Last year, I wryly noted in this blog that a future former friend (whose delusional tendencies border on the certifiable) had once caused me to make a spectacularly unsuccessful speculative investment. At that time, I wrote that the director of the company at the heart of that investment had already prepared a shopping list of …
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Dark Emu and Other Great Australian Literary Hoaxes
I once almost was a neighbour of the great Australian poet John Shaw Neilson. For the first seven years of my life, I lived in Gordon Street Footscray, number 156 to be precise, in a neighbourhood which was gobbled up in 1976 by the Footscray Hospital when the brutalist concrete psychiatric facility was constructed behind …
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Vale Dr Edelsten
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, …
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 …
Lost For Words! 