So, “the lovely” Lena took the Eurovision prize back to Germany. Given that they have saved the economies of a significant amount of the contestants, any other result would have been a travesty.

Having said that, there was a clear lack of appreciation for this from the Greeks. The Germans actually gave more points to them than the other way around. They clearly don’t have the required appreciation of Eurovision voting etiquette and diplomacy.

Quite how Iceland managed not to be last, having spent the last year destroying economies in Europe, refusing to pay back debts and erupting volcanoes at our planes, is a mystery. They at least got the predictable nil points from us.

It would have been hilarious next year had Iceland or Greece actually won the competition, though. Live from a rented-out Town Hall, the pyrotechnics consisting of matches and deodorant cans, the music and equipment replaced with ‘Singstar’ on Playstation. Every national representative would have to sing a different Disney song.

Why Israel are in Eurovision remains beyond me, in any case. They’re clearly not European. If Israel are allowed in, surely Palestine and certainly Lebanon and Syria should be ‘European’ too, on purely geographical grounds. Israel would, of course, protest against this. They’d clearly get no points from any of them.

There does appear to be a predominant view amongst many that Israel are really just another Western European country. The only problem is they’re in the Middle East, are largely right wing religious fundamentalists, and have stolen a load of another country’s land and refuse to give it back.

My point isn’t that Israel shouldn’t be part of international cheese competitions, or European ones in particular if needs be. The problem is the exclusion of other states that are equally aggressive and reactionary, but happen to be Islamic.

Had Syria or Iran publicly railed against the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in the way that Israel have, they would have been put under huge diplomatic pressure and vilified by politicians worldwide. North Korea have been put under huge pressure after sinking a ship; Israel openly invaded and destroyed most of a country last year and have faced no sanctions.

The disgusting pandering to Israeli diplomatic pressure by the BBC when they refused to show a charity appeal to help the Gazan innocents whose families and properties had been destroyed by Israeli shells highlighted this bizarre set of double standards. This showed up again recently, as Frankie Boyle was condemned for comparing Palestine to a “cake… being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew.”

Whilst this was undoubtedly over-simplifying the matter, it was a joke, and the only reason it came in for specific criticism was because it was regarding the actions of Israel. It seems you can make jokes about the Jewish religion but not their politics – the opposite being true for Islam.

If the actions of Israel on Monday morning are held in anything but strong and consistent contempt by the western world, what remains of our credibility on matters in the Middle East must surely be lost. The blockade on Gaza is deplorable, causing what the UN calls “grim” and “deteriorating” humanitarian conditions. Daniel Ayalon’s dubbing of the aid convoy as an “armada of hate” is taking irony to a new level. If you’re trying to avoid confrontation, don’t storm an aid boat with dozens of heavily-armed commandos. If it was only a “policing type activity”, why go about it in such an aggressive manner? If they were armed merely with knives and metal bars, why was there any need for anything but riot gear? Even if the violence was started by a protestor grabbing an Israeli’s gun, why were there any guns present in the first place?

Israel have been ceded the political advantage for too long. Gaza for Eurovision 2011!

Of all the political events of the last month or so, one in particular has fixed itself in my mind. That it should have done so strikes me as somewhat surprising, given that the event in question was neither scandal nor gaffe of bigot-gate proportions, nor even a hilariously edited poster of call-me-Dave. No, I refer to that slightly surreal Tory coup whereby business leaders, tycoons, and captains of industry massed behind Cameron, ostensibly in response to Labour’s proposed N.I. increases. The phenomenon was interesting enough to observe, if not exactly earth-shatteringly exciting, but what did make it memorable, and the reason I write about it now, is how bizarrely reminiscent the whole episode was of Atlas Shrugged – a comparison which was understandably ignored in the national press at the time, but which may, tangentially, lead us to see added significance behind a mere political stunt.

