I think, when I was younger, I had a rather blindly Manichaen view of the world (ie good versus evil and all that). Hopefully, I have outgrown such simplistic views as I have accumulated life experience. Perhaps a remnant of that puerile Manichaenism is my love for villains. I greatly enjoy the Shakespearean villains (Iago, …
Author Archives: Ernest Zanatta
My Kingdom for a Horse! Reflections on Malcolm Gladwell’s Latest Book.
“For want of a nail, a shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For want of a horse, a rider was lost. For want of a rider, a message was lost. For want of a message, a battle was lost. For want of a battle, the war was lost. For …
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Geez Louise!
Readers of this blog (and there are 3 or 4 I suppose, even though I appear to have lost all the readers from the PRC since the start of January, causing me to suspect my blog has been blocked in Communist China) would know that I am not a great admirer of the technocratic dictator …
Victoria Bitter…
Collingwood’s Catbird Seat
Collingwood Football Club’s boast in their theme song that the ‘Premiership is a cakewalk’ is not borne out by recent history. In my 50 plus year lifetime, they have been runners up 8 times and won 2 premierships, as compared to the 11 they won in a 36 year period leading up to 1936. However, …
The Victorian Government’s Not-So-Clever Plan to destroy the Laneways of Melbourne
The 1980s was a more innocent or naive time. Or at least it seemed so to me, given I was a teenager for much of them. Once, circa 1984, I was on an English class excursion to the city to see a movie, and we actually took a chartered bus rather than public transport, and …
Allen & Unwin Publishers grow a new backbone
I hope you have heard of Silent Invasion, Professor Clive Hamilton’s 2018 expose on how Communist China was quietly and systematically subverting Australian democracy and society. I bought three copies myself – one for myself, one to circulate around the office amongst my colleagues and friends, and one to give to a friend who is …
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A quick shout out to Real Freedom News
Through some idle net surfing this morning, I discovered an interesting recent website called Real Freedom News. Here is a link to it: https://realfreedomnews.com I find it interesting for two reasons. One is that it includes a segment called China Watch which appears to share my concerns about Communist China. It is always a worthy …
Vaccinations and the wrong way to calculate risk
In the 1990s, I was a big Tom Clancy fan. I saw The Hunt For Red October and Patriot Games before I read any of the novels, but I quickly got onto the Jack Ryan novels. They did quickly get a little bit over the top, although thankfully the Super Bowl was never nuked by …
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Where’s my lollipop?
I was not at Highpoint last Thursday night, but I pretty much could have been. The risk of catching Covid would have been low but having to isolate would have been very disruptive. That spurred me on to get my first dose of Astra Zeneca yesterday. I was a walk in at the vaccination centre …
Lost For Words! 