When I look back at our household when I was young, I can’t but help admire my parents’ tenacity and resilience. When I was a child I had no perception that we were poor, and compared to some around us, we weren’t. My mother was frugal and as early as March would start putting a […]
Every now and then, after a little nagging, my wife prevails on me to clean up the cupboards in my office. I am a little sentimental and that causes me to be somewhat of a hoarder of the various mementos and awards I have collected over my career. In cleaning out recently, I came across […]
It is within my mind, then, that I measure time. I must not allow my mind to insist that time is something objective. When I measure time, I am measuring something in the present of my mind. Either this is time or I don’t know what time is. St Augustine, Book Xl of the Confessions. […]
Here is a provocative title for you! Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University, wrote The Case against Education; Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money. Caplan’s thesis is that most of what we learn in the traditional education system is irrelevant. Much of the subject material, apart from […]
It is far better to render Beings in your care competent than to protect them. Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life It is fast becoming the dominant ethos in our society that we must shield people from every possible harm, whether physical or psychological, real or perceived. Unfortunately this futile task renders us vulnerable as […]
It is a source of great frustration having an interest in indigenous affairs coming to realise how ineffective we are at making a difference. Recently the annual “Closing the Gap” report was published highlighting the usual disappointments in trying to reduce the disadvantage of indigenous Australians. The only statistic we seem to have been meeting […]
Actualities seem to float in a wide sea of possibilities from out of which they were chosen; and somewhere, indeterminism says such possibilities exist and form part of the truth. William James As you will have deduced from my blog essays, I am an avid reader and enjoy a wide range of genres including history, […]
I have often told my readers how important I believe myths and parables are to our understanding of the world. Unfortunately we sometimes suffer greatly when these pointers to the truth are taken literally. (I recently came across a clue as to why parables are so popular. According to research quoted by David Di Salvo […]
To most of us the climate signals are rather confusing. Whilst the press has often provided stories of shrinking ice-caps with commentary from global warming alarmists insisting this is evidence that increasing level of atmospheric CO2 , the same folk seem rather bewildered by the record cold conditions now blanketing North America. If the truth […]
Our democracy seems to me to be floundering. Our politicians seem too keen to embrace populist issues without sufficient concern for the long-term. Serious reform which underpinned our economic success in the late twentieth century seems now impossible because voters can’t be convinced to make short-term sacrifices in order to access long-term benefits. Our two […]