‘Who is John Galt?’ So goes the famously enigmatic opening of Rand’s masterpiece, a novel of staggering scope (at 1168 pages) which regularly tops lists of the most influential works of fiction of the last century. The book describes an alternate reality in which the U.S. is the only country in the world not yet run by socialists, or ‘looters’, ‘moochers’ and ‘parasites’ as Rand charitably refers to them throughout her novel. That situation, however, is changing, and with the economy in crisis Washington seeks to impose ever greater constraints and controls on big business.

It is with this background, which has a certain resonance in the contemporary climate, that the story of Atlas Shrugged unfolds. Rand envisages a scenario in which the ‘men of talent’ whom she celebrates – the great inventors and industrialists who are responsible for production and growth – go on strike. Atlas shrugs: the business leaders who hold up the economy, like the mythological titan who propped up the sky, refuse to co-operate any longer with a government that wishes to hamstring them under the pretence of admirable values such as fairness and equality of opportunity. They gather behind the mysterious figure of John Galt, withdraw the benefit they confer on society, and watch as things collapse.

The novel, in other words, is a libertarian economist’s wet dream: a laissez-faire fairy tale in which industrialists are morally upright paragons of integrity, metaphorically holding up the very sky, whereas socialists or ‘looters’ are lazy, detestable, and lacking purpose. So what does Atlas Shrugged have to do with David Cameron? What else but show us his (albeit rather extreme) literary counterpart in the form of John Galt, rounding up all the ‘business leaders’ with a view to creating a better society. It remains to be seen whether or not Cameron’s roll-call of economic titans can achieve this in the coming years; what is certain, however, is that they will be considered vital to the recovery by the new government. Perhaps, then, it will not be completely irrelevant to ask ‘who is John Galt?’

What does the acceleration of the universe mean?

The Universe is expanding around us. When we measure the rate the Universe is expanding now and compare that to the rate in the past, it seems the Universe has been speeding up over the past 6 Billion years or so.

What evidence is there that the universe is expanding?

If we look at objects across the Cosmos, we notice that the further away the object is, the more its light is stretched to redder colours. This is expected if the Universe is in motion: as light travels through expanding space, the light stretches with the space it is travelling in, making it appear redder. The phenomenon is called redshift. In partciular, measuring the light from supernova has been used in this way to trace back the expansion of the Universe more than 10 billion years and uncover the acceleration.

How does this relate to Dark Energy?

Dark Energy is meant to be energy that is part of space itself. When the Universe expands, the amount of dark Energy per volume stays constant (but of course the Universe is bigger). This material has, according to General relativity, the almost magical ability to accelerate the expansion of the Cosmos. Observations of supernova suggest that more than 70% of the Universe is made up of Dark Energy.

What could this mean for the ultimate fate of the universe?

If the Universe’s Dark Energy doesn’t disappear (or change over time), it will cause the Universe to expand faster and faster over time, until our part of the Universe (us and the nearest few galaxies) loses contact with the rest of the Universe. We will look out onto a vast emptiness and slowly fade away into oblivion.

What are supernovae?

Supernovae are the violent deaths of stars; there are two types, but for measuring distances I will mainly focus on the explosions of stars called white dwarf stars. When our sun runs out of nuclear fuel, its interior will collapse down to a ball of Carbon and Oxygen about the size of the Earth (but a million times denser). This is a white dwarf. If our sun were born as a binary (a star system consisting of two stars orbiting around their common center of mass), then it is possible, after the white dwarf is created, that the second star in the binary can shed material onto the white dwarf and increase its mass. At a certain point, gravity can cause this huge nuclear powder keg to ignite into an explosion 5 billion times brighter than our sun – this is a Type 1a supernova.

Where might future research take us?

I can honestly not say. It would be nice to figure out what Dark Energy is (or even if it really exists), and thereby better understand why the Universe is expanding and its ultimate fate.

Prof. Brian P. Schmidt is an astrophysicist at the Australian National University’s Mount Stromlo Observatory.