Bad laws make lawbreakers

Miranda Devine had a rant this week about cyclists:
But hostilities were fed by the lies told by the Government and the RTA, which gave cyclists unreasonable expectations and ideas above their station. The former roads minister Carl Scully, a vegetarian cyclist, threw $250 million at the lobby, further fuelling expectations which were dashed by subsequent [...]

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Music and Complexity

Last week was a very cultured week for me. I hardly ever go out to live events these days, but accidentally, I found myself at two in a week. It started on Monday evening, with a Musica Viva Chamber music concert in the Angel Place Recital Hall for 1,200 people from The Tokyo Quartet. And it [...]

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The End of Mothers Day

For as long as I can remember, I’ve hated mothers day. I’ve seen it as a just another occasion when capitalism tries to guilt me into spending money for no reason. Fortunately for my family relationships this view comes originally from my own mother, who has a fairly strong aversion to spending money unnecessarily.
Most of the people who [...]

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Modern Life

Behind me, sitting at his computer, Mr Penguin is at a Buck’s night. They’re all playing TeamFortress online (about 30 of them in their own private game). To make it different from just another game, their avatars are wearing party hats, and balloons suddenly appear any time someone is killed.

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Great interview

I’ve been a bit quiet lately (no good reason, just reading a few books, for a change) but I’m breaking the silence to point you towards a link:
The Daily Show (late night comedy news that I’ve become mildly addicted to after watching some great Sarah Palin rants last year) has an extended interview with a [...]

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Wildfire

Wildfire scarcely seems an adequate term for what happened over the weekend in Victoria.  To give a sense of the intensity, many cars are unidentifiable, because the numbers on the engine blocks have melted. This article compares the temperature in the worst of the fires to the Dresden firestorms.
John Quiggin has done his usual wonderful [...]

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A Remarkable Woman

This week, I held a book written by my great-great-great-great grandmother.
Esther Beauzeville  was born in 1786. She was descended from Huguenots who had escaped from France in the late 17th century, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. She married the Reverend James Hewlett in 1809, and they had five children, the fourth of whom [...]

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Reading 2009

I spent part of New Year’s Eve updating my reading list for 2008, which was quite interesting. I couldn’t resist a few statistics:
There were fifteen fiction books, with my rating ranging from three stars to two at five stars:
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and
How to Twist a Dragon’s Tale, by Cressida Cowell (a [...]

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A meme

Just started three weeks of holiday, Hooray! Not going anywhere, but I need some relaxation after the last three months (plus the rest) of continuous financial crisis. So I don’t have enough brain to blog, but here is a meme. I’ve seen this in a few places (Charlotte’s Web, Still life with Cat are who I [...]

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The comfort of religion

Today I went to the funeral of a some time professional colleague who committed suicide after one too many calls on his margin loans. It was unbearably sad, as he left a young family – four children from 9 to 21, and a school and sporting community that he had been a pivotal part of. [...]

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