This year, Good Friday does not happen til 15 April. However, given that the holiday calendar is geared around maximising retail sale volumes, Hot Cross Buns and other Easter related matters appeared in my local supermarket even before the New Year. I am not sure whether they appeared on Boxing Day, but believe me, by …
Author Archives: Ernest Zanatta
In the Year of Our Lord 2,022….
I have never been into all that contemporary CE (Current Era) and BCE (Before Current Era). For me, counting the years with the Latin preface Anno Domini (In The Year Of Our Lord) suffices as much now as it did 20 or 200 or 1500 years ago, and does so for most people, except for …
Should we sometimes say ‘Roxy’ instead of ‘Karen’? [Does it even matter?]
The philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche in his writings frequently deplored the materially affluent and relatively safe bourgeois lives that most people of his era lived. He found such lives mundane and unheroic. He yearned for the coming of a Superman, an Ubermensch, who would, through his example, topple the existing moral order and usher in a new age of …
Continue reading “Should we sometimes say ‘Roxy’ instead of ‘Karen’? [Does it even matter?]”
God’s Wrath and the Susceptibility of Crowds
Historicism is one of these concepts which I first encountered during my readings for my long ago abandoned MA thesis on Nietzsche, Hegel and matters which were in vogue in the mid 1990s such as the End of History. Historicism essentially holds to the idea that human nature changes over time, that as civilisation grows …
Continue reading “God’s Wrath and the Susceptibility of Crowds”
Enid Blyton’s Posthumous Thought Crimes
As a child in the 1970s, I avidly read much Enid Blyton. My favourite was the mischievous trickster Brer Rabbit, always getting the better of Brer Fox and Brer Wolf and Brer Bear with his quick wit. It was only when I re-read a few of the stories about a decade ago that I realised, …
Grange or Hill Of Grace?
I am a bit of a wine buff (which is a kind way of describing someone who probably should drink a lot less fine red wine than I do). Back in 1999 when I lived in Canberra for most of the year, I started reading about wine appreciation in order to relieve the boredom of …
Bipartisanship as an affront to Democracy
Several weeks ago I wrote a post in which I expressed my concerns about recent changes to federal electoral laws to make it harder for minor parties to operate. Since that time, two long established minor parties, who have enjoyed a small degree of electoral success over the years, have had their registrations challenged by …
Continue reading “Bipartisanship as an affront to Democracy”
Modern Monetary Mayhem
For a few days there, after finishing reading Stephanie Kelton’s book on Modern Monetary Theory, The Deficit Myth, I was starting to doubt my sanity. She sounded really convincing. This is the problem with not have studied economics formally, but just having read a few textbooks to teach myself economics. There are always going to …
The Global Financial System Is Insane So Let’s Just Print Money
I recently read a book about Modern Monetary Theory. I want to have an understanding as to what the current fashion is in financial policy, given that it does affect our wallets and our lives. The author was at pains to emphasise that MMT is not money printing – it is creating money electronically by …
Continue reading “The Global Financial System Is Insane So Let’s Just Print Money”
Sainthood for Santamaria?
I was having a few beers the other day with a friend who is on speaking terms with various people associated with the remnant of B.A. ‘Bob’ Santamaria’s ‘Movement’ (although I am not sure that the NCC and the DLP are as unified as paranoiacs in the Labor Party would believe). He said that there …
Lost For Words! 