I'm old enough to know that I don't have any answers, but that won't stop me talking
Have you ever seen a real dead body? Relatively few people do, and hopefully very rarely. I have only three times – just after my father died, at the open casket rosary reading for an uncle, and at an open casket funeral for the father of a close colleague. It is not something you really …
Continue reading “Fake Photos and Real Bodies – How Communist China Really Behaves”
Australians are not always good at picking their folk heroes. Ned Kelly is still seen by many, and not just by the bogan element, as a rebel against oppressive authority, rather than as a petty criminal from a family of petty criminals who turned into a cold blooded murderer and hostage taker. Similarly, Breaker Morant, …
I lost $50 last week. I bet with one of my friends that Trump would win the presidential election. The ‘enthusiasm gap’ between him and Biden (ie the number of crazy-scary people who would go to rallies to support Trump as compared to Biden), as well as the recent proof that opinion polls are about …
Continue reading “Reflections on the US Presidential Election”
I have three hardback editions of the Complete Works Of Shakespeare – two identical (aside from the dust cover) from my teenage years (one was a present for my 14th birthday, and one was an academic prize at the end of year 10), and a nice leather-bound one I was given more recently for my …
Continue reading “Never After: Huxley’s Twisted Take On The Tempest”
About a decade ago, I used to go to a Guy Fawkes night organised each year by a friend of a (now former) friend. They would burn an effigy each year – the Guy representing some annoying lefty or Islamic terrorist figure. As it burned, we would sing God Save The Queen, and Advance Australia …
Continue reading “Night of the Living Dead: Or Why are People Celebrating Halloween?”
Doesn’t this sound like Chief Wiggum smashing Homer’s tail light? http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/antidan-andrews-bus-given-unroadworthy-defect-notice-at-melbourne-lockdown-protest/news-story/6f76a1d3bade80f549095b6cdb40e6fc
The reason why Melbourne is the sporting capital of Australia, and quite possibly the world, can be summed up in one simple word: economics. This one word masks a lot of complicated history and social progression. Organised sport is a very recent phenomenon. Before the industrial revolution, the vast majority of people lived in absolute …
Continue reading “Australian Rules Finally Becomes The National Football Code”
Brutus: Let them enter: They are the faction. O conspriracy, Sham’st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night When evils are most free? (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 1) Julius Caesar is, in my view, one of the most under rated of Shakespeare’s plays, one which I feel belongs right up there with …
Continue reading “A Plea To The “Honourable Men” Of The Victorian Parliamentary Labor Party….”
The late second temple Jewish general and historian known to us as Flavius Josephus is one of the most interesting characters of his society and time in history, not so important as Jesus or as influential as Paul, but perhaps just as fascinating in his own way. After all, his very survival of a suicide …
Continue reading “The Space Race Without Heroes – Retelling The Right Stuff”
Ok… my team got eliminated in week one of the AFL finals, but after the 2016 premiership miracle, I am not too put out. One thing that always gives most Australians something to smile about is the suffering of Collingwood supporters. As a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Collingwood kept making …
Lost For Words!