Music bleg

This is a plea for musical advice from my blogging readers. But first, a bit of background.
I play the classical piano quite respectably. I learned it all the way through school, and got to the point where I could play some impressive sounding classical pieces.
But now, I have no party pieces. The closest I come [...]

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Feminist Motherhood Meme

Blue milk, a few weeks ago, asked all her readers to answer some questions about feminism and motherhood. It’s taken me a while, because some of these are questions I’ve never really thought deeply about before. 
How would you describe your feminism in one sentence? When did you become a feminist? Was it before or after [...]

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Election geeks

We had a small party at our place for the election last night. I realised how well I’d chosen the guest list when the people that didn’t know each other started comparing notes on how much they loved Antony Green. This was the preparation I did for the evening:

The liberal/conservative seats were on the left, [...]

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Book Review: the Death and Life of Great American Cities

Today’s review is The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. This is a book I never would have read without my blogging habit. When she died last year, several of my favourite bloggers wrote about her.
The book is an indictment of pretty much everything about American cities (particularly New York) in [...]

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Fashion

I was at the beach today, and Chatterboy and Hungry Boy are old enough that I don’t need to keep my eyes on them every second any more. This particular small harbour beach is one that is generally attended by families with children under 10 or so.
Every single boy was wearing a rash vest of some [...]

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Interest rates

A friend of mine pointed out to me (you really should get your own blog, Brian!) that the discussion of who is a better economic manager by reference to absolute levels of interest rates misses some fairly fundamental points about how much is inside the control of the people managing the Australian economy. One fairly [...]

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Procrastination alert

This website is seriously addictive: Free Rice. You answer questions about what a word means, and every time you get the answer right, the sponsors of the site donate some rice to the United Nations World Food program. It’s set up to be at exactly the right level for your word knowledge – moving you [...]

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Wedding symbols

A few days ago, I found my wedding ring after mislaying it for a couple of weeks. I was surprised at how bereft I realised I had felt while it was gone.
When Mr Penguin and I decided to get married (we both hated the word engaged) I refused categorically to get an engagement ring. I was [...]

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Jury again

One of the reasons (apart from general laziness) that I didn’t do Globlopomo is that I was called for Jury service for a month starting today. But I’m posting now because I got off.
I got as far as sitting in the jury box of a trial of someone for sexual assault. To my great relief, I [...]

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Voting for children

Michael Duffy, in the SMH last week (although it seems to have disappeared from their website), mentioned in passing how many issues seemed to be setting the older generation against the younger – global warming, the aged pension, housing policy, even economic policy – the interests of the older generation are trumping those younger.
And of [...]

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