The Palestine Dilemma

On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists emerged from Gaza to commit an horrendous atrocity against Israeli civilians. This deadly incursion has been well documented so I won’t elaborate on the gruesome details. Inevitably Israel responded with deadly force in order to deter further aggression and to rescue the civilian hostages that Hamas had kidnapped during […]

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The Downside of a University Education

At the age of eighteen, I left my family home in Charters Towers to start an engineering degree at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville. In those days it was quite an extraordinary thing to do! In my high school years I can only remember two students in the cohort that I knew ahead of […]

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The Perfidy of God

Well, after this essay my soul is likely to be sentenced to eternal damnation in Hell, but I can’t but help share with you some of my reservations about conventional religious beliefs. Traditional monotheistic religions have been largely constructed by those who have claimed to have had particular, personal access to God. In ancient times […]

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The Manufacturing of Muhammad

Some years ago I wrote an essay which I titled The Most Famous Man who never Lived which critiqued the mythology that had been created to support the notion that an extraordinary man, who purported to be the Son of God lived on this earth some two millennia ago who held the keys to eternal […]

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Some Inconvenient Truths


I had a long career in the Electricity Industry. I was a leading proponent for renewable energy and concerned to be as environmentally responsible as I could. But it seems to me that the debate about these things has often been skewed by those taking idealistic, extreme and sometimes uninformed positions. Let me give you […]

October 29, 2016

What Can I Say?


As I have written elsewhere, in this age of political correctness, meaningful communications is mired by an unfortunate asymmetry. Those delivering a message must do so in a very constrained and unemotional way to minimise the likelihood that they will be called out for giving offence. Consequently contentious issues are skirted around and some not […]

October 22, 2016

Democracy on the Ropes


Democracy on the Ropes Anyone who was masochistic enough to watch any of the Clinton/Trump debates must be shaking their heads in bewilderment at the state of Western democracy. It is appalling that the world’s most powerful democracy has come to this, forced to make a choice for President between an uninspiring Hillary Clinton, whose […]

October 15, 2016

Mundine Right on Indigenous Domestic Violence


As you would have observed from many previous essays, I have had a long time interest in indigenous affairs and in particular the need for Australians to address indigenous disadvantage. Unfortunately we have made few inroads into addressing indigenous disadvantage. The reasons behind this are complex. But basically, although there are many indigenous families now […]

October 8, 2016

Taking Things Seriously


In my little book Augustus Finds Serenity, the sage Takygulpa Rinpoche has been asked to give advice to a religious community. Among other things he tells the assembled throng: Do not take life too seriously. The glue that holds our communities together best is made from shared joy and good humour. Just as we are […]

September 30, 2016

Identifying with Difference


I thought that old age was supposed to bring us wisdom. But in my case it seems to bring more confusion. I must confess that I am dumbfounded by some of the social trends that I witness. Those of you that have followed my meanderings in my blog essays over the years would be aware […]

September 24, 2016

Parenting and ADHD


I suppose this is a sort of “trigger warning”. I intend my blog this week to be provocative. If you don’t want to be challenged best you continue no further! And what is the confronting issue I am going to attempt to deal with this week? It is parenting. Now I am not going to […]

September 17, 2016

The Sad Demise of Mythology


It is interesting that today the use of the word “myth” has a pejorative nature about it. We call something a myth when it seems factually untrue and deliberately designed to mislead. To so misuse the notion of myth is to do it a great injustice. The ancient Greeks made the distinction between Mythos and […]

September 9, 2016

A Powerful Life


I suppose that viewing it now, my childhood home wouldn’t seem a very salubrious dwelling to many. But I thought it was wonderful! A hundred metres or so to the east ran the train line. But it didn’t worry us much because the trains were pretty infrequent. On the southern side was the station master’s […]

September 3, 2016

After Bennelong


When Europeans settled in Australia in the late eighteenth century they had little knowledge of its prior occupants. Some of the Dutch and English seamen who had chanced by the shores of the Great Southern Land had encountered the indigenous inhabitants. Some of those encounters were amiable and some were hostile. But, by and large, […]

August 25, 2016