With the recent passing of Steve Jobs there has been a lot in the press about his life. He was in many ways a remarkable man. I don’t know much about him and I have no desire to deify him. But in celebrating his life one of the papers published an edited text of an […]
Suppose I am driving in the city and have decided it would be useful to merge in to the outside lane of traffic. Just as I am about to do so the car behind and to my right seems to accelerate to prevent me from taking advantage of the gap in the traffic. I brake […]
Because of its implications on our rights to free speech, I have been following with some interest the Andrew Bolt case. He was recently convicted under the Racial Discrimination Act of racial vilification. In his judgment against Bolt on Wednesday, Judge Mordecai Bromberg stated, “I am satisfied that fair skinned aboriginal people, or some of […]
I am an inveterate reader of the religious historian, Karen Armstrong. Her writing is largely very readable, intelligent and well-informed by prodigious research. In one of her books I recall her pointing out that Heaven was largely unknown to the characters of the Old Testament. They did not seem to aspire to eternal life in […]
I have written before about the conundrum that the universe poses us. Its history commenced spectacularly fourteen billion years ago with the big bang and out of that history evolved our own, the history of humankind. And of course the story of humankind and its earlier hominid relatives is a very recent one. Creatures somewhat […]
This week’s essay contains some sentiments that are closely related to what I wrote last week. It is stimulated by something the good Dr Phil has taught me. He tells me that when we experience trauma we should make sure we “come out better and not bitter.” Whilst this is wise advice it is somewhat […]
Many of those I speak to decry the fact that in modern society everyone seems to be a victim. No matter how dysfunctional our behaviour we are seemingly excused by our circumstances. Sure there are people living in difficult circumstances and this has an impact on their behaviour, but we now seem to believe that […]
Some years ago I was invited to be the guest speaker and to make presentations at a graduation ceremony at the Central Queensland University. When I commenced my address I stated that I had come to address a deficiency in the university’s curriculum. The Vice-Chancellor seemed a little startled at this suggestion and there were […]
Well, what a week it’s been – riots in London, the USA losing its AAA rating, financial crisis in the Eurozone and our own share market taking another plunge and then recovering. What has gone wrong with our modern democratic capitalist societies? To begin with, I suppose, one of the downsides of democracies is that […]
Our society seems increasingly permeated by polarising issues. Issues such as climate change (and subsequently the carbon tax), the issue of refugees arriving by boats, the government intervention into remote indigenous communities, the threat of terrorism (particularly by Muslim Jihadists) and so on seem to rapidly polarize our society making meaningful debate quite problematic. It […]