Flexible working

I’ve been pondering, after my last post, just how feasible it is to have a workplace with different attitudes to working hours.
It’s a horrible time of year right now, which exaggerates the problem, but I’m working in a workplace which has (at one extreme) someone who sent me emails at 1.30 am and 3.30 am [...]

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Fathers and children

The ABS released a study (as part of their annual social trends review) of fathers and how much they are working these days. In previous posts, I’ve trawled through various ABS products to find out how many stay-at-home dads there are. This study answers the question – 3.4% of families with children under 15 had [...]

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Wal-mart

There’s been a fascinating discussion at Slate (via 11D) about whether Wal-Mart is good or bad for the US. Go and read it, but my take is that at least some of the argument boils down to:
1 Wal-mart reduces prices by driving a hard bargain everywhere, but particularly on one of their biggest costs, wages. [...]

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Stylish geekdom

My cousin’s in the International Maths Olympiad, which is currently on in Slovenia. It’s a competition for those who are under 20, haven’t been to university yet, and with those conditions, are the top mathematicians in their countries, and hence the world. Six contestents per country.
After we found the picture of my cousin, my parents [...]

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Tipping Points

After my gloomy posts on global warming, I had to link to RealClimate’s recent post on tipping points – a superb summary of all the various things that might tip the planet into a new (probably unpleasant) climatic stage.

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Idealism rebounds

My employer has recently introduced a new policy for all sorts of family friendly stuff – among them, a “breastfeeding friendly workplace”. I work in the CBD. We have employees spread across a few different buildings. They have put aside one room in one building for expressing breastmilk. Completely useless to anyone in any other [...]

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Corporate vs Consulting

My recent work move was from consulting life into corporate life. I’ve been there before, but a while ago. Something I really noticed when I moved back is that there are far more “mature”workers, at all levels, but particularly at the junior end. In consulting, whether articulated or not, most firms operate some kind of [...]

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Book Review – Field Notes from a Catastrophe

Today’s book review (I’m not promising weekly any more!) is Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Man, Nature and Climate Change, by Elizabeth Kolbert. It is a fairly slim book, based on a series she did for the New Yorker in 2005, and I read it after reading the review on realclimate, a blog by [...]

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