorly at the Melbourne Cup.

In 1977 Sir John Kerr got a bit plastered and was out of control.

Not so in 2015. Sir Peter Cosgrove was in total control. So much in control that he was utterly controlled by what seemed to be a pre-prepared speech.

Just fill in the blanks with the name of the jockey, trainer and owner.

He completely missed the point of history.

Why didn't he just chuck away his prop – his prepared speech – and seize the moment of history. For the first time in the 155 years of its running, a female jockey won the Melbourne Cup.

Yay.

On Sunday 1st November, the Bolt Report had a guest who was conferring with Andrew Bolt about the farmer who took his life because of his battle with mining companies. The case was used by Bolt to bash the ABC yet again. Bolt was asserting that we "did not know" why the farmer took his own life and we should not blame the CSG mining companies for this fellow's despair. But according to Mr Bolt we should bash the ABC for assuming it was the fault of the miners.